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Old 29-07-2010, 08:02   #1
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Some Thoughts About the Plugins (Structure)

Hi,

as the new beta development on version 2.2.0 is going on I would like to ask some questions about the new plugins (structure).

From my personal understanding plugins are optional features which belong to the decision of the user which one to install/ use.

How should/ could this be achieved in OCPN?
My suggestion would be an additional tab 'Plugins' in the toolbox where
  1. all available plugins are listed
  2. plugins could be dis- and enabled (checkbox)
Another question is if all available plugins have to be included already in the setup file (which could lead to a very large file size when there are many plugins) or if it would be possible to download (from OpenCPN.org?) and separately install them?

And how to handle alternative plugins?
Using the tab solution they may be handled by radio buttons instead of a checkbox. But that depends on a system (included in each plugin) which "handles" incompatibilities with other plugins.

Gunther
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Old 29-07-2010, 08:14   #2
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Gunther....

Good idea. I plan to implement the PlugIn Manager tab as you have suggested.

I think we may include a few popular PlugIns with the official release, and then allow the user to download new PlugIns from the .org site if desired. All these details remain to be worked out.

I suggest that Grib and Dashboard become part of the official release.

Comments?
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Old 29-07-2010, 08:30   #3
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Dave,
Quote:
Originally Posted by bdbcat View Post
I suggest that Grib and Dashboard become part of the official release.
sounds good so far to me!

One question though will be if they are replaceable?
For example if the actual GRIB plugin (integrated in the official release) only supports GRIB Edition 1 and there will be one with GRIB Edition 2 support in the future, will the user be able to replace it?

Another point I can think of is how to handle/ implement possible config options of a plugin?
For example: Would be great, if the background- and font-color of the dashboard plugin are definable by the user.

BTW: Maybe we should add a "plugin wish list" to the tracker?

Gunther
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Old 29-07-2010, 08:47   #4
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Dave,

I believe that most OpenCPN users will not be adding/removing the various plug-in's very often. In fact, after the initial install, I suspect that for most their configuration will most likely never be changed.

So I would like to suggest a different method to handle plug-in's. Include a plug-in .ini file that lists the unique file names for all plug-in's that were built against a particular version of OpenCPN. If the main code finds any of these files it loads them and activates that plug-in's functionality. To include or remove a given functionality only requires downloading or deleting/renaming a file. This will save a whole lot of GUI code and makes it more likely that the correct plug-in file will be used with a given release.

Paul
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Old 31-07-2010, 11:41   #5
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Plugin Ideas

FS#33 : Plugin Ideas

Quote:
Here is a list of plugin ideas, perhaps we can keep these in mind when designing the plugin system:

Dashboard - NMEA data display
Grib Weather
Weather router for sailing vessels
Proprietary chart support BSB4, S63, Navionics, CMAP, CM93/3 ... etc
Satellite Imagary... KML, Geotiff etc
Active Captain
Acquired Radar target overlay
Radar controls and overlay for various network radars
Sounder controls and overlay for various network sounders
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Old 02-08-2010, 14:30   #6
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Will,

what is your idea for this project? What kind of tasks should users add there?
And how about project config (task types, categories, versions etc.)?

Sorry for asking - but it does not become accessible to me.

Thanks for explanation,

Gunther
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