Removing plugin manager was a mistake
-
From what I read, it was users complaining about the readability of the plugins folder and that’s why it was taken out.
I don’t want to be a jerk about it, I just want to make sure that someone says what I’m thinking and that is simply:
the plugin manager worked great, and I think it was a mistake to remove it.
It really feels like you took a perfect tool and broke it for no reason other than some people who were complaining (someone is ALWAYS going to complain).
I really hope you decide to put the plugin manager back in because Notepad++ was a solid 10/10 for as long as I’ve known about it, and now it’s a 7.5/10.
-
Do you mean Plugin Admin? It is still there in Notepad++ 7.9.2
-
@mere-human said in Removing plugin manager was a mistake:
Do you mean Plugin Admin? It is still there in Notepad++ 7.9.2
Specifically, the old Plugin called Plugin Manager, which was shipped by default with Notepad++ until somewhere in the v7.5.x range. The Plugin Manager became incompatible with Notepad++ v7.6.0 due to changes in the plugins folder structure. By v7.6.3, the builtin Plugins Admin that @mere-human mentioned was stabilized and provided the functionality that was previously provided by Plugin Manager. Plugin Manager is incompatible with any version of Notepad++ newer than v7.5.9, and has been effectively deprecated because of the builtin solution.
the plugin manager worked great, and I think it was a mistake to remove it.
You are allowed your opinion – that it was a mistake to remove it – but the new Plugins Admin that is built into Notepad++ works, and has less overhead, and doesn’t hog network bandwidth like the old Plugin Manager did.
It really feels like you took a perfect tool and broke it
Factually incorrect. The developer replaced a tool that was externally maintained and externally hosted, and replaced it with similar working functionality built into the Notepad++ application itself.
for no reason other than some people who were complaining
As far as I understood it, factually incorrect. Either your research was incomplete, or one of us is mistaken. As I was heavily involved in this forum as everything was going through the process of changing from Plugin Manager to Plugins Admin, I understood it happened as follows:
Someone created a Plugin Manager plugin for Notepad++. The Notepad++ developer (Don) had liked it so much that he distributed the Plugin Manager plugin with Notepad++, because it was such a useful tool for managing plugins. But they were always separately maintained and separately owned. Don didn’t feel the need for developing a builtin plugin-administration tool, because the PM was good enough, and he was willing to distribute that plugin with Notepad++ to make managing plugins easier. But the owner of the Plugin Manager was not Don. Unfortunately, due to the way that Plugin Manager was designed (frequently downloading the list of available plugins), the Plugin Manager’s webhost gave them the choice of paying for the bandwidth, or of including an advertising banner for that webhost (I think that was the details; it may have been that the PM developer’s host started charging for the bandwidth, so he decided to get some other sponsor) – either way, there was an advertising banner in the plugin.
Don decided he didn’t like distributing Notepad++ with an advertising banner inside the application by default. I can understand that, because he claimed that Notepad++ was free, not adware, but if he shipped it with a plugin that had an ad, people would misunderstand and complain that Notepad++ was being supported by ads: it wasn’t, but he didn’t want to fight over nitpicky details like I’m doing here. Don didn’t want to pay the bandwidth fee for the PM plugin-list downloads to get rid of the banner, so he stopped shipping Notepad++ with the Plugin Manager, though at first the PM continued to work with Notepad++ and could be installed separately.
As a result of this advertising hurdle, and the fact that no plugin management was being shipped with Notepad++, he began development of his own builtin Plugins Admin tool that he could control, and that used less bandwidth (currently, it only updates the plugin list with new revisions of Notepad++). As that was being developed, the plugin folder hierarchy changed, and the Plugin Manager decided not to update the tool to support the updated structure; at that point, the PM was effectively deprecated, and Plugin Admin became the primary tool for managing Notepad++ plugins. The only downside that I see to the new solution vs the old is how infrequently the plugin list is updated; we were originally hoping that there would eventually be a feature to download an updated plugin list without a new version of Notepad++ being released (though it wouldn’t be a frequent download like the old PM used – otherwise, there would have been the same bandwidth issues), but Don didn’t continue down that path.
I really hope you decide to put the plugin manager back in
Nitpick on “You”: the people of this forum are part of the Community of Users. We don’t put in features. Don and other volunteer contributors do that.
