roundcube calendar

[tomward]

Hi and thanks in advance
I am having some trouble getting the calendar plugin to work. it just comes up with a grayed out screen with the bar down the side with small calendar and nothing where the big calendar should be.
i am using roundcube 0.8.4 with larry theme and calendar version 10.0.6

if you need any more info just ask

Thanks

Tom

[rosali]

calendar plugin has dependencies:

Required plugins:
- jqueryui¹
- jscolor¹
- qtip¹
- http_auth¹
- http_request¹
- timepicker¹

If you were using plugin_manager these things would be handled automatically.

[dcrobertson01]

Hi - I have installed the plugin-manager, but cannot see any reference to the plugins in the example config file.

I don't see a plugin called http_auth at all.

I am wondering what the point of the plugin manager is. It does not install the plugin, does not configure the plugin, or do anything useful at all. You are still required to manually download, unzip, run sql files, edit configuration files etc. It just adds another file to edit.

Anyway - how do I find and configure the plugins you mention.

[Yoni]

Hi - I have installed the plugin-manager, but cannot see any reference to the plugins in the example config file.

I don't see a plugin called http_auth at all.

I am wondering what the point of the plugin manager is. It does not install the plugin, does not configure the plugin, or do anything useful at all. You are still required to manually download, unzip, run sql files, edit configuration files etc. It just adds another file to edit.

Anyway - how do I find and configure the plugins you mention.

If you have already installed plugin_manager please browse to Plugin Manager Center and download the required plugins... http_auth is available for download. Read the dependency requirements on the far right hand side of each plugin and download them as needed.

Plugin Manager does not install plugins automatically not it configures your plugins. What it does:

Simplified plugins distribution
Plugins updates
Plugins dependency information.
User-level control over account preferences.
Unified localization publishing and distribution.
Localization translation completeness tracking.
Plugin issues report system.
Release notes and documentation links

It also loads plugins by default so you don't have to register them in main.inc.php . While loading plugins automatically it will also load the default config.inc.php.dist configuration so in a sense it is loading configurations by default that allows the plugin to work out of the box in most cases.

I can tell you that giving users the ability to enable/disable functionality (plugins) is very welcome in my deployments but your experience may vary. Out of the top of my head, newmailnotify will bother many people and be useful for others, for example. It is extremely inconvenient to be on the phone with customers and your webmail resounding every time a new mail comes in. Before plugin_manager you had to either enable it globally for everyone or disable it all together; no in-between. Unless you hard code it to specifically not load for a specific user. In such case it becomes a pain when you have to deal with 10-20-50 users custom preferences. Regardless, you are not required to use plugin_manager if you don't find value in it.

Those "helper plugins" Rosali mentioned do not need any extra configuration if you are running plugin_manager. They will be loaded automatically; just make sure they exist in roundcube .../plugins/ folder.

[dcrobertson01]

It also loads plugins by default so you don't have to register them in main.inc.php . While loading plugins automatically it will also load the default config.inc.php.dist configuration so in a sense it is loading configurations by default that allows the plugin to work out of the box in most cases.

No - instead of adding one word to the main config file, you have to add a stanza to the plugin-manager config file. If you have a stanza for a plugin that is not installed, it fails and stops the whole application. Unless I got something wrong with my setup.

While loading plugins automatically it will also load the default config.inc.php.dist configuration

If a config.inc.php file exists, does it use that? Maybe that is what drove me mad. The plugins I was trying to configure did not have a configuration page - so I was editing the config.inc.php file and not seeing any changes.

It is  a good idea, and good on you for giving it a go, but it could be better. It should be a bit more graceful when a plugin has a stanza in the plugin manager config file, but has not been down loaded. It could warn people when they are downloading the plugins that they do not have all the other plugins that are needed.  I did not get any notice of missing dependencies.

At the moment, it just seems a bit sloppy.

The other thing I found particularly annoying is that people in the forums keep referring to a plugin - the caddav plugin, or calendar plugin - without making it clear which one they are talking about. The myroundcube one? the myroundcube + one? Kolab's one? Some other one?

It would be nice if roundcube could set up a central repository for plugins - maybe adopt the plugin manager, and make sure plugins have a unique name, install properly, and have at least a readme that has more than a url to a git repository.

I know a lot of that rant is not your fault - and maybe it works perfectly with the paid for plugins. But I have found alternatives now, so I am not likely to find out.

[Yoni]

I think you are missing the point when doing a comparison by mentioning the "stanza" of configs in plugin_manager vs registering plugins.

Plugins are uploaded and configured as usual. Plugin Manager is there to offer the ability to enable/disable functionality (plugins) at the user-level while adding  centralized downloads and keeping plugins up-to-date ++ as I mentioned before; that's the plugin_manager configuration you will be customizing your way. Obviously, we don't have a more sane way to add all the configuration parameters for each plugin other than to give you the config.inc.php.example file. Plugin_manager does in fact inform you when a plugin is included in its configuration file but missing from your plugins installation folder.

It is up to the end user to download the plugins they want. Plugins dependencies are mentioned in Plugin Manager Center so users can have a better idea of what other plugin(s) they could be missing or they need for that matter.

MyRoundcube, Kolab, Roundcube, etc. are all different projects. No wonder users will often forget to mention which plugin they are specifically using. This is an open forum and we come here to help whenever we can and read users feedback and issues so we can further improve our plugins whenever possible but this is not a MyRoundcube forum.

Plugin_manager works fine regardless and we don't mind listening to feedback in order to improve it. The limitations are there because of they way it should be administered and not because we can't do anything else. We have had this talk several times and the last we want is for MyRoundcube to install plugins or updates automatically. We don't want to be attached to others admins servers. Plugins should be manually configured as usual and there are always configuration parameters that need changes in order to work for each specific environment, let it be.

Again, you don't have to use plugin_manager if what it offers does not meet your expectations. Just register your plugins (after downloading them) as you usually do and off you go without plugin_manager.

Just a side note:  This is something we should make mention of it as well. plugin_manager also helps when it comes to keeping your Roundcube database tidy. When plugins are disabled, the user configuration is also deleted from the database.