[Kwintv] Channel Plugins - any input?

[George Staikos]

On Wednesday 18 December 2002 19:21, Rizsanyi Zsolt wrote:
> On Thursday 19 December 2002 01:01, George Staikos wrote:
> >    The channel plugin and channel manager code has -got- to change.  It's
> > really ugly right now.  I want to change this asap.  Does anyone have
> > some input on how it should look?  What would you like to see?  Does
> > anyone even want to take this project on?
>
> You mean the 'Channel Format Plugin', no?

  Yes.

> My main problem with it was that it relies on file extensions for
> determining which plugin to use. (And even the file extensions were
> hardcoded in the channel manager).

   Yes I agree.  This is terrible.  We should be using a more KDE-centric 
system for filetypes, using magic if possible.

> So the channel manager should be able to pick a format plugin according to
> the extension of the file, but if there is no extension or that format
> plugin could not parse the file, then it should try to load the file with
> all other plugins.
>
> I had no other problems with the channel format plugins/manager. Only I did
> not find logical the menus which are available for
> opening/importing/saving.

    I think it should be able to read a bit of the file to determine what it 
is.  Failing that it can use extension.  Failing that, it can guess based on 
the plugins that don't have fixed "magic" bytes or formats.

   The plugin manager is horrible though.  It's filled with static methods and 
does things in a seemingly inefficient manner.  It doesn't look anything like 
the other classes in the project either.  It was great at the beginning but 
the rest of the code has outgrown it very quickly.

> And no I dont want to take this project on. Sorry. I have no time for that
> now. Probably next month. But you want to fix this asap :)

   No problem.  asap could be 4 months for all I know, but I consider this a 
very critical problem right now.  It's something that would hold up any new 
prereleases.
    
-- 

George Staikos