Improvement Request: provide description explaining what each plugin does

[jerkstorecaller]

In Settings > Markdown, there's a list of plugins that the other can enable/disable. However, other than the name, there's no way to tell what it does, or how to use it. Like, what's "deflist syntax", why would I want it, and how do I use it?

It would be better for the average user if they had a way to tell what each plugin does, especially for the built-in plugins that ship with the app.

I recommend doing what Notepad++ does in its Plugin Manager, which is include a short description, author name, as well as the URL of the homepage of the project. Presumably N++ reads this info from some manifest file that's bundled with every plugin.

For anyone who finds this by googling, there's an explanation of built-in plugins here: Markdown Guide | Joplin

EDIT: the simplest way to solve this ticket, is to simply link the above page on the Settings > Markdown screen, if the fancy manifest plugin thing is too much work for now.

[tessus]

Once again, there is a menu item that says Website and documentation it is pretty clear how that works.

If someone does not know how to do something.... open the docs... search for plugins. The first hit is the paragraph with the link to the Markdown Guide.

We deliberately put not too many links in the app. It's a maintainance issue, if the website structure changes.

[jerkstorecaller]

Did you try your own instructions? I just opened Help > Website and documentation, searched for "plugin", and opened all 6 links with that word. Not a single one details what the built-in plugins do, you won't find the word "Deflist" in them for example. You actually have to click the Markdown link as I explained in my ticket.

If it's not intuitive to you, as someone intimate with the Joplin project and website, how intuitive do you think it's gonna be for the average user?

I'm providing feedback because I think first-time-user feedback from a fresh set of eyes like mine will improve the project. I'm just trying to help, this isn't laziness.

[tessus]

@jerkstorecaller

You actually have to click the Markdown link as I explained in my ticket.

Yes, of course you have to click it. It says so in the paragraph:

Joplin also supports Markdown plugins which allow enabling and disabling various advanced Markdown features. Have a look at the Markdown Guide for more information.

I'm truly sorry. If this is not intuitive enough, I can't help you.

Right now I'm a little bit confused. Are you a person or a bot? Or just a troll with the username jerkstorecaller. I really don't know.

Let's see what others have to say. I'm out of this conversation.

[philip-n]

Three separate things:

Descriptions

IMO, for many (most?) options in the different menus, additional short help text would be useful. Quick examples from the "Note" section:
Auto-pair braces, parenthesis, quotations, etc. could get "If you type an opening brace, a closing brace will be added automatically"
Save geo-location with notes could get "Your current GPS location will be saved with your note. This only works if (...)"

From a programmers point of view, many things are self-explaining; but not everybody has the same knowledge. As I assume that there is rather little effort in creating these descriptions (?), I think it would be worth the time to do so.

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Naming convention
Before the Joplin plugin system, the markdown plugins were the only plugins available within Joplin. To prevent confusion, I'd suggest renaming them to "markdown-extensions" both in the Joplin settings and under Markdown Guide | Joplin

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wysiwyg

A small suggestion, to improve readability: Let's get rid of the (wysiwyg: no) comments behind each option in the markdown-plugin-settings in Joplin. Instead, let's split the list of options into two parts:

• the first half contains all the wysiwyg-compatible options
• the remainder (non-wysiwyg-plugins) goes under a separate heading Caution, and the warning message from the top is displayed under this heading instead ("The following extensions are incompatible with the WYSIWYG editor. If you ...").

Quick mock: This

would become this

[Daeraxa]

I would also suggest it might be worth unifying the "WYSIWYG" and "Rich Text Editor" names as both are used in the application and documentation to refer to the same thing.