Multiple questions regarding plugins

[lmv]

1. After more than one year not using Waveform, I noticed something odd. There are a lot of plugins in my personal collection, catalogued by Waveform. Good. However, when I open the plugin section in Settings and the scanner button, none of their paths is there. How did they end up in my catalogue?

I seem to have a vague memory of that. I think that I added the plugin paths, scanned them, organized them in the catalogue, then deleted the paths to avoid the constant problems with plugins that crash, stall etc. in future scans, then did it all again with new paths. One directory (or even one plugin) at a time to avoid the crashes and stalls. Apparently, Waveform does not "forget" or delete from the catalogue plugins that have been detected before even if their paths have been removed. Which is excellent if true.

Can someone please confirm that?

2. In any case, I have a backup of the knownPluginList64.settings file because of course I do. It's an XML file. I can see all my plugins there. Would it be a viable or a good idea at all to add plugins to that file manually?

3. In that case, where does the "uid" come from?

4. I can also see the list of BLACKLISTED plugins. Waveform was upgraded since then and maybe one or two of those plugins were upgraded too. Can I rescan them? How or why not?

Thanks in advance.

[pough]

1. The paths are for scanning, not remembering. The XML file remembers.

2. I have never considered this, so I don't know if it's a good idea or not.

3. Almost certainly generated by Waveform. I wish it did a better job of this. I sometimes find plugins with newer versions show up twice in the plugin list with different UIDs. It's the same plugin, just listed twice.

4. I think if you do a scan it will try again, but I'm not sure.

[Peter Widdicombe]

I think you can also drag a plugin, at least the simpler ones, either onto a waveform icon or to the plugin browser. I think I had done this with the Kontact plugins at one time, as they were particularly onerous to work with at the time.