Hi

as described on http://wiki.phpmyadmin.net/pma/GSoC_2012_Ideas_List, please use mailing list for such questions, I'm posting your reply there.

Dne Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:08:11 +0530 DImuthu Upeksha dimuthu.upeksha2@gmail.com napsal(a):

In this summer I hope to spend my time in gsoc but I'm quite new to this gsoc process. However I'm a frequent user of phpMyAdmin so I was interested in your proposal named as "Plugins and OOP for import/ export/ transformations/ autentication". But there are some points I need to get clarified

1. What do you mean by "general plugin interface"? Is it an abstraction for

all plugins or something else??

Yes, some abstraction, which could be later used for plugins in various places. The existing use cases are listed above, but it should not be limited to these.

2. What could be the use of such a generic interface because plugins that

are used up to now are different to each other?

That's the challenge in the project :-). The solution can be anything, from making the core emit signals, on which plugins can hook, to object model allowing plugins to override/extend any class which phpMyAdmin uses.

3. What could be other plugins which can be attached to phpMyAdmin except

those mentioned above?

There are currently none, but I can imagine people would want to replace different parts - for example providing wysiwig text editor for some fields.

4. Is converting existing functional codes means all the code of the

software or some particular section?

It's up to you what scope you will give to your project and it will be evaluated based on the scope as well.

As I mentioned earlier this proposal is very interesting to me not because this is gsoc, but one day I will be able to feel this difference while I use phpMyAdmin with these positive changes. It is kind of you if you can clarify those problems for me.