Comment 1 by surveyor (in reply to comment description) on 2012-05-29 06:21
Replying to Brendon22:

Hello, I have tryed opening the following Add-on's with the new Add-on manager: 1. OCR-0.20120528

1. Systraylist-1.3
2. Braille Note Driver-0.2

You must be sure that, the files hav nvda-addon extension. If you have downloaded them using IE, it is a possibility the original nvda-addon extension has been converted to zip. If that is the case, you should manually rename them with .nvda-addon extension.

1. I open the Add-on manager.
2. I go to the Install Button.
3. I brows to the folder wair I've saved the Add-Ons.
4. I open the folder.
5. but The Add-on manager shows nuffing there?
6. it doesn't matter if there unzipped or not nuffing is showen by the Add-on manager?

Using Win 7 64-Bit with NVDA RC1

Changes:
Added labels: invalid
State: closed

Comment 2 by Brendon22 on 2012-05-29 06:55
Hi Surveyor, thank you very much for your reply. But renaming them to .nvda-addon doesn't work. I am using IE 9 and they are coming to me as .Zip. But the Add-on manager isn't showing them? Hmmm!
Changes:
Removed labels: invalid
State: reopened

Comment 3 by surveyor (in reply to comment 2) on 2012-05-29 07:12
Replying to Brendon22:

Hi Surveyor, thank you very much for your reply. But renaming them to .nvda-addon doesn't work. I am using IE 9 and they are coming to me as .Zip. But the Add-on manager isn't showing them? Hmmm!

Addon manager can show every file with nvda-addon extension even if it's not an NVDA addon. There must be something wrong with renaming I think. For instance OCR addon file name should look like this: ocr_0.20120528.01.nvda-addon

Changes:
Added labels: invalid
State: closed

Comment 4 by pvagner on 2012-05-29 07:19
can you please post the links where you are downloading these addons from?
I would like to see this just to avoid confusion.
Not all the global plugins have been converted to the nvda addons and redistributed this way.
Addon manager can only handle .nvda-addon files which have been specifically built like so.

Comment 5 by Brendon22 on 2012-05-29 07:35
Hello, No! Naming it to ocr_0.20120528.nvda-addon still doesn't work! It's just not showing anything at all. Hmmmmmm
Changes:
Removed labels: invalid
State: reopened

Comment 6 by Brendon22 (in reply to comment 4) on 2012-05-29 07:41
Hi, The link I'm downloading the Add-ons from is from the link that Jamy posted erlyer today. Here it is: http://www.nvda-project.org/wiki/AddOns

Comment 7 by surveyor (in reply to comment 5) on 2012-05-29 07:47
Replying to Brendon22:

Hello, No! Naming it to ocr_0.20120528.nvda-addon still doesn't work! It's just not showing anything at all. Hmmmmmm

You can see known file extensions don't you?
As I wrote, if a file, a real addon or not, has nvda-addon extension, you should see it in the install addon dialog. Handling is another issue.
Changes:
Added labels: invalid
State: closed

Comment 8 by briang1 on 2012-05-29 08:03
If you look inside the archive there should always be a manifest file, so if there is not one its a manual install add on and these though they will still work if installed that way, will not show up in the add on list either from what I can see.

Comment 9 by pvagner (in reply to comment 5) on 2012-05-29 08:12
Replying to Brendon22:

No! Naming it to ocr_0.20120528.nvda-addon still doesn't work! It's just not showing anything at all. Hmmmmmm

Have you reopened addons dialog after renaming the file just in case the list of files has never been refreshed?

However I have identified the issue where downloading a file using Internet explorer saves the files with .zip extension rather than with .nvda-addon extension.
It's possible something can be done on the server side in order to overcome this, but as a long term solution, mostlikelly we'll need to do something to the file header in order to change its mime type.
This needs to be discussed further.
Changes:
Changed title from "The new Add-on manager isn't working right?" to "Addons downloaded using Internet explorer aren't easily installable"
Removed labels: invalid
State: reopened

Comment 10 by Brendon22 (in reply to comment 8) on 2012-05-29 08:25
Hi, Yes I do and no nuffing comes up when I brows to the folder wair I saved the Add-on. Even when naming it with the nvda exstention.

Comment 11 by Brendon22 (in reply to comment 9) on 2012-05-29 08:26
OK Thanks but they still won't show up! Hmmm

Comment 12 by pvagner on 2012-05-29 08:49
Okay so we are not going to reinvent the wheel, so I can just point out, Mozilla xpi extensions are also ordinary zip files with servers configured to present a different mime type than the archive/zip or similar.
This somewhat urges existence of central addons repository.
See here for reference: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Extension_Packaging#Making_an_extension_XPI

Comment 13 by pvagner on 2012-05-29 09:11
Another way of handling this in the future might be adding ability to open .nvda-addons files from the commandline into NVDA it-self. This would also register a proper mime type mapping with the user's system and may prevent such conflicts.
Still I am afraid we won't be able to make this into 2012.2 release.
Changes:
Milestone changed from None to near-term

Comment 14 by jteh on 2012-05-29 09:14
Replying to pvagner:

Okay so we are not going to reinvent the wheel, so I can just point out, Mozilla xpi extensions are also ordinary zip files with servers configured to present a different mime type than the archive/zip or similar.

