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For one type of plugin, see [[todo/PluggableRenderers]].
A plugin system should ideally support things like:
* [[todo/lists]] of pages, of mising pages / broken links, of registered users, etc
* a [[todo/link_map]]
* [[todo/sigs]]
* [[pageindexes]]
* Wiki stats, such as the total number of pages, total number of links, most linked to pages, etc, etc.
* wiki info page, giving the ikiwiki version etc
* would it be useful to reimplement the hyperestradier search integration as a plugin?
* Support [[RecentChanges]] as a regular page containing a plugin that updates each time there is a change, and statically builds the recent changes list. (Would this be too expensive/inflexible? There might be other ways to do it as a plugin, like making all links to RecentChanges link to the cgi and have the cgi render it on demand.)
* etc
Another, separate plugin system that already (mostly) exists in ikiwiki is the RCS backend, which allows writing modules to drive other RCS systems than subversion.
## preprocessor plugins
Considering ikiwiki plugins, one idea I have is to make the [[PreProcessorDirective]]s be a plugin. A setting in the config file would enable various plusins, which are perl modules, that each provide one or more preprocessor directives.
Since preprocessing happens before htmlization but after a page is loaded and linkified, it should be possible to use it to create something like a link map or lists, or a page index. Page inlining and rss generation is already done via preprocessor directives and seems a natureal as a plugin too.
Note that things like a link map or a broken link list page would need to be updated whenever a set (or all) pages change; the %inlinepages hash already allows for pages to register this, although it might need to be renamed.
I need to look at the full range of things that other wikis use their plugin systems for, but preprocessor directives as plugins certianly seems useful, even if it's not a complete solution.
## case study: Moin Moin plugins
See <http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/MoinDev/PluginConcept>
6 different types of plugins:
* *actions* are possibly out of scope for ikiwiki, this is probably what it uses for cgi script type stuff. Unless ikiwiki wants to allow pluggable CGI script stuff, it doesn't need these.
* *parsers* and *formatters* are basically what I've been calling [[PluggableRenderers]]. MoinMoin separates these, so that a page is parsed to (presumbly) some intermediate form before being output as html or some other form. That's a nice separation, but what to do about things like markdown that are both a parser and a formatter?
* *macros* and *processors* are analagous to preprocessor directives. A processor can operate on a large block of text though.
* *themes* should be irrellevant (ikiwiki has [[templates]]).
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