[orion-dev] Visual plugins

[John J Barton <johnjbarton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am trying to figure out how to write visually integrated Orion
plugins. I want the footer, global command header, banner, and
(optional) page actions, but the I want the ContentPane to be an
iframe given as a plugin.

My motivation is to be able to create tool UIs without modifying the
orion code base and without using dojo (sorry, not a fan).

I worked on this a bit and it seems very feasible. I created
"orion.pluginPlayer" to host visual plugins. But it has one major
problem: the pluginPlayer would have to be in the Orion code base. So
if the Orion team never wants to allow this I can stop now.

For now, the pluginPlayer URL can be mapped into the Orion space by
extending a self-hosting config to add the player project. So maybe
there is away to do this in general?  That is, a different kind of
'plugin' that is uploaded and mapped into the server space.

Or maybe there is yet another way?

jjb