* Research Planner Version 2 -- request for beta testing

[ColeValleyGirl]

David, could you try the attached? You'll need to delete the help zip file and folders (if you've created them) to test it properly.



NOTE: This has been superseded by the version in the plugin store.

Also, you'll need to install another standard library (zip) from here: how_to:family_historian_v6_on_crossover_wine#plugin_library_modules|> Plugin Library Modules but you will only need to do it once (in a similar way to the Pl Penlight library).

Please let me know how you get on.

[davidf]

David, that's something to do with running in Wine -- the unzipping mechanism within the plugin isn't working as it should.

how_to:research_planner#installing_the_plugin|> Installing the Plugin will get you going -- there are instructions there on how to deal with the help files manually -- while I puzzle out what might be going wrong.

Edited: I wonder if it's related to the issue here https://www.fhug.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13994

Answering for completeness - I see you have a later post that may solve the problem.

...
how_to:research_planner#installing_the_plugin|> Installing the Plugin will get you going -- there are instructions there on how to deal with the help files manually -- while I puzzle out what might be going wrong.
...

The KB article talks about downloading to "C:\Program Data\Calico Pie\Family Historian\Plugin Data\Research Planner.dat". Under Wine this looks like "..../drive_c/users/david/Application Data/Calico Pie/Family Historian/Plugin Data" - there is no "Research Planner.dat" subdirectory - possibly because that is created on first run - or is that the cause of the problem?

In the light of later posts I have not pursued this by creating the subdirectory etc.

...
Edited: I wonder if it's related to the issue here https://www.fhug.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13994

Might be something if not similar at least allied; Wine is however different from Crossover. I can run a check of plug-ins against the plug-in store, but I am not seeing the odd results that Valkrider reported in that the only "Not in Store" plug ins are those withdrawn; all others show as Up to Date or appropriate status.

Internet connections from FH can be problematic but has not given me enough hassle to be worth trying to sort out where the issues are. (Downloads from the plug-in store are of course done from my browser running natively under Linux - and behave perfectly!)

[ColeValleyGirl]

David, I've fixed a minor bug in the test version I made available for download, but if you don't at the point of downloading and extracting the Help file have the "Research Planner.dat" subdirectory that's a little worrying -- it should be created very early on in the process, before any attempt to download the .zip file and then extract it.

Yet, the message 'About to extract Help files' will not show unless the download succeeded into the Research Planner.dat subdirecotry. At the point that message appears, can you check to see if the directory exists -- either where it should be or in some unexpected place?

[tatewise]

Regarding David's comment about the how_to:research_planner#installing_the_plugin|> Installing the Plugin instructions, they could refer to the glossary:family_historian_program_data_folder|> Family Historian Program Data Folder that defines it for Crossover/Wine as:
C:\Users\Public\Application Data\Calico Pie\Family Historian\
I suspect this assumes it is being viewed from a Windows perspective inside Crossover/Wine rather than natively in Mac/Linux that would use forward slashes / and involve usernames.

[davidf]

David, could you try the attached? You'll need to delete the help zip file and folders (if you've created them) to test it properly.

Research Planner.fh_lua

NOTE: This supersedes the previous version which had a wrong version number within it.

Also, you'll need to install another standard library (zip) from here: how_to:family_historian_v6_on_crossover_wine#plugin_library_modules|> Plugin Library Modules but you will only need to do it once (in a similar way to the Pl Penlight library).

Please let me know how you get on.

OK I have manually downloaded the zip.zip, extracted it and stuck it in "/home/david/.wine/drive_c/users/Public/Application Data/Calico Pie/Family Historian/Plugins/zip.dll" (Your dialog box to offer to download it fails, possibly due to the issue mention in preceding posts?)

(Note that "/home/david/.wine/drive_c/" is defining where I have told Wine to treat a folder as the root of my drive C: - hereafter referred to as C:\)

Running the Planner than gives me:

Extracting Help files notification

Screenshot from 2019-12-02 17-25-38.png (9.92 KiB) Viewed 9831 times

Clicking OK, then gives:

Extract Plug in Failure

Screenshot from 2019-12-02 17-26-46.png (10.82 KiB) Viewed 9831 times

Which is a different error. So I now step back to your previous suggestion and manually unpack the zip file.

At the point that message appears, can you check to see if the directory exists -- either where it should be or in some unexpected place?

Which is sitting in "C:\users/Public/Application Data/Calico Pie/Family Historian/Plugin Data/Research Planner.dat/Research Planner Help 2.1.zip".

Now unlike zip.zip, I get an error when trying to unzip:

Unzip failure

Screenshot from 2019-12-02 17-40-38.png (9.33 KiB) Viewed 9831 times

Now this is of course a Linux message! But, zip.zip does extract; which makes me wonder if there is a quirk in the Research Planner Help 2.1.zip file? This might be a quirk that upset Linux (possibly not following strict format rules, so treated as suspect by Linux which does protect you from doing stupid/unsafe things!). Alternatively it might (see below) be an issue with the Research Planner Help 2.1.zip file

Research Planner Help 2.0.zip will load into the unzip utility and will extract. So, per your earlier post:
I have download the Research Planner-2 from the plug in store (which when run gives the previous 1003 error)
So I have extracted Research Planner Help 2.0.zip into C:\users/Public/Application Data/Calico Pie/Family Historian/Plugin Data/Research Planner.dat/index.html (is that the right position for the help index.html file) and removed Research Planner Help 2.1.zip.
Running then gives me the 1003 error again!

