Enabled / Disabled plugins

[xod]

We all know that, when we have a large number of plugins PDN launches harder.

I wonder if it would be possible to activate / deactivate some of them and keeping their in PDN Effects folder?

 

[Ishi]

A variant of that idea has recently been discussed on this thread:

 

http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/32475-plugin-indexing-for-faster-startup/

 

 

As for now, the best thing we can do is move the individual DLLs of the plugins we do not use in the Effects folder to another folder. I personally made a folder named "Unused" inside my Effects directory and that's where I keep the DLLs of unused plugins that I may need to pull out for future use.

[xod]

Thanks Ishi, this thread can be deleted.

Edited November 29, 2015 by xod

[MJW]

Another idea which has been mentioned before, and which I think is a good one, is to have Paint.NET load plugins from subfolders of the Effects folder, provided the subfolders' names have a certain format, such as beginning with "Effects," like "EffectsBlurs." Then the plugins could be grouped by folder, and the plugins in a folder could be disabled by renaming it to something like "_EffectsBlurs" so it would no longer be searched.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Just remember that Rick will not guarantee child folders (under the parent Effects folder) will not be parsed. Future version of paint.net *might* parse these sub folders looking for effects.

 

Admission time: I too use a child folder named "Unused". If/when Rick changes this space we might need to find another option/location.

[Ishi]

I don't know if its possible to include a plugin diagnostic tool on PDN.

 

What it does is basically tracks down how the plugins are loaded and lists the top ones that took the longest to be loaded into the memory. It saves the report into a log file, very much like the crash log file. This way, you can choose which culprit, delay causing plugins you can move away from the Effects directory.

 

This plugin diagnostic tool can be included somewhere under the Settings.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Ishi

[xod]

In my opinion, a .dll file may have a bit for activation: 1 - Enabled, 0 - Disabled that PDN could analyze / set it.

I have no idea if this can be done and how much work involves ...

Edited November 30, 2015 by xod

[Rick Brewster]

In order to populate that menu with the name and icon, even with a disabled state, Paint.NET would have to load the plugin. That would not save anything for anyone.

 

Plugin management = (re)move the DLL. Windows already provides this functionality. It's not as fancy as a built-in UI, but a built-in UI would also be very expensive to develop. (and honestly it just wouldn't be very interesting/enjoyable to write). In order to figure out which DLL an effect is in, just move your mouse to the little jigsaw icon and it'll tell you in a tooltip.

 

And, again, if Paint.NET takes too long to start because you've installed a lot of plugins, then the answer is to remove plugins.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

And, again, if Paint.NET takes too long to start because you've installed a lot of plugins, then the answer is to remove plugins.

 

That bears repeating. So I did.

[xod]

As Ishi or EER, I have also a folder called Unused where I keep the unnecessary plugins.

 

I'm sorry if I reopened an earlier discussion about this topic, but I hoped that there is a more elegant solution.

 

Thank you all for your responses and especially to Mr. Rick who was kind enough to enlighten me.

Edited December 1, 2015 by xod

[skullbonz]

Another way that might be to add more RAM on your computer. 16gb of RAM here, I have hundreds of  plugins installed, only wait a few seconds for PDN to come on. 

[Rick Brewster]

And get an SSD.