Make unavailable plugin fields more visible when used

[Lefteous]

It would be nice to get some information when content plugin fields are used but the associated plugin isn't installed. Currently nothing is displayed where the field values are expected. This can be a custom plugin view. As the user cannot see if the field is really empty or the plugin is not installed this lead to strange assumptions. So in this case a hint should be placed inplace of the field value.
Another case is a loaded 'saved search'. Here conditions defined on the plugins tab are simply removed when the plugin isn't installed but if the user never controls all tab contents there is no way to see which conditions have been used in the search. In this case I would expect a warning when loading the search

[petermad]

Support+++

[ghisler(Author)]

What would you suggest? What about numeric fields?

[Horst.Epp]

What would you suggest? What about numeric fields?

I don't think that there can be a good general result for missing field contents.
What about an error message showing the missing field reference,
with the options to continue (behaves as its now) or aborting.

[milo1012]

I always find prefixed exclamation marks quite useful in such cases, as they are rarely used in plug-in values.
So for custom columns you would see sth. like:

Code: Select all

(!)

in all requested fields.
But I agree: there is probably no overall solution for all possible places where wdx plug-ins are used. So a short messagebox with the error message might be best, though it's probably best to make it optional through an ini option.

[Lefteous]

What about numeric fields?

I don't really understand why the field type matters in case the plugin is not installed. I would have expected that TC checks if the plugin is installed before allocating memory for the field results. Or why does it matters?

What would you suggest?

For the custom column view and similar something like this:
http://lefteous.totalcmd.net/tc/ideas/missing_plugin_v1.png (this is the Unicode placeholder character which is used when a character is missing in a font.
http://lefteous.totalcmd.net/tc/ideas/missing_plugin_v2.png (a more chatty approach)

For loaded searches a simple warning message box would be sufficient.