Ben,
This is possible, but you need to change interface.cpp to have WITH_EFFECTS_MENU to 1. This will give you and effects menu, which will launch the scripts. I expect this to be set to 1 by default after 0.41 is released.
On Tue, 2004-12-28 at 11:52 +0000, Ben Crowell wrote:
Also Ben Crowell's Perl scripts and XSLT scripting are very nice features that should be more accessible, if possible, via the Scripts dialog or otherwise.
Incorporating some of the Perl scripts would be fun, and I'd like to do it. However, IIRC there is still only a sketch of an API? Give me an API, and I'll get to work. Basically I need:
- a way to get an svg file as input, and send it back as output
All effects will do this. To set up your script as an effect just make an .inx file for them. If you look at dropshadow.inx you'll probably have something very similar.
- a way to report errors (including errors due to not having the right CPAN modules installed)
Well, there is a way to report dependency failures. There currently isn't a dependency mode for CPAN modules missing, I'm not sure how to do this. Any ideas? Currently specific files can be checked for, will that work? Is there some sort of Perl path?
- a way to get input strings from the user
Currently there isn't a way to do this with effects/scripts. What kind of user input would you like?
- a way to display some documentation to the user about what this script does
Theoretically this would be in the description, and the tooltip. Both of those are in the .inx file -- but there isn't a large text area. This is probably something that we should add to the extensions dialog (when it gets created).
- provisions for internationalizing all the strings the user will see
I don't currently have a way to do this, but I think that all the .inx files are going to have to be internationalized. Intltool can handle XML files, so I think that it is very doable. If you make the .inx file, I will make sure it gets i18n with everything else :)
--Ted