If this is a file location problem, it might help to know that I have Wine Emulating Windows 7 (which determines folder layout etc). If you think this is a problem I could experiment with getting it to emulate Windows 8/8.1/10 - I just hope that does not require rebuilding my entire Windows Environment and FH setup!

Continued Thanks

[davidf]

Regarding David's comment about the how_to:research_planner#installing_the_plugin|> Installing the Plugin instructions, they could refer to the glossary:family_historian_program_data_folder|> Family Historian Program Data Folder that defines it for Crossover/Wine as:
C:\Users\Public\Application Data\Calico Pie\Family Historian\
I suspect this assumes it is being viewed from a Windows perspective inside Crossover/Wine rather than natively in Mac/Linux that would use forward slashes / and involve usernames.

Yes, although I think the slashes are nomenclature rather than actually part of the strict definition of folders.
So if Under Wine I load Windows Explorer I can find
C:\users\Public\Application Data\Calico Pie\Family Historian\Plugin Data\Research Planner.dat"
Which would indicate that the orientation of the slashes is presentational and should not be causing program problems (which would be extensive if that was not the case!).

[davidf]

Update.

I decided to remove everything Research Planner related and download the Research Planner-3 from the Plug-in store; which failed on running.

Cleaned out again (deleting the plugin and the associated directories) and downloaded the version earlier in this tread.

David, could you try the attached? You'll need to delete the help zip file and folders (if you've created them) to test it properly.

Research Planner.fh_lua

NOTE: This supersedes the previous version which had a wrong version number within it.

Also, you'll need to install another standard library (zip) from here: how_to:family_historian_v6_on_crossover_wine#plugin_library_modules|> Plugin Library Modules but you will only need to do it once (in a similar way to the Pl Penlight library).

Please let me know how you get on.

This is now working - or at least I get into it and get the configuration dialogs and can read the help file. Thanks

Summary:

• The version of the plug-in offered above does have a change that is significant when compared to the version currently in the plug-in store.
• there is something odd about the various help zip files (at least with respect to the GNOME unzip utility Archive Manager 3.28.0 - which is in widespread use across a number of Linux distributions):
  • Research Planner Help 2.0.zip will manually unzip
  • Research Planner-2 Help 2.0.zip won't
  • Research Planner Help 2.1.zip wont
• I may have had problems because the various versions have created a variety of folders (Research Planner.dat (now in use), Research Planner-2.dat, Research Planner-3.dat) and I may not have deleted the right ones?

[ColeValleyGirl]

David,

you should have a Research Planner.dat directory, with a directory under that for research planner help 2.0 with all the help files under that. Everything else is superfluous. You should also have a single version of Research Planner.fh_lua wherever your setup saves plugins (no digits).

I will wait to see if the latest version works on Crossover -- I've asked Valkrider to test it as favour -- if it does, I will update the plugin store.

I'll also give some thought on how to word the advice in the Installation instructions when downloading the help file fails-- it needs to cater for all the common environments (Windows, Crossover, Wine, etc.)

[tatewise]

The hyphen digit (-1, -2, -3) appended to Plugin filenames, are added by the browser download process.

Users should remove such suffixes before running the Plugin otherwise rogue folders & files can get created with the same suffixes and subsequently need to be deleted.

Plugin authors could take account of such suffixes by removing them where appropriate in the script, before using them in folder or file names.

[davidf]

David,

you should have a Research Planner.dat directory, with a directory under that for research planner help 2.0 with all the help files under that. Everything else is superfluous. You should also have a single version of Research Planner.fh_lua wherever your setup saves plugins (no digits).

(Mike has also pointed out to me that the -2 -3 suffixes are of course download induced!)

Yes, that is what I now have!

...
I'll also give some thought on how to word the advice in the Installation instructions when downloading the help file fails-- it needs to cater for all the common environments (Windows, Crossover, Wine, etc.)

Certainly I found when initially extracting the help file I was putting it in the Research Planner.dat directory rather than in the Research Planner.dat/research planner help 2.0 subdirectory (case as shown).

Thanks for your help

[davidf]

The hyphen digit (-1, -2, -3) appended to Plugin filenames, are added by the browser download process.

Users should remove such suffixes before running the Plugin otherwise rogue folders & files can get created with the same suffixes and subsequently need to be deleted.

Plugin authors could take account of such suffixes by removing them where appropriate in the script, before using them in folder or file names.

Duh, of course!

