Create new Editor types from Python
allow add-on developers to create completely new generic Editors for interfaces which do not logically go anywhere.
there are many use cases for this and many add-ons which simply put their UI into 3D View Sidebar which has nothing to do with 3D View. another less common solution is to put the UI into Add-on's Preferences, which a user will need to open manually every time they need to do something there.
- add-ons with rich UIs which provide functionality for better file management of the current and linked libraries, and their data-blocks.
- add-ons for developers, for example ones which start or connect to Python debug server.
- add-ons for better UI of data management (a la new "Outliners").
- add-ons for LLM chatbots - require a wide space for a lot of inputs, text, and buttons.
- add-ons for custom views of UVs.
- ... and so on. i hope you understand the idea.
the Editors don't need to support all kinds of Regions and can not even support a Space. for us, add-on developers, there is simply a need to have a single Panel in its independent Editor.
i use and develop a few such add-ons which have no logical place in the existing Editors and what i do now is putting them into Text Editor Sidebar (as the most neutral and "generic" place) and resize it to the max. unfortunately this is still sad because the sidebar size has a limit and it's not possible to fill full Editor only with the contents of the Sidebar. also, Sidebar is not updating with the size of the Editor itself.
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3 Comments
Clean and simple way of creating a blank Custom Editor with python would be fantastic.
thanks for comment! i'd appreciate a lot if you give any new example use cases that you saw (just a description, without direct links, so we don't transform this post into an ad space). i think the more of concrete examples we gather, the clearer it will be for the devs that it is a problem. i see a typical setup where there is so much clutter in the sidebar simply because those add-ons don't have a better place to be.
I think you kind of nailed it. The N-Panel is somehow the place to go for most of the add-ons because there often is no better place in the native Blender's UI. That really sucks because all of the sudden you end up having many tabs in your 3dview which makes it really difficult to navigate. I think having a dedicated isolated space for an addon like a custom editor really makes a lot of sense. I've been scratching my head why this is still not an option for python developers.