Re: plugin XML files

[Gerry Duprey <gerry@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Howdy,

>>Here's a question -- can tools other than xPLHAL access that
>>website that hosts the vendor plugin files?
>
> The master plugins XML file just contains a list of every plug-in,
with:
> Name
> Description
> Url

> Suggestions or improvements to the master file structure are always
> welcome (though of course we need to remain backward compatible).

A few comments here:

1) There are no file extensions on the URLs that leads to the actual plugin
file.  Could someone elaborate on why and/or what the "proper"
way to
manipulate the URL to get at the plugin file?  For example, is the proper
way to get the default/english plugin file for a URL to just suffix the URL
with ".xml"?

2) I could see a real benefit to having two additional attributes on each
plugin entry:

a) vendor=  being the xPL vendorID that this plugin describes.  This way,
you don't have to parse a name from the URL and it provides some
flexibility
in the URL naming. I guess a matter of explicitness vs implicitness.

b) some sort of type= where the values might be "core" and
"plugin" (or
anything else).  I ask because the first entry -- xPL Schema Collection --
isn't really a plugin file.  If it where flagged differently from plugins,
then I could programatically skip anything that was not marked as a plugin.
That could allow different xPL "root" info in here for the
future, but
even if that is not desired, it would make it easier than having to test a
URL or name for a string match.

With luck, xPLHAL/older software would just ignore attributes that are not
known, so such changes would be backward compatible.

Gerry
--
Gerry Duprey
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
http://www.cdp1802.org