But I don't think that resolves the varying treatment of unzipping help files - but closer examination is revealing:

• Research Planner Help 2.0.zip will manually unzip (file size: 1,099,287 bytes)
• Research Planner-2 Help 2.0.zip won't (file size: 805 bytes bytes)
• Research Planner Help 2.1.zip wont (file size: 805 bytes bytes)

Clearly something odd happened in the downloading of the last two (look carefully - no "k" before the "bytes"!

[ColeValleyGirl]

David,

The last two zip files don't exist -- the zip file name is computed by the plugin using the name of the plugin -- so as you ended up with multiple plugin file names during the download, you were trying to access non existent files.

[ColeValleyGirl]

The version of the plugin in the plugin store will be updated shortly, so I've removed any downloads from this thread to avoid confusion.

[mjashby]

Helen,

The Version in the AppStore does seem to have been updated (6 Dec 2019), but isn't recognised by the "Check Installed Plugins Against the Store" Plugin, presumably because it identifies as the same version number as the previous release.

Mervyn

[ColeValleyGirl]

Looks like I need to change the plugin name in the store... to Research Planner.

[tatewise]

I thought it always was Research Planner in the Plugin Store.
In order to get Check Installed Plugins Against the Store to suggest a download, the Version must change.

[ColeValleyGirl]

The version did change from 2.0 to 2.0.1 (to account for the minor change to the zipfile extraction).

The file was Research Planner, but the Plugin page name was Research Planner Version 2. (I shall have to think how to proceed when I update the plugin for FH7 -- I want to leave version 2 in place for people who don't upgrade, but also publish a new version for FH7 users).

Currently both Multifact and Research Planner are showing up as not being in the store when Check Installed Plugins Against the Store is run, but they're also both pending approval while minor tweaks to the details are done, so I shall wait until early next week to check again.

I am starting to think we need some best practice guidance on publishing to the Plugin Store in the Knowledgebase.

[tatewise]

Yes, they won't be available from Plugin Store while pending approval.
I avoid updating at weekends as it may take days to get approved.

There is some limited advice at plugins:version_control_and_file_naming_advice|> FH Plugins > Version Control And File Naming Advice.

To keep two distinct versions in the Plugin Store you effectively need two Plugins with different Titles that match the names in the Plugin Store. e.g. Research Planner FH6 and Research Planner FH7.

The alternative is to have one composite Plugin called Research Planner that has the script for both FH6 and FH7 differentiated by a test such as:
if fhGetAppVersion() < 7 then <FH V6 version> else <FH V7 version> end

[ColeValleyGirl]

Mike, I might edit plugins:version_control_and_file_naming_advice|> Version Control And File Naming Advice to include a little on semantic versioning; and also to emphasise that the file name, plugin name within the plugin and plugin name in the store must all be the same. (Check Installed Plugins against the store doesn't work otherwise).

Although you can't tell for sure this is the case. An example:

Plugin title in store: Research Planner
File title in store: Research-Planner-3.fh_lua
File title when downloaded: Research Planner.fh_lua
Title inside plugin: Research Planner

I intend to feature-freeze RP as it is for FH6 now, and only introduce new functionality in FH7, so there will be two divergent versions. (Likewise, probably with Multifact).

[tatewise]

Yes, go ahead and update that advice.
I reported Plugin naming problems to Calico Pie a long time ago, with the suggestion that the Plugin Store enforces those rules to keep Name, Title & Filename identical.

What is your plan for two divergent versions?
I don't think Version numbers offer a solution, so it has to be by using two different Plugin Titles.

[ColeValleyGirl]

I agree, only version titles offer a solution, so the next version may be called Research Planner 7...

[davidf]

I agree, only version titles offer a solution, so the next version may be called Research Planner 7...

Does the plug-in store offer only versions compatible with your FH version?
(If not, perhaps it should - or at least offer a filter (like the Thunderbird email client does))

If not, should your naming convention be Research Planner FH6 and Research Planner FH7 (as I think Mike suggested earlier) so as to avoid FH6 users downloading an incompatible version? Then We can have Research Planner FH7 V0.1, Research Planner FH7 V1.0 etc.

[ColeValleyGirl]

davidf, I'm going to wait to see what materialises with FH7 .

The plugin store does allow you to specify what FH versions are compatible; and most plugins (including mine) additionally test that minimum requirements are met, so that if somebody inadvertently downloads a plugin they can't run they get an error message. It isn't a matter just of major versions, but (for example some things don't run in FH 5.0.8 but will run in 5.0.9

[tatewise]

Yes, the Plugin Store settings allow a minimum FH Version to be specified to three digits like 5.0.9 or 6.2.7.
The Plugin script written by the author can check the current FH Version to three digits and apply any rules they like.
So for example Research Planner FH7 could set a minimum of 7.0.0.
While Research Planner FH6 could either completely inhibit the Plugin on FH V7.x.x, or advise the user to upgrade to Research Planner FH7.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Mike, I've updated plugins:version_control_and_file_naming_advice|> Version Control And File Naming Advice if you'd like to take a look -- I modified the section on Git to point to the current websites, but you might want to check that you're happy with it.