Pet peeves. the extension manager and the various extension menus

[ateliernab]

this is a feature request, as well as a “ffs people, think” moment.

First, I hate that the extension manager is sorted by extension name only.
I wish I could sort by author’s name, or by status. or by name, as it is by default. because sometimes I’ll know I need an extension from ThomThom, but I can’t remember the name, and his are all over the alphabet.

Second, since we can’t sort by anything BUT the extension’s name, please name your plugins accordingly.

Here is a good example.

they all start by Eneroth (for some reason ) and thus are sorted together. The author’s name could be unified but as we can’t sort by author, who cares ?
(off course, it would be much simpler to be able to sort by author. then, no need to rename your plugins.)

this is a perfect example of what to do and not do. I’m looking for Veras. but it’s not at V. it’s at E as in EvolveLAB. Just look at enscape, they get it. it’s not Chaos Enscape is it?
(also, it requires me knowing that Veras was made by EvolveLAB despite now being part of Chaos.)

and on PC, if I need Scan essential I have to look at T for “trimble scan essential” and the gaussian splats are named…

EXTENSION SKETCHUP SPLAT. not gaussian, not splat, E like Extension.

the one name nobody will look for.

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Ideally, if we could sort by author, I would also really love companies like… well Sketchup to sort it out. is the author sketchup ? trimble ? trimble inc ? sketchup team ?

Please, let’s all, especially Trimble / sketchup, take a page out of Fredo6’s book.
That man can cook. no matter how you sort it, names or author, it’ll always be perfectly sorted, with good logical names.
(unlike Extension Sketchup Splat. serioulsy.)

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Last thing, related.
I get that extension authors are free to pick in what menu their tools appear.

But would it be too much to ask (idk if it’s even possible) some alphabetical sorting in the extension menu ?

when you install, it’s sorted with new at the bottom, but upon restart… this is a great way not to sort.

(same goes for the view / toolbars on mac, but I guess this one will be remade with the new UI like on pc)

[ateliernab]

Some of the blame is on the interface.
the inability to sort for example.

Some of the blame lies with time, off course, old plugins were signed sketchup, or sketchup team, new can be signed trimble. or Labs. IMO there should only be 2 authors there, Trimble/sketchup and Labs.
Same goes for the various devs, adding or removing their emails / pseudos over the years. I get that Eneroth would call herself with or without her screenname over time.

Giving a bad name to a plugin is not great.

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I don’t know how easy or hard it is for a dev to update or adjust these things. In an ideal world, the author’s name would be the same for every plugins posted using a specific account (account dependant), and the plugin’s name would be easy to change (without having to reupload the whole thing.

Dunno if it’s the case.

but the menu thing, that one is really getting under my skin.

[3DxJFD]

@mihai.s has made this point too: put your name, then extension name, to keep your extensions together.

The menus might be built in the order extensions are loaded??? maybe @DanRathbun has insight to how to better organize these?

[ateliernab]

@3DxJFD

The menus might be built in the order extensions are loaded??? maybe @DanRathbun has insight to how to better organize these?

oooh, didn’t think of it. and since they load in the same order every time, that’s why they keep their really weird order in the menu.

maybe a way to reorder the menu post loading ?

[3DxJFD]

I would love to look into this right now but I have to force myself to go out into the hot sun to get some work done But I think Dan has explained this before… Anyway, this is something to get sorted out, so to speak.

@ateliernab

maybe a way to reorder the menu post loading ?

Might be a different animal. A good animal though.

[DanRathbun]

@3DxJFD

The menus might be built in the order extensions are loaded???

Yes correct.

@3DxJFD

maybe @DanRathbun has insight to how to better organize these?

A long time ago Smustard had a script that did this, but it was before the SketchupExtension class and the Extension Manager.

In order to do this, Ruby code would need to highjack the Sketchup::Menu class which is a BIG no-no. Such a utility would never be published on the SketchUp Extension Warehouse.

@CraigTrickett This is a longstanding request and would likely need to be a native feature.

There is also a longstanding issue with non-persistence of submenu references that prevents extension authors from having all of their extension commands on a single submenu.

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However, (musing) once the Extensions menu is put in alpha order, will users start asking for all menus to be in alpha order?

[ateliernab]

funny thing is, this is the bottom of my tool menu.
You can see plugin developers decided to land stuff in there, and it’s being done in two different subsections. Don’t ask me how.

Notice how the top part is clearly just like the extension menu, but the bottom part is alphabetically sorted ?
something there ? something these devs know that other don’t

edit : I’m gonna end up going down the path of the DaVinci Ruby Code am I ?

[RLGL]

Good to know I am not the only one frustrated by the way the menu is organized. I would like to see a search function.

[mihai.s]

@ateliernab

… some alphabetical sorting in the extension menu ?

For the Extensions menu, I think it would be useful to be able to group the extensions as you wish, in different folders, in a simple way.

