Re: Generic Embeddable plugins.

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005, Charles Goodwin wrote:

> Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 16:50:29 +0000
> From: Charles Goodwin <charlie@vexi.org>
> To: abiword-dev@abisource.com
> Subject: Re: Generic Embeddable plugins.
>
>
> On Tue, 2005-01-11 at 16:25 +0100, J.M. Maurer wrote:
> > Erm, when the plugin is not available, the png/jpg/svg images are
> > *purely* there for fallback. To give an idea of the contents that should
> > be there. Not for perfect rendering or whatever. The user should still
> > install the plugin to get the functionality he needs (and we should
> > inform him which plugin he misses).
>
> As a user, I'd expect to *only* see a box saying, "You need plug-in X to
> view this!" with simple directions on how/where to acquire said plug-in.

That would be the bare minimum, but it would be more robust to have a
basic preview. As I said previouslly installing plugins may not be a
trivial matter for normal users, and as we can be reasonably sure
because people can embed anything that they probably will embed anything
and users could need to install many plugins from many different
sources. This generic system makes no assumptions about plugins being
open source, and even open source plugins wont necessarily be available
for all platforms or have a version of the plugin compatible with
the current version of abiword.

> What I don't want is a potentially fairly inaccurate image in a document
> that just shouldn't be there.

Certainly there would need to be a clear and prominant indication that a
plugin is needed for the full experience (I'm thinking an icon/button
overlay in one corner).

> I mean, from what you're suggesting, there's almost the implication that
> you'll be distributing documents with these images stored with/in them
> whether they are needed or not, just in case.

Presumably some users will want to do that. It seems reasonable to try
and accomadate them.

If you have used the AbiGIMP plugin or other like it you will be aware
that all you really need is an adequate preview and a way to fire up the
external program, rather than needing to have full scale BONOBO/ORB
embedding of a full application within an application (which tends to be
unusable anyway, it is much easier to switch out and use the proper
application so long as the changes propogate back to your document).

I figure most plugins will want to provide a preview simply because it
will be faster to render a cached copy to start with.

> So not only are you making my documents look worse, when I want people
> to view them properly by grabbing the plug-in, you're also significantly
> increasing the file size too!

I'm not saying it is going to be easy. Some users will want to directly
embed the object and include previews (most users because I expect you
wouldn't be embedding things if you were overly concerned by size)
others will want to indirectly link in the object.

Even a crappy preview will be helpful if we manage expectations, and put
users in the mindset that it is better than nothing and good enough
(compared to spending their time downloading all sorts of plugins).

What I do believe is that Martin has done a great job by implementing this
base functionality and that it will mean that there will be a robust
system for all kinds of different versions of abiword on different
platforms from different times to be able to render enough of a document
for users to be able to have some understanding of what the embedded
objects are and roughly what information they contain.

> Perhaps that's just me being twisted by the way things tend to already
> work in the software of today (i.e. if you ain't got the functionality,
> you ain't seeing nothin') and you, the AbiWord developer, are actually
> trying to do me, the user, a favour.

That was my point of view and I was the one strongly pushing for this
architecture. I want to keep things simple from the user perspective but
also allow developers to future proof abiword against all kinds of unknown
plugins. Like I said, implementing this kind of base functionality is
extremely optimistic and hopefully it will make things easier for users
and developers in the futre. I'm _extatic_ that Martin was willing to go
out of his way to generalize this rather than just focussing on the Math
plugin.

> That's my blunt but honest opinion as an individual AbiWord user. Of
> course, other users may take a more appreciative tone.

Hope my comments help make a little more sense (if they come across as a
little aggressive please ignore, I need a caffeine and sugar!)

Sincerely

- Alan
Received on Tue Jan 11 19:28:10 2005