Actually I just had another thought about this.
Is it unreasonable to expect that the extension developer knows which versions or operating systems their extension works with? Why not make sure the developer shares that when the extension is released to the community?
Would it be possible to have extra fields be displayed, in the upload form, when the Extensions category is chosen? Is there any way to configure the upload form, so that info has to be provided, before it will upload?
Or if not mandatory fields, would it be possible to just display a prominent notice, when the Extensions category is selected, asking the developer to please, please, please include that info?
All best, brynn
-----Original Message----- From: Victor Westmann Sent: Saturday, June 16, 2018 10:09 PM To: Brynn Cc: Inkscape-Docs Subject: Re: [Inkscape-docs] extension testers needed
Got it!
No no. You said it right. I was just wondering if we could promote inkscape extensions more widely and more clearly. I use inkscape since 2007 but just recently understood how to use and enable some of the extensions... hehe.
Hopefully not all inkscape users are as distracted as I am/was. :)
On Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 8:52 PM brynn, <brynn@...78...> wrote: Hi Victor, Well, the gallery is the first item in the Community tab, in the main menu. There's also a promonent link on the front page of the website.
And more specifically about extensions, at the bottom of the guide for writing extensions (https://inkscape.org/en/develop/extensions/) it mentions uploading it to the gallery (or a link to it). It even gives steps how to do it.
I can't think of any way to make sure that /all/ extensions are in the gallery. But I think eventually, most of them will be there.
Or did I miss your point?
brynn
-----Original Message----- From: Victor Westmann Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2018 8:46 PM To: brynn Cc: Inkscape-Docs ; Maximilian Gaukler Subject: Re: [Inkscape-docs] extension testers needed
Brynn,
Thank you for your always detailed and very well explained email.
Allow me one silly question, please: is it possible for us to announce the gallery in the main inkscape website so the inkscape extension developers can publish them in our gallery?
Let me know if I missed anything.
--Victor Westmann
On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 9:41 PM, brynn <brynn@...78...> wrote: Short answer:
It will be different in 2 ways. 1 - It will include all known extensions, and 2 - it will only be links to download pages, not any actual extensions. Here's the page, but it only has tutorials and a couple of books on it now: https://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/index.php.
As far as I understand, you don't have to host your extensions in the gallery. If you prefer to use a repo like github, you can just put the link to it in your gallery posting. (But for newbies, it would be nice to include specific info about exactly what to download. I'm not exactly a newbie, but I still get confused when I have to go to github to download something.)
I think the gallery category *could be* the main distribution channel. But I'm not sure how that could be controlled. Once it becomes known more widely, I would guess that most extensions will be found there. But I think extensions will always be scattered around, to some extent.
Long answer: Currently external Inkscape extensions are scattered far and wide across the internet. By my count, that is approximately (roughly) 300 extensions! A few of us are working on contacting as many extension authors as we can, and informing them about the gallery, which might not have even existed, when they created their extensions.
But when I say "a few", really only one person is doing that work, with me and another person (Maren) providing support when we can. The work is going very slow, as far as I can tell. I think the reason it's going so slow, is that person (Mark Shafer) (I probably mispelled the last name) is also attempting to bring older extensions up to date, at the same time. If we were to focus only on contacting the authors, it would probably go faster. This is our working page: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Inkscape_Extensions.
Between that page, the original Extensions Repository (which was only sparsely used by extension authors, afaict) (http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Extension_repository), and the gallery's extensions category (https://inkscape.org/en/gallery/=extension/), that's all the extensions we know of.
I just want to have sort of a master list of extensions, because as I provide support for Inkscape (primarily in forums) I'm sick and tired of searching hither and yon to help users find extensions. Plus, having such a list will allow users to search on their own.
If someday, we finally have all the external extensions in the gallery, I'll happily delete my list of links (to download pages). I'm not sure if that would ever happen, but I'd be happy if it did.
My desire to put out a call for testers will benefit both the comprehensive list I'm making, as well as the gallery category. I'm also getting tired of explaining to people who are searching for extensions, that 'here are all our extensions, but we have no idea which ones work, which version they work with, or on which systems'. So even when we have them all in one place, we'll still be reciting the same lines, unless we can gather that info about them.
All best, brynn
-----Original Message----- From: Maximilian Gaukler Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2018 1:39 PM To: inkscape-docs@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-docs] extension testers needed
Hi brynn,
I may have missed something - in what way is your extension page different from the extension gallery? Is it only for extensions not listed in the gallery? https://inkscape.org/en/gallery/=extension/
Do you have a link to your page?
Anyway, I'd like to get an overview of existing extensions out there in the web, especially the ones that do similar work to the ones I am contributing to.
Regarding the gallery:
Is there a way to add an extension to the gallery without uploading a zip file? I would like to link only to github, as I don't like having to reupload it for every new version: That's duplicate work and tends to be forgotten, especially if the inkscape website is not the main distribution channel.
Best Regards,
Max
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