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@ateliernab

… the extension manager is sorted by extension name only.
I wish I could sort by author’s name, or by status. or by name, as it is by default.

In Extension Manager, the ability to search would be useful as well.

[ateliernab]

@mihai.s

For the Extensions menu, I think it would be useful to be able to group the extensions as you wish, in different folders, in a simple way.

yeah, but you know how it works, you need to be reasonable Mihai, look how look it took for the component panel to have a proper search tool that didn’t launch the microsopic warehouse

@mihai.s

In Extension Manager, the ability to search would be useful as well.

yep, definitively.

Afraid it might be used as a band-aid though, no need to sort and use good naming practices if you can just search

so many QoL things.

[mihai.s]

Hi Pierre,

I like using search! And also QoL things!
Both are very fast and very useful!
Good to implement in SketchUp.

[slbaumgartner]

As to your last point, I believe items are presented in a menu in the order they were loaded/added to the menu. I suppose a follow-up sort could be done after all of them load, but maybe the OS doesn’t support that?

[RLGL]

@slbaumgartner

I believe items are presented in a menu in the order they were loaded/added to the menu

I am on Windoze, the extensions are listed in alphabetical order.

[DanRathbun]

Qt allows menu items to be inserted but otherwise the QMenu must be cleared and rebuilt from a Qlist. If the SketchUp Core could just wait until all the extensions loaded then sort the list before building the menus, the ordering would be better.

@ateliernab Nab, the order can be even more confusing on Mac as the order of extension registrar files in the “Plugins” folder may not be in alpha order.
The separator line on your Tools menu could have been inserted by the Bac a sable extension. I would not do this myself on a top-level menu.

Fredo has been working around the submenu reference bug by using a convoluted method that “flexibly” loads all of his extensions from one script. It’s not an easy workaround.

[3DxJFD]

So maybe Bac a sable has a separator above in the code? That’s a ‘no’ for Tools menu (see below). Then, check your Plugins folder: all named as shown? Alphabetical. Out of curiosity what happens if you remove Bac a sable? Separator gone? Interagir? Separator below is a no no for Tools Menu & in Extensions. Anyway, the separator could be part of the extension code of either of those two. If one of those adds the separator, and removing it removes the separator are they still in the same order?

I see Dan points to this too…

Then it could be that the extensions are alphabetical in Extension Manager and have different extension names in the registration file (I think… but I’m tired).

@ateliernab

edit : I’m gonna end up going down the path of the DaVinci Ruby Code am I ?

Yes. You basically have no choice at this point. Prowly need to get in there and start renaming files and folders and extension names 'til things get straightened up. If anything gets messed up the extension wont load. Which means it can’t load out of order. Fixed. Then you take the win!

Home | Get Started With Extension Development

[ateliernab]

@DanRathbun

The separator line on your Tools menu could have been inserted by the Bac a sable extension. I would not do this myself on a top-level menu.

@3DxJFD

So maybe Bac a sable has a separator above in the code? That’s a ‘no’ for Tools menu (see below).

checking what happens when I turn sandbox off.

yep, sandbox comes with its own divider. however, everything else remains the same. odd ^^

@RLGL

I am on Windoze, the extensions are listed in alphabetical order.

hmmmm nope, I get the same scrambled order. on my training PC.

@DanRathbun

Nab, the order can be even more confusing on Mac as the order of extension registrar files in the “Plugins” folder may not be in alpha order.

oh yeah.

It’s a bit of a paradox, in the library, the rb files + folders have better names, many start by their dev’s name. Even the official plugins all start by SU_
I almost wish the extension manager would show these instead of the random names we see

[dezmo]

@ateliernab

Even the official plugins all start by SU_

Not entirely, there are some that start with “habitat_”.

By the way, the Author also changes, sometimes Trimble, sometimes Sketchup. The copyright text also changes; Trimble, Trimble Inc, Sketchup… it also changes whether the copyright year is before or after. So, I don’t think it’s really consistent.

[3DxJFD]

Who knows:

[clearplanmodeling]

Great idea, but like many great ideas to improve the functionality of SketchUp, it will be ignored by the development team. Seems to be par for the course. Everybody’s got their googly eyes on AI.

[3DxJFD]

@DanRathbun

In order to do this, Ruby code would need to highjack the Sketchup::Menu class which is a BIG no-no. Such a utility would never be published on the SketchUp Extension Warehouse.

Dan, I found an extension on the EW that does do this. It intercepts SketchUp Ruby API calls such as UI::Command.new. I’d put it in the monkey-patch no-no category. It also appears to need a Ruby 3.2 compatibility fix because it still uses File.exists? so I didn’t go further.

But it would be possible to call captured commands from it. So it may be possible to make a second-order monkey-patch dependent menu ordering/launcher.

I’m thinking you’re thinking “second-order monkey-patch” does not sound great. I’m not sure there is much more to say beyond this.