I've explicitly configured files.nvaccess.lorg to serve .nvda-addon with application/octet-stream, so if it's happening for the OCR add-on, mime type isn't the reason.

This somewhat urges existence of central addons repository.

We just don't have the bandwidth or space to maintain everyone's add-ons. The OCr add-on, for example, is around 80 mb. You could argue it's a rare exception, but there are other valid use cases; e.g. speech synths. In addition, we'd then have to have some way of people uploading such large files, which is not trivial.

Brendon, are you certain you actually changed the file extension? If you have Windows Explorer set to hide extensions for known file types, you won't be able to change the actual extension. You have to disable this option to be able to change the extension.

Comment 15 by jteh (in reply to comment 13) on 2012-05-29 09:15
Replying to pvagner:

Another way of handling this in the future might be adding ability to open .nvda-addons files from the commandline into NVDA it-self.

Covered by #2306.

Comment 16 by tspivey on 2012-05-29 09:26
I just looked this up, but have no quick way to test. See:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms775147.aspx

From reading that, it seems like:

• application/octet-stream is ambiguous; IE will scan the file to see what it is.
• If you give it a mimetype IE doesn't know about, it should leave your file extension alone. Try something unofficial like application/nvda-addon+zip.
  (Why that? epub is unofficially application/epub+zip from its wikipedia page.)

Comment 17 by jteh (in reply to comment 16) on 2012-05-29 09:51
Replying to tspivey:

• application/octet-stream is ambiguous; IE will scan the file to see what it is.
• If you give it a mimetype IE doesn't know about, it should leave your file extension alone. Try something unofficial like application/nvda-addon+zip.

Thanks; that was very helpful! I've configured the server to serve it with application/x-nvda-addon (since we should use the x- prefix for unregistered types), which seems to make IE behave the way we want it to. Unfortunately, this doesn't help other servers.

Comment 18 by Brendon22 (in reply to comment 14) on 2012-05-29 10:05
Hello, Yes I'm shore I changed the File Extension. Windows came up and said to me that the file might become unusable if I changed the file extension! I have hide extensions for known file types disabled!

Comment 19 by pvagner (in reply to comment 18) on 2012-05-29 10:34
Can you please try downloading ocr addon one more time? It may avoid renaming issues since jamie has reconfigured the server.
Unfortunatelly as he said this still doesn't solve downloading addons from other sources.

Comment 20 by briang1 on 2012-05-29 10:42
So how come when the ocr add on was first recoded, I downloaded it with IE and navigated to it and it just worked?
Is IE8 less fussy perhaps?

Comment 21 by Brendon22 (in reply to comment 20) on 2012-05-29 11:02
Hi, I've just downloaded the OCR Add-On. But it still doesn't make any diffrents. The Add-On Manager still doesn't see it there!

Comment 22 by Brendon22 on 2012-05-29 23:47
Hi, Today I updated to the latest Snapshot, NVDA Snapshot-5200 and the OCR Add-On is working now. But nun of the other Add-ons are working? The only one that comes up with a.nvda-addon exstention is The OCR Add-on. All the others just come up with a .zip exstention as they did before? Hmmm

Comment 23 by briang1 on 2012-05-30 15:49
I downloaded a dectalk driver from a dropbox and it too came with a.zip extensiion, but on changing it to .nvda-addon It worked perfectly. This is Win XP IE8.
So really a simple rename is all that should be needed.

Comment 24 by nikosdemetriou on 2012-06-05 08:05
Hi.
I am also using internet explorer 8 and it changes the extention in to zip.
But i found an easy way to solve this problem. In the choose addon dialogue i just type . and it shows everything so i can choose and install the addon.
But i have got a question.
Why such a bigg extention? I think if it was .nvda or something small with 3 or 4 letters perhaps it wouldn't confuce internet explorer.
Nikos

Comment 25 by jteh (in reply to comment 24) on 2012-06-05 08:42
Replying to nikosdemetriou:

I am also using internet explorer 8 and it changes the extention in to zip.

As noted earlier, this depends on the server. It shouldn't happen any more for the OCR add-on, for example.

Why such a bigg extention?

This makes it very clear what the file is. There's no need for short extensions with modern file systems.

I think if it was .nvda or something small with 3 or 4 letters perhaps it wouldn't confuce internet explorer.

According to the documentation, the length of the extension is irrelevant.

Comment 26 by Brendon22 on 2012-06-21 04:52
Hi, I've just downloaded the New Vocalizer Boices for NVDA. And I downloaded the Driver to run the Voices. And when browsing for the driver file in the Add-On Manager. The Add-On Manager can't find the driver file. Hmm. The name of the Driver File is vocalizer-driver-1.2.nvda-addon

Comment 27 by Brendon22 on 2012-08-21 05:43
Hello,
This problem has been fixed.
Changes:
State: closed