Displaying plugins by topic

[placoderm]

problem

There are now more than 80 plugins in the repository. Finding the right plugin solution for your problem can be difficult.

solution

Create categories for plugins

Issues

• Currently we don't have any category info in the plugin manifests. We have keywords (used in search) but those can be set to anything by the plugin developers so we probably can't derive a category from it.
• We'd need to add a new field and create a number of pre-defined categories.

[placoderm]

Here is my experiment with categories. Sub topics are just me being lazy/noncommittal. Once there are more than x number of plugins within a category it should probably just be split into two or more.

[feel free to delete this comment if it takes up too much space in the thread]

Name	Description	Category	sub topic
Attaché	Your attachment updater. Mass replacement of Joplin attachments (resources) such as resized image files, current music playlists, and any other attachments you need to one-off or regularly update within Joplin.	administration	attachments
Disable PDF	Disables the PDF preview (and export) in Joplin for better performance	administration
Simple Backup	Plugin to create manual and automatic backups.	administration
Victor	Victor can be used to clear all your data - notes, notebooks, attachments, tags, etc. Convenient to start over.	administration
Resource Search Plugin	Search in Attached Resources	attachments	search
Conflict Resolution	A plugin that makes process of resolving conflicts easier.	developer
Get Notebook ID	Copy/Show the ID of a notebook. For developers. A regular user won't need this.	developer
Better Markdown Viewer	Keep Cursor Synced Between Editor and MD Viewer	display
CodeMirror Line Numbers	Enables line numbers for CodeMirror editor	display
Rich Markdown	Helping you ditch the markdown viewer for good.	editing	markdown editor
Insert Date	Adds a button to insert the current date (without time) into the editor.	editing
Note Variables	A plugin to create variables that can be accesed through all the notes.	editing
Paste Special	A plugin used to paste special text into Joplin	editing
Table Formatter Plugin	Format the table under the cursor in Markdown editor	editor	tables
BibTeX	Use locally stored BibTeX files to integrate citation into Joplin	integration	citations
Email Note	Send a note as an email	integration	email, export
Export To SSG	Export a collection of notes to static site generator project.	integration	export
Pages Publisher	Generate static blog website from your picked Joplin notes, and publish to Github Pages, with a few mouse clicks. Support preview in local	integration	export
Bible Quote	Quote the bible direct in text editor	integration
Jira Issue	Retrieve Atlassian Jira issues information using their api in order to track the status of them from your Joplin notes.	integration
Joplin Anki Sync	Bidirectional sync between Joplin and Anki	integration
joplin-hackmd	Quick share notes on HackMD	integration
NLR	将joplin在记笔记的同时，变成一个网文小说阅读器,a chinese net literature downloader and reader plugin for joplin.	integration
PlantUML2	Render PlantUML diagram inside your Joplin notes.	integration
Home Note	Plugin to open a choosen note each time joplin starts. It is like homepages on browsers.	interface	homepage
Quick Goto	Switch to designated notes using keyboard shortcuts	interface	shortcuts
Note Tabs	Allows to open several notes at once in tabs and pin them.	interface	tabs
Menu items, Shortcuts, Toolbar icons	Additional menu items, shortcuts, and toolbar icons, which are not part of Joplin core	interface	toolbar
Note list and sidebar toggle buttons	Adds buttons to toggle note list and sidebar	interface	toolbar
Favorites	Save any notebook, note, to-do, tag, or search as favorite in an extra panel view for quick access.	interface
Folding in Code Mirror Editor	Allows to fold parts of markdown text displayed in editor	interface
Notes Station Import	This plugin imports notes from QNAP Notes Station	interface
Outline	Outline (TOC) sidebar plugin for joplin.	interface
Persistent Editor Layout	Save the editor layout (editor/split view/viewer/rich text) for each note separately with custom tags.	interface
Kanban	Flexible kanban board plugin for all your tasks	kanban
Autolinker	Adds an icon to the toolbar. When clicked, it creates a link to the note with a title matching the selected text.	linking	interface
Automatic Backlinks to note	Creates backlinks to opened note, also in automatic way	linking
Copy Anchor Link	Add a link icon near each heading. Copy Joplin markdown link of the specific heading to clipboard when click on the icon.	linking
