Hey all,
First, I'll apologize for my disappearing -- I've been crazy busy, but I hope that it will start to be getting better. I've not read through most of the Inkscape lists, and there seems to be some discussion on extensions, I'm going to try to hit everything I remember in one mega e-mail.
-- It seems that there are problems loading the GIMP gradient plugin. Who is getting those? Is there a consistent set? Is this related to people who are/aren't compiling in the bin relocate code? I'm sure the extensions stuff isn't thread safe. This worries me, as I'd like to move alot more functionality into being plugins in the near future.
-- There seemed to be a few "where are extensions going?" type of e-mails. I guess my 'grand goal' is to have them pretty much everywhere, but in the short term I'd like to get functionality similar to GIMP's filters working. This would involve having a menu item which would cause modifications to the document based on some plugable functionality. I hope this can be done with scripts and plugins, and made to 'just work' for every user of Inkscape. This goal may seem overly ambitious, but there is tons of the infrastructure already in place.
Some solid documentation has been started on this by Bryce. Find it here: (it also explains the terminology that we've been using)
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/inkscape/inkscape/doc/extension_system...
-- Extensions dialog -- I think that this is a really good idea. I'd like to be able to load and unload the extensions from a dialog -- for testing also. If someone could mock up the dialog and take care of all "the GUI stuff" I'd be happy to help with the tying it into the rest of the system part of it. Otherwise, this has lower priority for me to getting effects working happily. One thing that I'd like to see in this dialog is a place to put a textual "Why this extension didn't load" so we can explain missing dependencies to users somewhere.
-- API for extensions, this is still in flux. But, it is something that needs to be figured out. I know at one point we'd discussed using the SVG DOM from the W3C. I don't know how that would work out, or how difficult it would be. Bryce and I outlined some general functions that would be needed for "Command and Control" in the document above, but those ideas are definitely not fleshed out.
-- Now that we're XSLTized -- should we be adding that as an extension type? I could see it working for input/output extensions, perhaps as effects also?
Okay, that is all I can remember right now... tell me more, I should be more responsive now!
--Ted
PS -- If anyone is looking for "bite-sized" extensions task to do over winter break or something similar, ask, I think that I have a few.