Floating window in reporter?

Scripting
1

I want to make a reporter plugin that shows circles around the cursor, inspired by mekkablue’s crosshair plugin. It’s meant for checking stroke thickness and dot-based proportions in Arabic. But I need to be able to change its radius from GUI. Is it possible to open a vanilla window while the plugin is running?

2

Yes, take a peek inside Mark Frömberg’s Show Siblings plug-in.

3

Thanks!

4

This is rather unrelated, but I have a recurring problem that I don’t always remember what the cause is. Whenever I make a new plugin (usually by duplicating existing projects first), I have hard time just getting it to show up on the View menu. What’re the common reasons for not loading the viewer plugin? Could you add this troubleshooting to the tutorial?

5

Could really be anything. Any trouble should be reported in Console.app or the Macro window.

If you are duplicating an existing project, a potential pitfall may be the class name not being unique. Or Info.plist entries not matching up with info inside plugin.py.

This is from the top of my head, no idea how frequent these problems are. I’ll see what I can add to the tutorial. Please contact me directly when the problem occurs again, maybe send me the project in its faulty state, so we can go bug hunting.

6

File sent. It’s based on Show Crosshair plugin.

7

Another option to consider, if that interaction makes sense for the plugin: adding UI into the context menu.

Described in the README.md for the Reporter plugin template:

1 Like
8

To debug a not functioning plugin, it helps to wrap every method in a try:except: block:

import traceback

def someMethod(self):
    try:
        # do stuff
    except:
        print traceback.format_exc()
2 Likes
9

@composerjk Thanks, I’ve found that too and put the UI in the context menu.

@GeorgSeifert Thanks. When a plugin doesn’t even show up, usually it seems to be something else that’s not correct. In my case, it was info.plist that was wrong. Once I can activate it, then I have no problem after that.

Thanks for the help guys!