Copy link to active note	Adds entry to right click menu in editor to get link to active note	linking
Create and go to #tags and @notebooks	Go to tag,notebook or note via links or via text	linking
Embed Search	Embeds list of links specified by search inside of note	linking
Joplin User Link Plugin	A Joplin plugin for custom links, like jump://?query=blabla.	linking
Make All Links	Searches the current note for mentions of other notes, then makes the corresponding links. Just click the new icon in the toolbar.	linking
Note Link System	A complete Link System for Joplin. Referrer(aka. backlink), Quick Link, Copy Anchor, and much more feature	linking
Quick Links	Create links to other notes	linking
Admonition markdown extension	Enables markdownIt admonition plugin, which enables formatting notes	markdown enhancements
Container with Classes	Plugin for creating block-level containers with classes for customization	markdown enhancements
Quick HTML tags	Create quick HTML tags.	markdown enhancements
Rubi and Furigana	Commands that insert appropriate and tags to formatted text to display furigana.	markdown enhancements
Spoilers	Create inline spoilers and spoiler blocks with title and extendable body.	markdown enhancements
Hotfolder	Monitors a locale folder and import the files as a new note.	note management	import
Combine notes	Combine one or more notes	note management
Complete Link	This plugin adds an icon to the toolbar. When clicked, it completes the selected text into a note title (in a markdown link).	note management
Convert Text To New Note	Converts highlighted text to new one in same folder	note management
Link Graph UI	Visualize the connections between Joplin notes.	note management
Note Statistics	Plugin to get note statistics	note management
OCR	offline OCR auto/manually for images, videos, pdf documents in your Joplin notes	note management
Quick Move	Collection of commands to quickly move notes to other notebooks.	note management
Random note	Opens a random note from your vault	note management
Semantically Similar Notes	Show user which notes are semantically similar to the one they are looking at	note management
Send snippet to different note	Sends snippet of text to any other note from any notebook	note management
Untagged	This is a joplin plugin to find notes and todos without a tag.	note management
Day Review	This plugin adds an icon to the toolbar. When clicked, it makes a review of the day's created/updated/completed notes and todos.	note management ?
Automate Notes	Finds blocks of javascript in the current note (blocks have to start with javascript" and end with ") and runs it as a function.	rendering	javascript
Note overview	A note overview is created based on the defined search and the specified fields.	rendering	note management
Markdown table calculations	Plugin for automatic calculations of markdown table formulas.	rendering	tables
Markdown Table: Colorize	Add colors to markdown table syntax to help distinguish different columns	rendering	tables
Markdown Table: Sortable	Add the ability to sort rendered tables on the fly	rendering	tables
ABC Sheet Music Plugin	Turns ABC text notation into sheet music	rendering
Math Mode	Turn your notes into a powerful calculator with inline math.	rendering
turnToChart	Transform markdown table into d3js chart	rendering
embedded tags	embeded tags	tagging
Inline tags	Inline tags plugin	tagging
Tagging	Plugin to extend the Joplin tagging menu with a coppy all tags and a tagging dialog with more control. (Formerly Copy Tags).	tagging
Tags Generator	Plugin for Joplin which can be used to extract keywords from note and assign them as a note's tags	tagging
Templates	This plugin allows you to create and use templates in Joplin.	templates
GitHub Theme	Joplin theme with colors of GitHub	theme
macOS theme	Native looking macOS theme for Joplin. Also works on non-macOS devices.	theme
White Theme	A white theme for joplin	theme
Agenda	An agenda/calendar/schedule panel for joplin that shows all uncompleted to-dos with a due date.	todo
Metis	A Simple Task Manager Plugin for Joplin based on Todo.txt Specification	todo
Repeating To-Dos	A powerful and comprehensive plugin for to-do repetition/recurrence	todo

[mak2002]

Can I work on this issue?

[mak2002]

as @placoderm said we cant rely on plugin developers for categories so we will have to add categories ourselves. In order to do that

• we can add new private field _pluginCategory in PluginManifest interface.
• Maybe we can maintain a file containing plugin ids and their categories.

If possible I will make a preview for this and post it here. Is this approach good?

