kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Nick Østergaard <oe.nick@xxxxxxxxx>]

2016-03-03 15:40 GMT+01:00 Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>:
> Are you considering attempting to load a file with each available plugin
> until the correct one is found or they all fail?  That's not a very
> elegant solution.  If you only have a few plugins this may be feasible
> but what happens when you have 10 or 15 plugins?

10 or 15 plugins are not a lot. All they should do it sort of create a
sanity check on weather or not the file is parseable. I think that can
be determined quite quickly by the plugin. You usually don't need to
parse the whole file. Often you can find a header in the file, that
should give you a very strong indication on whether or not it is
likely that the file can be read.

>  This is one of the
> reasons the fp-lib-table exists.  The fp-lib-table is not just a file
> path resolution system.  It also handles associating the library (file
> or folder of files) type with the correct plugin as well as any optional
> parameters the plugin requires to perform it's job.  Relying on file
> extensions is always going to have it's issues.  Unfortunately we are no
> closer to a file system with file metadata then we were 30 years ago
> when the powers that be figured out the whole file extension concept was
> broken.  I wouldn't hold my breath on this being fixed anytime soon.
>
> On 3/2/2016 5:19 AM, Simon Wells wrote:
>> Handling multiple plugins would be annoying and probably a whole
>> different discussion, but it should really only be an issue when user
>> plugins are possible if sanity checks are done properly. And it would
>> most like have to be a user setting or i have no idea of a better way
>> of doing it
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 10:40 PM, Nick Østergaard <oe.nick@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> 2016-03-02 9:21 GMT+01:00 Simon Wells <swel024@xxxxxxxxx>:
>>>> After looking into and discussing
>>>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1551628 with nick i am not sure
>>>> the filter is the best way of advising kicad of which plugin to use
>>>>
>>>> I was thinking the best way to solve this would be for each of the
>>>> plugins to have a static
>>>>  "bool CanYouHandleThis"
>>>> function (obviously with a better name) and when a file is loaded each
>>>> of the plugins are checked to see if they understand the file,
>>>
>>> Yes, I think this is a proper way to do this. After all, it is the
>>> plugin that knows if it can parse the file, so having a
>>> CanYouHandleThis to sanity check the file or whatever it does to say,
>>> "Yay, I can handle this file!", would be a good idea, it could
>>> possibly also be used to do some better error reporting to the user.
>>> Say; the user tries to open an eagle v5 .brd file which is not
>>> supported, it could possibly detect the version type of the file and
>>> import the user that the file he is trying to open is v5 and only v6
>>> is supported for example.
>>>
>>>> With each of the responses if they are all no, then a error can be
>>>> reported, and for any that are yes the loading can then be handed off
>>>> to it/them (if dynamic plugins are enabled at some point in the future
>>>> (which you would really need some sort of what can you read interface
>>>> anyway) then you may get to the point where multiple can handle a
>>>> single file)
>>>
>>> If multiple plugins can handle a file, how would you handle that
>>> situation seamlessly?
>>>
>>>> This would allow the user to not have to set the filter which i am not
>>>> sure many people would think as the problem anyway as far as i am
>>>> aware its not the normal method for setting what type a file is. And
>>>> also move away from blindly trusting extensions
>>>
>>> Blindly trusting extensions is indeed problematic as we already have seen :)
>>>
>>>> Thanks
>>>>
>>>> Simon
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
>>>> Post to     : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
>>>> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
>> Post to     : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
>> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
> Post to     : kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers
> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp