To meet the needs of different users, many software programs will introduce plugin functionality. The benefits of doing so are obvious: on one hand, it can quickly leverage the power of the community to contribute to the software, and on the other hand, it can judge user preferences based on download statistics and other data, laying the groundwork for future official features. However, for users, while plugins bring a modular experience, there are also certain risks, such as plugin maintenance may not keep up with software versions, or excessive reliance on plugins may make data migration difficult.
Software programs I often use, such as Obsidian, KeePass, etc., all have plugin functionality. To avoid the above problems, I have set myself some basic principles for using plugins: only use automation plugins. In other words, the functions that these plugins can achieve can also be manually implemented without the need for coding knowledge.
For example, in Obsidian, the plugins I frequently use include:
- "Douban"
- "Easy Typing"
- "Image Auto Upload Plugin"
"Douban" can quickly import book information from Douban; "Easy Typing" enhances the Chinese input experience, such as automatic spacing between Chinese and English, and quick input of symbols; "Image Auto Upload Plugin" can more conveniently upload images to the image hosting service and return the link.
The functions of these three plugins can all be manually implemented without the need for coding, so whether the plugins are unavailable or data needs to be migrated, it will not affect the established workflow.