[texworks] SCRIPTING: Web page Linking back into Issue 261 Scripts

[Stefan Löffler]

On 2011-07-21 20:41, Charlie Sharpsteen wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 11:11 AM, Stefan Löffler
> <st.loeffler at gmail.com <mailto:st.loeffler at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>     On 2011-07-19 01:47, Paul A Norman wrote:
>     > To help people find scripts, I just wanted to run past people that I
>     > would like to link back into individual (current/active) scripts on
>     > the issues page (261)
>     > http://code.google.com/p/texworks/issues/detail?id=261&can=5
>     <http://code.google.com/p/texworks/issues/detail?id=261&can=5>
>     > from TwScript.PaulANorman.info <http://TwScript.PaulANorman.info>
>
>     awesome :).
>
>     > Does any one have any objections please?
>
>     Not from me ;). I'll need to clean up some stuff there, but possibly
>     I'll migrate scripts to github or similar as well for easier
>     maintenance...
>
>     -Stefan
>
>
> An interesting idea for the future would be to develop a central
> script repository and a "plugin manager" inside TeXworks that makes it
> easy for users to find, download and install plugins.

In principle, this is a great idea. However, there are a few problems
with this (or else we'd probably have it by now ;)).
First is quality management. With a central repository, it could be easy
for people to get the impression that all those scripts are part
of/endorsed by Tw (especially when such a repository is hosted on some
official server).
I know, things like this work for other programs (including, e.g.,
Mozilla Firefox), but Tw scripting is intended for everybody, not just
hard-core coders, so if this picks up as intended, I guess there will
always be scripts than have the one or other bug, don't work on some
platform or other, etc.
And in any case, someone would have to maintain such a platform
(evaluate scripts, remove problematic ones, etc.)

On a more technical side, this would probably be a fairly major web
program (with upload functionality, database backend, etc.). We
certainly can't host that on tug.org, as they don't have PHP or similar
enabled AFAIK (at least not globally). And unless there are such
websites ready-made (like for blogs or CMS), this would be a major
undertaking.

As I said at the top, I do think this is a great idea, and I really
appreciate Paul's efforts to provide pointers to the resources we have
scattered around. I'm just pointing out the rough edges I see.

Cheers,
Stefan
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