Consolidate settings for managing add-ons

[Frank Ralf]

Hi,

I find the settings for managing add-ons a bit irritating:

• There are three entries in the Help menu that basically lead to the same dialog for installing or updating add-ons.
• Activating/deactivating installed add-ons is not done via Help > Manage add-ons... as I would expect but from Options > Preferences > Plugins.
• The setting item is called "Plugins" instead of "Add-ons" so cannot easily be found in the Preferences.

Best regards,
Frank

[Radu]

Hi Frank,

Thanks for the improvement request, I added an internal issue based on your remarks.
Please see some more comments below:

There are three entries in the Help menu that basically lead to the same dialog for installing or updating add-ons.

Yes, you have actions to "Install new add-ons", "Check for add-ons updates" and "Manage add-ons" corresponding to 3 separate use cases: installation, update and uninstalling an add-on. I do not quite see a problem with this. Maybe indeed one could consider a single action "Add-ons..." which could do any of these use cases internally but to me maybe having a separate action for each use case is more clear.

Activating/deactivating installed add-ons is not done via Help > Manage add-ons... as I would expect but from Options > Preferences > Plugins.
The setting item is called "Plugins" instead of "Add-ons" so cannot easily be found in the Preferences.

An add-on can install in Oxygen either a plugin or a document type/framework configuration. This is why we cannot name add-ons "plugins", because once the add-on is installed, it might contribute a plugin to the "Options > Preferences > Plugins" preferences page or a document type/framework configuration in the Preferences->"Document Type Association" page.
Maybe what we should do would be to show details about installed add-ons in the Preferences->"Add-ons" page and to also allow disabling an entire add-on (which might mean a plugin or framework configuration) from there.

Regards,
Radu