Plugins menu (was: Re: Speaking of IDE Updates)

[Richard Gaskin]

Wilhelm Sanke wrote:

> Three hours earlier I had written:
> 
>> I am unsure what should be added to the script of the Plugins menu
>> button. It works here without problems, but any suggestions and
>> modifications are of course welcome.
> 
> Despite his urgent preparations for the MacWorld Revolution seminar
> Richard managed  to simplify my script to the essential bare bones
> within minutes after my post and uploaded his modified mctools stack to
> the files section of the MC_IDE Yahoo group.
> 
> My own script, which is slighty more circumstantial, was taken from an
> experimental stack and then put into the added button of the Menu Bar.
> 
> I was somewhat unsure about the necessary length of the script, as the
> Revolution uses many more script lines to achieve a similar purpose,
> even distributing the script across the preopenstack handler of card 1
> of  stack "revmenubar" and button "Development" in the Menubar.
> And the Revolution solution does not immediately update the text of the
> menu button when you change the contents of the "Plugins" folder during
> a Revolution session, because the updating script resides in the
> preopenstack handler.
> 
> Both Richard's and my script update the text of the menu button at once
> also during a "session" when  something is added to or removed from the
> "plugins" folder. Our scripts are much shorter than the corresponding
> Rev scripts - and especially Richard's solution is an excellent example
> of  "clean and lean" programming.

Thank you for the kind words.

As much as I like the convenience of building the Plugins menu on the fly,
there's a drawback that Rev doesn't account for either:  Stack file names
may not be the most descriptive term (which we use in these review copies of
mctools), nor even the stack name (which Rev uses).

In my own apps I prefer to use the stack title, as it's the only one of the
three options designed specifically for human reading, so they're usually
more descriptive.

The drawback to using the effective title is that it's not as fast as
getting the file names, so it's better used in a system that only updates on
startup.

If it is desirable to use the title, we could add an "Update Menu" item to
the bottom of the Plugins menu which would allow you to refresh it without
having to quit.

In a later version we might also look at adding a Plugins Manager window to
provide optional support for plugins made for Rev.  Perhaps the Plugins
Manager itself could be a plugin.

Thoughts?

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
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