10

To plugin, or not to plugin, that is the question,
Whether 'tis nobler for the scripts to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of changes,
And by plugging in end them?

In the recent announcement for the Beta release of the new Stacks Editor, there is a roadmap item for adding support for external plugins. However, the item is scoped to adding support for extra native features specific to various sites of the Stack Exchange network.

When the Stacks Editor is eventually rolled out network-wide (and likely be made the default or even the only editor), it is naturally going to break a significant number of existing community integrations such as userscripts that have been developed with the old editor in mind.

It is expected that, as third-party developers, we will have to update them to work with the new editor, but the idea that there can be a stable public API for extending the editor capabilities is quite appealing (since it is also open source, it means that such extensions can even be integrated with the editor natively if they prove to be popular enough).

A public API for extending the editor via the plugin system is also in line with the announced project to provide a stable API for third-party integrations to hook into without constantly being on the lookout for breaking changes.

To summarise, are there plans to allow custom plugins for the new editor and, if by chance there are not, would it be considered a desirable community contribution as the project is open source?

Improve this question
5
  • 5
    While the title of this is kind-of catchy, it would be nice to have a title that gives a clear and accurate idea as to what the question is about from just the title. As it is, when seeing this in the Top Questions list, I had no real idea what it was about, but thought it might be about a burnination, as those tend to have puns and/or humor in the title.
    – Makyen
    Commented Jul 13, 2022 at 0:34
  • 1
    @Makyen yeah, fair enough! I hope the new version of the title is descriptive of the question itself, tried to preserve both the punny part and the meaning.
    – 0Valt
    Commented Jul 13, 2022 at 15:20
  • 2
    What types of plugins do you have in mind? How would you envision this working from a user perspective?
    – Yaakov Ellis StaffMod
    Commented Jul 13, 2022 at 15:29
  • One use case that immediately comes to mind is extending actions available in the editor menu. If I read the sample plugin structure correctly, menu items can be extended. This looks very useful for scripts that extend the editor functionality in a similar manner. As a quick real-world example, take one of mine that adds a way to quick-reference other posts with accordance to attribution guidelines. As for the user perspective, I envision something like registerPlugin(plugin: EditorPlugin) as an instance method. If that makes sense, I can add it to the post.
    – 0Valt
    Commented Jul 13, 2022 at 16:13
  • @OlegValteriswithUkraine that could be a good answer!
    – AncientSwordRage
    Commented Aug 9, 2022 at 11:10

0

Reset to default

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .