Plugin Continuity

ashscott

This is a genuine concern of mine and I hope it doesn't come across as a rant.

I'm probably the least skilled plugin developer there is (because I pay clever people like Dan Rathbun rather than learn ruby myself - see here: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323%26amp;t=54082), but I'm a bit confused about the direction of SU's plugins.

I would say I'm a pretty proficient SU user but I just tried to get some of my old plugins going and I have to say; what a process.

I love the fact that sketchup's functionality is so diverse because of plugins but the old way seemed so easy - just chuck that bad boy in the plugins folder and you're good to go.

Nowadays, I'm not sure if I should be looking for the appropriate installable plugin in the Extension Warehouse, the plugins directory, or an independent installer (twilight for example).

I understand that we're probably trying to do the unified "appstore" style thing but the ability to understand what was going on in the background (SU is accessing the plugin from XYZ directory) made troubleshooting more obvious than it currently seems...

Is there a thread that clarifies the vision for SU's plugin capability going forward? I'm worried that, if someone like me who is used to sketchup finds the process un-intuitive, people who are learning SU will miss out on one of its most powerful assets because of an abstract usage process.

ashscott

So Keyframe Animation was behaving strangely after I threw it into the AppData plugins folder. I uninstalled it and re-downloaded it through the Sketchucation plugin store. Now it shows up in the plugins manager as if its working but I can't get the toolbar to show up or have sketchup's native installer recognize it.

No doub't I'm doing something that I shouldn't but after several of years using SU its quite frustrating to not be able to just make things work - I don't know how to fix this so I'll have to wait for someone to reply to make it work wheras before I could have deleted it from the plugins folder and thrown a new copy in there and continued working.

Feeling caged but probably just under-informed....

Ash

Box

Have you tried the latest version from Regular Polygon's site. He mentions that he has updated it 5 times so far to fix SU2014 issues.
Perhaps the one published in the sketchucation store isn't the most up to date.
Have a look here and see if it works better.
http://regularpolygon.org/keyframe-animation/download/

ashscott

Downloaded it from the regular polygon site and installed it via SU's native installer and .rbz

After a lot of tinkering I realized that the .rbz was unpacking "load_keyframeanimation.rb" within a folder so SU wasn't recognizing the install. I placed this directly in the plugins folder and finally got Keyframe working without toolbar icons so that, after a couple hours of headscratching I can finally get back to work.

This may have been a regularpolygon issue but it feels like an unnecessarily convoluted trouble shooting process - I feel like a lone voice on this so have to assume that I'm missing something critical... Either that or the other people that are having issues aren't posting.

Is there documentation about how the plugin system is supposed to work?

Thanks for your help Box

Box

It sounds like you have something screwed up in your SU installation. I download it from the site and installed it via the preferences window and it all works fine. Including the toolbar.
That .rb file you mention should reside in a subfolder.

Have you used the defaults when installing SU2014 or did you make your own plugin folder?
What is the path to the plugin folder you are using?

ashscott

C:\Users"Username"\AppData\Roaming\SketchUp\SketchUp 2014\SketchUp\Plugins

Thanks for taking an interest - I feel like I'm going a little nuts but there must be something wrong....

Box

Try deleting the folder called rp_keyframeanimation and the two files of the same name, one .rb the other .rbx. Then reinstall from the preferences window. Restart SU and see if it's working.
You should then need to input your license, so make sure you have it before you delete anything.

ashscott

It returns this Load Error:

Error Loading File rp_keyframeanimation.rb
Error; #<SyntaxError; C;/Users/Ash/AppData/Roaming/SketchUp/SketchUp 2014/SketchUp/Plugins/rp_keyframeanimation.rb;18; invalid multibyte char (UTF-8)>

ashscott

Then works immediately when I move "load_keyframeanimation.rb" out of its subfolder - the toolbar icons are still absent

Box

Sorry, it's beyond my tiny mind. It works exactly the opposite for me. If I move that file into plugins I get the error and a broken toolbar.

ashscott

Thanks for your effort anyway - At least I can finish my project now.

TIG

That error shows a Ruby2 issue.
If you open the .rb in Notepad++.exe is its encoding listed as "UTF8-without-BOM" ?
If not the change its encoding to that and save it.
Retry and see if the error goes, repeats or it changes - e.g. it might now point to a line number with another error ?
If you are lucky then the re-encoding will have fixed it, but if not then some other syntax error[s] need[s] addressing - e.g. a common one is method (arguments) - there can be no space between a method and the opening parenthesis around its arguments in Ruby2, so it's method(arguments) - the previous Ruby warned about it, but still loaded the code, but now it simply breaks !

ashscott

It won't save as "UTF8-without-BOM" I can hit "convert to UTF8-without-BOM" or "encode with UTF8-without-BOM" and save it but when I re-open the file it is back to ANSI......

I can get it to encode in just UTF8 but that doesn't fix anything

TIG

Do you want to PM me the .rb file and I'll look at it