This article shows you how to write plugins for Scribus. Plugins are libraries that are loaded into the main application at run-time. Plugins can extend and to an extent modify the behaviour of the application without having to edit and recompile the core app. They are useful for adding extra tools, extra import and export functions, and for various more advanced uses.
This document assumes some basic knowledge of C++. You're assumed to know what a header file is, how include files work, know about classes an inheritance, and have some general familiarity with the language. Some familiarity with Qt - mainly QString and QObject - will also help. Issues like virtual and pure virtual functions, "extern C" declarations, the details of memory management, etc are glossed over and avoided in this document. You don't have to know about them, but it'll help you follow what's going on better if you do.
We're not going to try to explain the details of how the Scribus plugin
system works here. This is just about how to write a plugin. The documentation
in the scplugin.h and pluginmanager.h help explain
how the system works.
Scribus ships with a number of standard plug-ins. These will be installed
along with the Scribus program and its other files. On UNIX, plug-ins will be
installed in the same prefix as the main app. In Mac OS X they're included in
the .app bundle. If you want to know what these plug-ins do, the easiest way to
find out is to to fire up Scribus and go into Edit->Preferences
and click on the "plugins" icon. From there you will see a list of what
plug-ins are installed, what type of plug-in they are, and where the files
are.
In addition to the plug-ins shipped as standard with Scribus, it is possible to build and install plug-ins you obtain from elsewhere, or to write and add your own.
Let's suppose you've got a great idea to improve Scribus and you cannot wait to start writing some excellent C++ code. Hold on for just a few minutes and read this section; you might save yourself some time and trouble.
Maybe you are at the edge of "reinventing the wheel" - that is, writing
something you don't have to because someone else has already done it. You
should probably join the mailing-list and post about your idea, or join the
#scribus channel on irc.freenode.net. Your topic will
be discussed and you will probably get some help and ideas from the developers
and from other users. As Scribus is freely licensed, you're welcome to work
on your own, but at least an introductory chat on IRC, or a mail to the
mailing list may save hours of work and head banging. We want to make
writing plug-ins as painless as possible for those who're interested.
Scribus does not have a fixed C++ API for plugins to use. Releases are not binary compatible, and unstable versions frequently break source compatibility. Source compatibility is not currently guaranteed even across stable releases if changes are required to fix a problem. We hope to improve this so we can provide a stable C++ API for external code in the future. For now, if possible you should try to bundle the core of your plugin's functionality into a separate module that knows as little about the innards of Scribus as possible.
This document covers implementing a plugin for Scribus 1.3.1cvs. It is dramatically different to what was required for the 1.2.x series. Future changes should be smaller.
It is generally not practical to write a plugin that'll work on 1.2.x and 1.3.x versions of Scribus.
It's not too hard to jump in and start writing a plugin. The documentation below describes the implementation of a plugin in some detail, with references to places where you can find out more if you need it. A "plugin template" is provided for your use, so if you like you can get started by making a copy of that and getting hacking. Some basic instructions are included in the file, and if you get confused you can refer back to this document.
We'll build the plugin as a part of Scribus. That's the easiest way to get started, though you'll probably want to start distributing it separately later on (see later). To start work on an Action plugin:
scribus/plugins/myplugin
to scribus/plugins/pluginname
(where "pluginname" is what you want to call your plugin).
pluginname must be a valid C identifier - I suggest
sticking to nothing but lower case characters.scribus/plugins/Makefile.am and add
"pluginname" to Makefile.am . This tells Scribus's build
system to compile your plugin.scribus/plugins/pluginname/
from myplugin to pluginname, eg
myplugin.h to pluginname.h.
Do not rename Makefile.am.myplugin wherever it appears in the files to
pluginname, eg myplugin_getPluginAPIVersion()
to pluginname_getPluginAPIVersion(). Do the same for
MyPlugin and MYPLUGIN. On UNIX, you can use this
command:sed -i -e "s/myplugin/pluginname/g" -e "s/MyPlugin/PluginName/g" -e "s/MYPLUGIN/PLUGINNAME/g" myplugin*scribus/plugins/pluginname/).
You're now ready to start work on your plug-in. First, you need to fill
out some information about your plug-in in pluginname.cpp:
PluginName::languageChange():
m_actionInfo.text to the text of the menu item
you want to trigger your plugin.m_actionInfo.menu to the name of the menu you
want the menu item to go in. See FIXME where????