Nitpick on “back in”: Plugin Manager was never “in”, it was “with”, as described above – it was a plugin that just happened to be bundled with Notepad++, but it was never “in” Notepad++. The Plugins Admin is the only solution that is “in” Notepad++, because it is an integral part of the Notepad++ codebase.
Dealing with your actual intended meaning: Don is not going to start including Plugin Manager “with” Notepad++ ever again, because it is incompatible with modern Notepad++, and used advertising-supported philosophy which Don disagreed with inside the application. The Plugin Manager, as it was, is not coming back.
If you have improvements you would like added to the Plugins Admin interface, Notepad++ has an issue-submission on its github; if you need a link, you can look in the FAQ section of this forum.
-
@PeterJones said in Removing plugin manager was a mistake:
It really feels like you took a perfect tool and broke it
Factually incorrect.
A subjective opinion is not “factually incorrect”
for no reason other than some people who were complaining
As far as I understood it, factually incorrect.
He literally said this was the reason.
-
@PeterJones Oh, and thanks for the giant wall of text I didn’t bother reading, I solved my problem by uninstalling notepad++. Not gonna waste my time with trying to figure out how to solve problems caused by a dev’s bad decisions, and I’m definitely not going to waste my time going back and forth with some passive aggressive Karen. This could be a teachable moment for all devs: If you make a decision that causes your user to go search something on the internet, you’re doing it wrong and they are just going to use another solution.
-
@rowge-gaming said in Removing plugin manager was a mistake:
I don’t want to be a jerk about it
I don’t think you are being a “jerk about it”.
the plugin manager worked great, and I think it was a mistake to remove it.
Your opinion is acknowledged (well, by those of us reading this).
From what I read, it was users complaining about the readability of the plugins folder and that’s why it was taken out.
It really feels like you took a perfect tool and broke it for no reason other than some people who were complaining
No one was complaining.
Author of Notepad++ was the one with the “complaint” and decided on a change of direction for his product.Your feelings are acknowledged (well, by those of us reading this).
I really hope you decide to put the plugin manager back in because Notepad++ was a solid 10/10 for as long as I’ve known about it, and now it’s a 7.5/10.
It isn’t going to happen, EVER.
If your goal is to bump your experience back up to 10/10, perhaps another editor may suit you better? -
@rowge-gaming said in Removing plugin manager was a mistake:
Oh, and thanks for the giant wall of text I didn’t bother reading, I solved my problem by uninstalling notepad++. Not gonna waste my time with trying to figure out how to solve problems caused by a dev’s bad decisions, and I’m definitely not going to waste my time going back and forth with some passive aggressive Karen.
Ok, NOW you’re being a jerk about it.
Somehow we knew it was going to go there, didn’t we? :-) -
Maybe you’d be taken more seriously if you had some specific arguments on why the new plugin admin is not as good as the old system.
-
@rowge-gaming said in Removing plugin manager was a mistake:
He literally said this was the reason.
I did not remember that. Could you site your source?
The reason for not shipping Plugin Manager was about the ads, not about “readability of plugins folder”. And since Don makes such a big deal about Notepad++ being free software, I can see why complaints about embedding ads in free software would make him change things.
And my source for this being the reason for not using Plugin Manager: this post from Nov 3, 2018, 10:15 AM in “New built-in Plugin Admin (Plugin Manager) Is Ready”, where he said,
No Ads in the application even it’s a tiny one - it’s my taste, sorry if you’re offended by it
When he was working on alternatives in the era between v7.5.9 and v7.6.3 – after he’d already decided to stop shipping Plugin Manager – he moved the plugins folder around to a variety of locations, and people did complain about all of the locations he tried, because of write permissions, etc, and people were complaining because the plugins didn’t work there or could not be installed properly (so people were complaining about a technical failure in the implementation, so he fixed it to one that works).
But the change from Plugin Manager to Plugins Admin was completely caused by the advertising issue, not for “readability of plugins folder”.
You are allowed to believe and argue that Plugin Manager was a better solution – that’s your opinion.
But to claim that Plugins Admin is broken just because it’s different than Plugin Manager is … unsupportable, in my opinion. By that standard, Notepad++ is broken because it does not behave identically to windows notepad, or because Notepad++ made different design decisions than UltraEdit. The Plugins Admin does what it was designed to do, and I have been successfully using it to install and uninstall and update plugins since v7.6.3 in Jan 2019; IMO, it is not broken.
-
TL;DR :-)
