One source (or aggregator) for downloading plug-ins???

[HC Haase]

why is it that that only some plug-ins is distributed through the build in plug-in repository? many of my favourite plug-ins I found here browsing the forum and only after a long time I discovered the community page with the collection of plug-in links. This fragmentation is not user friendly, especially not for new users.

but what is the reason? is because the plug-in developer want to present there work them selves, is it a problem with capacity on the plugin server or is it a deliberate decision with some good reason?

would it be possible to have one source (or aggregator) for downloading plug-ins?

[Jed Carty]

There is no central plugin server for community plugins. The community search is the best we have so far. The way that works is I add plugins to my list on inmysocks.tiddlyspot.com then they get taken by the community search and put into the list there by Erwin. Unfortunately I have been busy and I am very behind in updating the list.

TiddlyWiki is a very distributed community and we haven't come up with a better method of collecting everything yet. I hope that the work I am doing on twederation will make this easier by allowing multiple people to maintain the listings, but nothing is finished yet.

[prog...@assays.tv]

THIS discussion I think is very interesting.

TBH I have to do A LOT OF WORK to figure out what has and hasn't been done. To find out exactly WHAT is WHERE and HOW to use it. Perhaps the more techno people who have been involved a while don't fully grasp what a MAZE it is to  grasp how brilliant TW is unless you are one of them.

I very much doubt that most of the people visiting it will ever get that far.

IMO TW is underused because its has a HIGH barrier to entry.

Josiah

[Jed Carty]

I assure you we are very aware of how difficult it is to find what has and hasn't been done and how difficult a task it is to start using the more interesting parts of tiddlywiki. I am mostly in charge of maintaining the list of plugins used by the community search site and I don't know a lot of what has been made or is being worked on. Most of the development work is taken up by improving the core so that as a basic standalone wiki tiddlywiki works well. Unfortunately since this is an open project and there is no dedicated staff being paid for development everything is limited to what we are interested in making in our spare time.
One result of this is, to use myself as an example, that when I make something interesting I tend to make only enough documentation so that I can use it and then I don't worry about it anymore. There are plenty of other people who do the same thing so over all documentation is lacking. That is why I started the wiki reference wiki but that is done in my spare time instead of working on any of my other projects that I generally find more interesting. The problem only gets bigger when you add the other authors who make plugins that I try to list because they need to make the plugins, then they need to host them somewhere, then I need to know they made the plugin and then I need to find the time to create the entry on my site then Erwan needs to find the time to update his site so that the community search has the correct list.
Me and Erwan have been in contact with each other about this and every so often some plugin authors will contact me, but for all of us this is secondary to the development itself. We have no dedicated organizer or logistics person so that side of things only gets done when someone who is working on development decides to take a break and spend time on it.
I am working on some things that will make it much easier for someone to develop a plugin and then send me the information to list it, but that is one of many projects I am working on.

This isn't to complain, just to explain why things are the way they are. Until we get some more people working on it (hopefully some who are dedicated organizers) progress is going to be slow.

[prog...@assays.tv]

Jed

Thanks for the very detailed reply. I will mull it & come back.

Josiah

[HC Haase]

@Jed
thanks for the answer. not enough volunteer manpower to do everything... makes sense.
Nice to hear you are cooking something up (when the time is there)  to make the updating more smooth.... maybe something to do with the federation thing...

One question though... why is there only some plugins available form the pluging tab in TW5 settings? is a freeze in time from when that feature was implemented?