FIXME for a list of menu names.m_actionInfo.keySequence and set it to your preferred
shortcut. The example there should show you how that works.PluginName::fullTrName()
to the name of your plugin as you want it to appear in the Help->About Plugins dialog
box and in the Plugin Manager pane in the preferences.about. You can see what information can be provided by looking
at the definition of AboutData in
scplugin.h.You've finished setting up the plugin, and can now start programming. Your
code should go in pluginnameimpl.cpp and
pluginnameimpl.h. The existing code should display a message
dialog box.
To compile the plugin, you can simply re-run make -f Makefile.cvs,
./configure, and make in the top-level Scribus directory.
When the compile completes, run make install and fire up Scribus.
Your plugin should now appear in the plugin manager (in the preferences), and
should have a menu item. If you press the menu item, a dialog box should appear.
Beware - a qmake project easy to use but isn't necessarily the most standard way to distribute software on the Linux platform. This process is an example only for development. When you create your bug-free functional package then save the time to prepare full featured automagic (autoconf, automake) distributon as described in the next section.
Let's compile it, but it isn't so easy as typing in gcc
myplugin.cpp ;). One easy way to build it - Qt qmake (because some
people really really hate autoconf and automake in their complexity). Note: you
will need to create an empty config.h file before running these
steps
Now the project file is created and we'll make just a few changes into it.
After these changes you're ready to compile
Running Qmake creates the Makefile and by running make you compile your plugin.
Then just copy *so* files into Scribus plugin directory and run Scribus. You'll see "Do Nothing Plugin" in the Extras menu.
It is clear that you have to use some other way to distribute your source code to others - some use autogenerated qmake pro files, other use the autoconf/automake combination.
Qmake is user frendly and useful for rapid development, but there is one standard way to compile/distribute software for Linux, *BSD etc. - autoconf and automake. Lets call these two programs by the automagic acronym in the following text.
To use automagic successfully you'll need chalk drawn to the north oriented pentagram on the floor (Carrefour, 2€), red-black daemonic dress (Hugo Boss, 2000€) and a sacrificed penguin on the home altar (one hour of fear in your local zoo). Err, only joking.. dont harm any nice little penguins, you wont need to.
Download the donothingplugin-1.0.tar.gz example from
http://docs.scribus.net, unpack it and browse it.
When you enter the main directory you can see a lot of files and directories. Warning, do not change anything in the admin directory. It's content is TABOO for you!
As you read the automagic docs (surely) you know that there is an
important file in every directory of your project called
Makefile.am. Here is a short commented example:
Shortly - if you take the donothingplugin-1.0.tar.gz file
and parse the content (and rename it of course :)) of
Makefile.am files you'll get a functional package.
There is one more thing to do. You have to specify directory structure
in configure.in in the project root directory too:
And now to how it works...
First run make -f Makefile.dist in the root directory. It
creates Makefile.in templates (some kind of the black
magic).
And then obligatory ./configure ; make ; make install
should work for you. Enjoy.
To go on from here, you should probably read scplugin.h and ensure
you understand that. There is an explanation of the way the plugin system works
in more detail here. Above all else, though, you'll learn how
to get things done by reading the other plugins and the core Scribus code.
Scribus provides a preferences api for plugin writers to store data between Scribus launches. There are two types of storage formats available: key-value pairs and tables.
First you will need to get the PrefsContext object for your
plugin. Then you can query PrefsContext to get the value for a
specific key or you can ask for a PrefsTable by it's name. Here is
a short example using key-value pairs.
#include <prefsfile.h>
#include <prefscontext.h>
extern PrefsFile* prefsFile;
PrefsContext *myPluginPrefs = prefsFile->getPluginContext("MyPlugin");
// default value -1 will be used if "i" doesn't already exist
int i = myPluginPrefs->getInt("i");
// default value "dog" will be used if "s" doesn't already exist
QString s = myPluginPrefs->get("s", "dog");
myPluginPrefs->set("i", 221);
myPluginPrefs->set("s", "cat");
Scribus's source code is lightly documented. There is a significant effort to correct this, but given the size of the codebase it's taking quite some time. Please do try to follow what's going on based on the header files and the code. If you're unable to sort it out, feel free to drop in on IRC or ask on the mailing list, and someone may well be able to help you. Try to be patient - we're not always on IRC or available, and it can take time to answer a message if everybody's busy.
If you feel like improving the documentation or fixing the doxygen api docs generation, the praise will be endless.
One important thing to understand is that the core Scribus application
can be accessed via the static global pointer ScApp, declared
in scribus.h. Confusingly, this is a QMainWindow subclass.
You can also get to the QApplication subclass used as ScQApp
from scribusapp.h.
Some major subsystems are singleton classes that are accessible via
ClassName::instance() . Examples include PluginManager,
ScPaths, and growing numbers of others. The advantage
of this is that you can interact with these classes without having to
delve into the guts of ScApp.