UMCConfigurationPlugin

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Summary

The UbuntuMediaCenter will use Elisa and we need a plugin to ease the configuration of this software. The specification for this plugin will be discussed here.

Rationale

Currently, the configuration of Elisa is done by editing a text file. We can't let the end user have to do this. Same problems occur for UMC plugins (text-editing configuration). So we need to create a plugin that will be use as a GUI to configure UMC and its plugins.

Use Cases

  • Tom wants to know which kind of plugins he can install on UMC. He use the UMC Config GUI to browse the plugin list from a repository, download one of them and click on "Activate" to activate the plugin.
  • Elisa wants to add a new media directory in UMC . She use UMC Config Gui to browse from her file system and add it .

    Comment (ArnaudQuette): the media dirs should be autodetected using xdg-user-dirs and an amaroK/picasa/... like method (view a full FS, and disable the activated dirs...)

Assumptions

Design

Functionalities

  • Plugin Browser
    • The plugin should in a first time be able to show all installed plugins on UMC
    • Second step will be to propose the (de)activation of each plugin.
    • Third step : to propose the installation of plugins (that means those plugins are "remotely" get by using an abstraction to the Package Management System (apt, rpm, ...))
  • Generic Plugin Config GUI
    • Each plugin implementing a certain interface will automatically activate a default config GUI
    • This so told Interface should allow plugins to self describe their options (name, type, [possible values])
    • According to the type, [possibleValues] of the option UMC Config Plugin will design a corresponding Entry (comboboxes, checkBoxes, TextEntries ... )

      • Question (ArnaudQuette): file format (xml?)

      • This will be achieved by the existence of a "config.xml" file that will describe the config options specification. TODO: define a XSL or DTD for this file. A plugin can contains multiple component (see base plugin of elisa ) and each component can have options in the configuration file. So we need to specify "sections" in this xml spec file. One (optional) section per component .

Implementation

UI Changes

  • The plugin should implement a MVC pattern so that it will be used inside and outside UMC

Code Changes

Migration

Test/Demo Plan

Outstanding Issues

BoF agenda and discussion


CategorySpec

MediaCenter/CodingStrikeForce/UMCConfigurationPlugin (last edited 2008-08-06 16:20:04 by localhost)