plugins vs core integration

[TotalNewbie]

Plugin only:
Leave TC as it is and do everything with plugs ins.
My opion: Plugins are 'bad'. They often dont integrate seemless.

Core only:
Plugin functions are move to the core.
Ultimate integration
TC gets bigger

Core but selecteble:
Looks a bit like plugins
But more integrated

Certfied plugins:
Lets face it.
Some plugins are buggy/slow/ take up lots of resources.
When some plugin crahes ppl will say TC crashed again.
And not TC is great/small/fast but the plugin crashed.
So maybe the most stable plugins get a certification.

Bundled plugins:
The best of the best gets bundled with TC.
Readily (installed)
If the author of the plugin aproves that of cource....

[pdavit]

Plug-in support is a good idea and it was a welcome added feature by Christian. And it was an added feature not a replacement feature. Under no circumstances plug-ins are a means to stop developing TC. Christian is equally active as he used to be before and I bet he will continue like this for a long long time!

To some extend all plug-ins are certified and follow certain design rules. And don’t forget that there is no such thing as fully bug-free software. And at the end of the day that’s part of the whole ideal behind plug-ins; to be designed by developers other than the author himself. If plug-ins are reliable or bug-free or useful that totally depends on the individual users’ judgment. Surely you don’t have to install every single plug-in available. You just pick the one you like and suits your needs and off you go!

A core integration will kill Christian. We certainly cannot expect all this workload to pass to Christian. It’s not feasible; he won’t even have time to sleep!

Bundled plugins. Hmmm, that’s kind of a good idea and reminds me a bit the way IrfanView has a single executable file with all the plug-ins included. Certainly though I wouldn’t want to have them integrated in TC’s executable installation file but separately. The problem though here is to find someone to do the job of collecting and putting everything together with a custom/selectable installation as well as having the file publicly available. New versions of existing plug-ins are available almost every day and new ones come out in a regular basis too so, bundled plug-ins is almost a full time job that I personally wouldn’t want to see Christian’s hands on it. That will leave TC’s development behind! Is there anyone out there qualified and willing to do the job?!

I kanda find an option missing in this poll: “Leave everything as it already is!”. I’m not negative at all. I just like things as they are now.

Kind regards,

Panos

[bago]

Bundled plugins:
The best of the best gets bundled with TC.
Readily (installed)
If the author of the plugin aproves that of cource....

There could be problems with Licensing of the plugins.
I'm not sure, but I think that a GPL plugin could not be distributed with TC because of licenses incompatibility.

[ghisler(Author)]

The main reasons why I added the plugin interface are:
- There are a lot of packer formats, and I cannot support them all by myself
- There are functions used by only a small percentage of people, and it makes no sense to bloat the main program with these features
- Plugins are nice for in-house development for companies - it allows to easily integrate with their proprietary software, much much easier than writing a device driver! I know of some companies who have done this (non-public plugins).
- I can make plugins open source, so others can re-use the code to write their own plugins. Both sides can profit from this.

[/b]About certifcation:[/b]
Plugins which appear on our addons page are approved by us. I will start to add new plugins to my addons page after the release of TC 5.51. If you have a plugin which you want to see on my addons page, please contact me now by e-mail!

[bago]

- I can make plugins open source, so others can re-use the code to write their own plugins. Both sides can profit from this.

Sure, I only wanted to point out that if a plugin is under the GPL license the it could not be added to a "bundle" distributed with TC itself. In order to have a bundle of plugins distributed directly with TC and installed by its installer plugins owner and Christian should pay attention to Licensing.

Plugins are great because they offer us a way to extend out favourite tool! If TC was opensource plugins would be less important I think... but at least TC has "open standards" for plugins.

[bago]

[OT] Someone should remove the "cloned" topic in this forum.

2ghisler(Author)
2TotalNewbie
Can you remove the other topic (the one without reply)?

[ghisler(Author)]

Can you remove the other topic (the one without reply)?

It's gone!

In order to have a bundle of plugins distributed directly with TC and installed by its installer plugins owner and Christian should pay attention to Licensing.

I do pay attention to licensing - all plugins which use open source code are also open source, and no open source plugins or dlls are bundled with TC. I also don't plan to bundle any plugins with TC, because it would only make the distribution file larger - something I wanted to avoid just by adding the plugin interfaces instead of adding the features directly...

[ben hub]

I completely agree with Panos.

hum… did somebody save the results of the poll (on the ancient forum) about the size of tcmdnnn.exe ? I do prefer to keep it within 1,4 Mo – fitting in a single diskette.

Let’s keep in mind that every new feature we ask will increase the size of tcmd.

Of course, many of the suggested new features would be useful – BUT I don’t want TC to become what we call in french “usine à gaz” (don’t know the equivalent in english, sorry).

For the moment, standard TC satisfies 95% of the needs, and every day I discover existing features I didn’t know – thank these forums !

Plugins are IMHO a very good solution. I use several of them, and I want to have the ability of choosing those I want/don’t want to install.

It would be useful to improve the installation process, to make it easy for standard users, who don’t know how to edit the wincmd.ini file (and find it first !), don’t know the difference between lister/packer/system plugins… maybe someone has already developed an installation plugin ??

I want to thank all the plugin developers, who do a fantastic job – for free – to make our life easier. I don’t forget Christian, without whom I’d be like a chick without its omelette

[Hacker]

hum… did somebody save the results of the poll (on the ancient forum) about the size of tcmdnnn.exe ?

Oh my poll, my good old poll... all the emotions rise up again... no... can't stand... the pain...
I miss the threads from the old forum.

IIRC people said they don't care about the size, nobody uses diskettes anymore anyways.


I want to thank all the plugin developers, who do a fantastic job – for free –

My greetings go out to almk...

Roman

[deus-ex]

2christian
a big plus would be a separate optiondialog for the plugins in tc.
currently, plugin-installation/management is somewhat scattered
in the settingsdialog.

maybe, an additional mainmenu-entry called "plugins" could help
to clarify the situation, especially for tc- and/or pluginuser-beginners.
an option to check which plugins are currently installed (with version?)
would be great too.

this idea can be found in "far", a filemanager by eugene roshal,
author of the famous packer "rar".

[pdavit]

2christian
a big plus would be a separate optiondialog for the plugins in tc.
currently, plugin-installation/management is somewhat scattered
in the settingsdialog.

maybe, an additional mainmenu-entry called "plugins" could help
to clarify the situation, especially for tc- and/or pluginuser-beginners.
an option to check which plugins are currently installed (with version?)
would be great too.

I like this!

We can also have the ability to deactivate some plug-ins while they are installed. What I mean is to have them visible in the installation window so that me know that they are available but have a way to select which of them we would like to be available (i.e. with tick boxes).

[Hacker]

That's actually this - http://www.ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?t=85 , isn't it?

TIA
Roman

[pdavit]

That's actually this - http://www.ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?t=85 , isn't it?

Nice! I just wasn’t aware of this plug-in thanks Roman for… one more time!

[steve_3199]

Plugins add extesnibility to Total Commander, indeed plugins are a good idea