Hi,
Note that this project was proposed in 2013, and a foundation was laid just
a few weeks ago. During this time, I and other developers have worked on
different aspects of NVDA, and for this project, a lot of discussion took
place regarding modules to use, procedures, user experience and what not.
Regarding making things easier for users: from my experience, making things
easier for users is one of the most complicated issues to go through in
software engineering. Not only code must work correctly under normal
circumstances, user experience must be useful for users. I vividly remember
when I first worked on update facility for StationPlaylist Studio add-on,
and it took me two months to make it work right (this included design,
requirements analysis, planning, coding, testing and documenting); compared
to that, adding add-on update facility in Windows 10 App Essentials took me
three weeks to perfect it (Derek helped me out by testing it). Imagine this
being applied to NVDA itself, and you can see the work involved - only took
me a week to code the basic client GUI, but took several months of planning
and going through several rounds of reviewing ideas. In the end, what
matters to me the most is to see a smile on everyone's face, knowing that I
and other developers are serving this community through our talents and
efforts.
Cheers,
Joseph
From: nvda-addons-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:nvda-addons-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dennis Long
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2017 8:42 PM
To: nvda-addons@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [nvda-addons] Re: Add-on template: proposed changes to support
add-on updates and channel selection
This would certainly be easier for the user and should be added asap.
Thanks.
From: nvda-addons-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:nvda-addons-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[mailto:nvda-addons-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joseph Lee
Sent: Sunday, March 26, 2017 11:40 PM
To: nvda-addons@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:nvda-addons@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [nvda-addons] Add-on template: proposed changes to support add-on
updates and channel selection
Fellow add-ons community members,
As some of you may know, I'm working on ability for NVDA to check for and
download add-on updates. This project consists of a client UI and update
experience, add-on update info retriever and protocols, and a server-side
implementation to gather add-on versions and other metadata under one roof.
More info about this project can be found at:
https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/3208
At the moment the client UI is done. Once NV Access comes up with a protocol
and server-side facility, I'll update my client UI bits to point to new
capabilities. But this is just the start, as bulk of this project relies on
cooperation with add-on writers when it comes to making our add-ons support
updates. In order to do so, I propose the following changes to the add-on
template and manifests:
* Update channel: I propose adding a new manifest key named
"updateChannel" that'll let NVDA know which update channel should be
consulted when checking for an add-on update. By default, this key will hold
a null string (None), or for add-ons that does not support updates, this key
will not be defined. For most add-ons, possible channels could be "stable"
and "dev". The add-on author must notify server-side admins or reviewers
whenever channels need to be added, changed or removed.
Comments are appreciated.
Cheers,
Joseph