[mak2002]

Overview

• As @placoderm said 'There are now more than 80 plugins in the repository. Finding the right plugin solution for your problem can be difficult.'
• This problem can be solved by adding categories for plugins

Solution

User Experience

• To access categories I suggest adding a Dropdown menu besides 'Search For Plugins' input field.
• Dropdown menu will contain 'Pre-defined Categories' names
• As this will also allow user to select a plugin category and search within that category.
• (These are not final styling, I will use more consistent ones) Quick Preview:

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/77744862/151946325-609beb0c-bcec-4bdf-9b12-fc7715bf450c.mp4

Technical solution

To achieve this,

• First we need to add plugin_category field in all the plugins manifests i.e. update the PluginManifest interface .
• We can maintain a separate file containing an object as (Plugin Name/Id : Plugin Category) For ex. "Rich Markdown" : "editing" which will help us while assigning plugin_category.
• Assigning of plugin_category to each plugin's manifest can be done in RepositoryApi.ts as we update the manifest to tell if the plugin is recommended or not.

  ---

• I intend to add 'select' element in SearchPlugins.ts. It will contain all the pre-defined categories.
• On selecting the Category from dropdown menu, it should call a method(i.e. sortByCategory() ) to render related plugins. I think that method should be defined in RepositoryApi.ts as this file manages all the manifests of plugins.
• sortByCategory method will take category and return related manifests and this will be rendered similarly to Search's rendered result.

Testing plan

• For testing, we can call sortByCategory method by providing some category and we can check if it returns the related Plugins' Manifests or not.
• To keep this consistent, we can use Fixed list of Manifest to sort from.

[mak2002]

hey @tessus , Can you please take a look at above approach and give your suggestions?

[tessus]

First we have to specify a few things:

• I believe Laurent mentioned that a plugin dev does not set the category. This is done by Laurent and team.
• not sure, if it necessary to use a new separate file. manifestOverrides.json should be fine for this.
• the field (key) should be named categories (not plugin_category) and the value should be an array. A plugin can belong to more than one category.

But we certainly require Laurent's input here, since he makes the decisions.

e.g. I would like to see auhors to be an array as well in manifest version 2, but that's another topic. ;-)

[mak2002]

Thanks tessus for your suggestions. I will wait to see @laurent22 's thoughts on this.

[laurent22]

I think there's a forum thread about this where we've already discussed what could be done so you should probably start from this. I don't think I've suggested that we should set the plugin category. On the contrary I would prefer if the plugin authors do it but we would restrict the set of possible categories.

[mak2002]

Thanks Laurent for the suggestions. I will update as you suggested on the forum and soon make a PR.

[mak2002]

Hey @laurent22 , I came up with some questions while implementing this can you please answer those?

• Just to confirm is it necessary for every plugin to be in at least one category and should category be required field?
• As we will be adding category field in plugin manifest i.e. plugin devs will also be required to update their manifest.json to include relevant categories. So will users have to download the plugins again as mentioned here in Getting Started with Plugin editing it(manifest.json) after it has been published may cause users to have to download it again. Is this ok?
• (Not entirely relevant to this) But webpack (webpack.config.js) when building a plugin with npm run dist is only checking if 'Plugin Manifest' has plugin_ID or not and not throwing error when other required fields like name and verison are not present. I know that in boilerplate for plugins these field are already present but still I was thinking it should check for all required fields.(If you think this is required should I make separate PR for this?)

[laurent22]

Just to confirm is it necessary for every plugin to be in at least one category and should category be required field?

Figuring that out is part of the task isn't it? You need to investigate and propose solutions - what other plugin systems do? What's the impact of making that field required, etc.

As we will be adding category...

They won't need to download the plugins again.

(Not entirely relevant to this)

Yes that's a different issue. Validation is working as it should at the moment.

By the way you chose a rather large project to work on, so please consider splitting it into smaller tasks.

[laurent22]

By the way I feel it's a bit like early GSoC this project, and personally I don't have time to mentor you, I'm not sure anyone does. So it might be an issue if it turns out many decisions need to be made, and there's no-one to make them.

[mak2002]

Thanks Laurent for the clarification. I will try my best to implement this project. I will split this project in smaller tasks and make the PRs accordingly.