How to re-order plugins within tabs - simply

[eDDe]

I discovered with Bibble 5 and it works with ASP that you can re-order your plugins simply by renaming the individual plugin folders ...
e.g
01 Black and White.afplugin
02 Nostalgia.afplugin
03 Silicon Bonk.afplugin

so keeping all black & white related plugins together and because i use them a lot - at the top of the list in Plugins 1 tab.

By playing around with the renaming you can more or less get your plugins where you want them in each different tab.

I have also cut and pasted the Black and White plugin supplied with ASP from the Plugins folder in the program's Supportfiles folder to the Plugins folder in the ASP Settings folder. You can find where your settings folder is in Preferences. This enables this plugin to be listed with my other B & W plugins.

Ed

[afx]

I guess you missed this: http://flightofthebibbles.blogspot.com/ ... -tabs.html

cheers
afx

[eDDe]

Thanks Afx. I had seen your link but hadn't got round to doing it. Thought I'd share my method which was a nice simple option if any anyone wanted to try it.

Ed

[ferdinand-paris]

Your suggested approach is precisely what we used to do before the advent of the custom UI text file. I even had a long and detailed post on the Bibble forums explaining how to do it. Sure it works, but there are several disadvantages:

1. You can't have more or less than 5 tool panels per tab
2. You can't mix the built-in tool panels with the plugins

#2 is the big one for me. I hate having to switch tabs all the time, and if you can organise the tabs - both built-in tools and plugins - into logical groups, then you can reduce tab switching.

Being able to do this using preferences would be even better. I assume that's coming at some stage. It would also be nice to be able to save different "workspaces", with different screen layouts and different arrangements of tools, but I would imagine that is right down the list, if it's even on the list.

F_P

[roeglinl]

Being able to do this using preferences would be even better. I assume that's coming at some stage. It would also be nice to be able to save different "workspaces", with different screen layouts and different arrangements of tools, but I would imagine that is right down the list, if it's even on the list.
F_P

I'd like to add that real multi-monitor support would also be nice here. That would give you an option to have all the important tabs/tools open at all times so you wouldn't need to switch tabs at all. But that might be even lower on the priority list...

Cheers,
Lars

[claudermilk]

We used to have that in Bibble 4 and have been begging for it back ever since. The custom UI text file gets us partway back to that. There will be many very happy users when full customizability is back.

Oh, and we lost even more in the B5 to ASP switch now that the toolbars are locked in their corners. Were they bad? Why are they in timeout? Whoever thought stuffing those controls in the far corners of the monitor was not using their head.

[ferdinand-paris]

Oh, and we lost even more in the B5 to ASP switch now that the toolbars are locked in their corners. Were they bad? Why are they in timeout? Whoever thought stuffing those controls in the far corners of the monitor was not using their head.

Someone who thought that they understood UI design better than the beta-testers. IIRC, one of the testers has said that this change was not favoured by the testers, but went ahead anyway. Perhaps the Corel UI experts thought that the testers were just too attached to the B5 way of doing things. That may have been true, but for good reason in some instances. What worries me most about all this is that the testers were not listened to. Kind of defeats the purpose of having testers. Or perhaps they wanted a similar look and feel with other Corel products.

Perhaps if there is enough feedback through surveymonkey this decision might get reconsidered. [Since this is a user-to-user forum I assume the rule is that Corel staff, including former Labs staff, don't post here except under exceptional circumstances. But do they read the public boards?]

F_P

[Gerard2]

F P : you can mix and match plugins and asp tools with custom.ui and you can use less then 5 tools in a tab.

[ferdinand-paris]

F P : you can mix and match plugins and asp tools with custom.ui and you can use less then 5 tools in a tab.

I know. That was exactly my point. You can do both these things with customToolsUI.txt but AFAIK you can't if you simply rename / renumber the plugin folders, which is what I thought you were suggesting.

F_P

[MikeFromMesa]

I guess you missed this: http://flightofthebibbles.blogspot.com/ ... -tabs.html

I followed this link and found the article. Using the information in it (and removing the stuff I don't have) I was able to successfully reorder the tab functionality in ASP for the most part. Some of the plugins just did not work and I assume that I am missing something somewhere.

I was able to successfully order the zPerspector plugin by using tin.tin.zPerspector but not by using zPerspector.
I was able to successfully order the Silicon Bonk plugin by using sph.SiliconBonk but not by using SiliconBonk.
I was able to successfully order the Fat Toni plugin by using sph.FatToni but not by using FatToni.
I was able to successfully order the CAQuest plugin by using CAQuest (no sph. needed).

I was not able to successfully order the following: Vigne, BlackAndWhite and Grain no matter what prefixes I tried to use. So here are the questions:

1) Why does zPerspector need the tin.tin. prefix? Why do the SiliconBonk and FatToni entries need the sph. prefix? If you check the SiliconBonk ui file the name is defined as "SiliconBonk", not sph.SiliconBonk so where are these prefixes defined? How can I determine what prefixes are missing from the Vigne, BlackAndWhite and Grain plugins?

I could find no reference to it in the zPerspector.ui file itself to tin.tin. so where does that requirement come from? Basically, what is the naming convention needed for the plugins so I can figure out what to use with the remaining ones I have (and any new ones I add) to get them to order themselves according to the defining list in the file?

Thanks for any help.

[spoilerhead]

those are plugin identifiers

click Help-> system info and scroll down until you see

Code: Select all

====================  Plugins  =====================

then there's a list of installed plugins, i.e.

Code: Select all

      Name: Grain
Identifier: sph.grain
   Version: 0.8.0
      Path: <User Home>/Plugins/Grain.afplugin

in that case you need sph.grain

[MikeFromMesa]

those are plugin identifiers

That took care of it. Thank you very much for the help.