mjwalfreds

This is awesome! I look forward to experimenting with this. Thanks!

Hi again all! Just wanted to follow up on a few improvements I've made to Pacmax with your feedback. Have even more in the works for hopefully later this week that should be even more exciting. Here's what's new, though:

- Added: Created By field on posts (links to the author's GitHub profile) - this might be my favorite addition
- Added: A scroll to top button for long pages
- Fixed: Rewrote About page to help better explain different aspects related to PM & Alfred; also created a GitHub repo for anyone interested in helping make About better!
- Fixed: Styled README section of posts make clearer that they're from the project's repository
- Added: Support for wider screens on Explore (fill it up!)
- Fixed: Pagination on Explore
- Fixed: Last Updated field displaying wrong time
- Improved: Several styles across the site

Check out the changes at https://pacmax.org/

Thanks!

P.S. Great reading all the conversations here. I look forward to more!

On 2/23/2019 at 6:32 PM, deanishe said:

Out of interest, what are you planning to do here? Just link to the <repo>/releases/latest page on GitHub or extract the URL of the actual .alfredworkflow file and link to that? 

 

I am planning to prioritize the .alfred file types, but have the releases available for download. What do you think?

On 2/23/2019 at 7:13 PM, vitor said:

That sounds like you won’t support monorepos and will focus on Github Releases, in which case Pacmax is guaranteed to not reach the goals you mentioned. If you want to be a true Packal successor that simplifies the distribution method, you can’t be the one to add the Workflows and you can’t focus on Github alone, plain and simple. Tons of Workflows are not distributed via Github, because not everyone likes (or understand how to use) Github. Some Workflows are only available on Packal, because it offered an upload method. That is a nut that Pacmax is yet to crack. 

 

Again, you seem to be a good person with a worthy objective, but you also seem (too) green to package management/distribution systems and community collaboration, and I think you’re making huge mistakes that make me not bet in Pacmax. A third-party closed-source manually updated site with an uncertain future is a hard sell. 

 

I’m with @nikivi on this one. The Alfred community has been bitten too many times already by closed-source websites just like that. We don’t need another technological solution, we need an ideological one.

 

 

 

Respectfully, I didn't say I won't support monorepos, that I'd focus on GitHub Releases first. By having Pacmax look at Releases I'd be doing the opposite of being the one to manually add the .alfred file types; PM is going to be doing the heavy lifting. I didn't say that Pacmax would ever look at GitHub. It seems like a great place (if not the best place) to start, to me. If it helps: The Share form is not any core functionality. It's a way for people to communicate what packages they'd like to see on the site while I was getting the ball rolling (namely getting the site to be a leaner experience altogether). Automation has always been on my mind, but it was important for me to get feedback from the start. I'm glad I did because without the community's feedback I wouldn't know what to tackle next (and it has helped a lot).

Your concerns don't escape me, and I respect them, however this is a new project and I hope anyone interested in it can see that I am scratching the surface. To reiterate, I'm not discounting building beyond GitHub—it feels like a great place to start (and I've got to start somewhere). I'm not expecting to be manually managing the site much longer; that's not realistic—but I didn't make that clear. I hope that better explains my position.

All the best,

Max

Hey again all! To answer more of your replies (apologies if they're not all in the right order):

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You haven’t answered my question about potentially making the site open source. But I guess the answer to that is no which is fine too.

Sorry, didn't mean to dodge this. I don't have plans to right now, but potentially someday‽

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One thing that would be useful to add to the website (and something current Alfred documentation lacks on the website) is how can you distribute your freshly made workflows to people.

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Perhaps Pacmax can mention the two ways (single repo per workflow distributed via GitHub releases aided by AwGo or some other library) or the mono repo approach with use of OneUpdater or some other mechanism although I only know OneUpdater and use it myself for my mono repo. I have both mono and single repo workflows I distribute.

 

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I think having this information I mentioned above, perhaps even on Pacmax Share page with some examples of these approaches in action would be very useful.

 

I love it! Thanks for the suggestion. I'll be incorporating this and will circle back once I have.

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https://www.paypal.com/donate is a bad pattern to search for and encourage, as PayPal doesn’t like that use of donate and has cracked down on users who use it in this manner. I forget the specifics, but I think it has something to do with donate being for nonprofits, not tips. The correct one to use in this case is https://www.paypal.me/.

Thanks for sharing that, noted! I think I've got a solution that'll do the trick.

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You’re fighting a losing battle. Presumably you don’t understand every programming language, nor are you going to sift through and understand hundreds of lines of code to find something malicious. If someone wanted to introduce malicious code to a Workflow, they could also obfuscate it. As with every software, trust in the code comes with trust in the developer. Which is not to say code shouldn’t be audited — it should — just that I think you taking that up on yourself won’t be a fruitful use of time.

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Moderation of submissions is of marginal value, imo, especially wrt security, as there's nothing a mere indexer can do to prevent users installing a workflow anyway: Any malware would need reporting to Andrew immediately, so he can block it effectively at the Alfred level.

 

You are both right. I was naive on that front going into this and the last few days has been enlightening; you've helped me to think about this differently. I will be sure to report any malicious code so that the Alfred team can block it at the greatest level.

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For the most part, yes. Thank you. Though it remains the question of how would my Workflows be added to your site, since I use the monorepo method.

 

I have a few ideas and will follow up here in the forums if something works as I'd like. I've been convinced by several comments here, namely that having Pacmax laser in on Releases would be a clean & beneficial implementation; I hope to have this live and be pulling from Releases soon. (update: this has been live for a while!)

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FWIW, monorepos aren't compatible with a lot of workflows. Apart from devs who just prefer to have one workflow per repo, quite a lot of workflows are based on my Python library, and its update mechanism uses GitHub releases, thus requiring one repo per workflow.

 

@deanishe, I've been working on this over the last day and think I have a great solution to everything you last mentioned. I agree with everything, and I'm excited to post the changes. Briefly, they are by adding a Created By [GitHub Username] which acts as a link to that user's GH profile, styling for the READMEs (we were on a similar wavelength with the lines: I have been working on a  card style for this that I think makes it much clearer), along with other updates which I've made (namely links to the GitHub repository of the post, and clearer language across the site for the different available buttons). It's a work in progress, but again, excited to push more before long!

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I just don't want to be fielding questions from folks who've downloaded a copy of the source code via Pacmax instead of the .alfredworkflow file and don't know what to do with it.

 

Understandably, and I hope that the most recent and upcoming changes address that.

As always, thanks all, and I hope this has been helpful (as your feedback remains to be).

Cheers,
Max

Hi again all! Sorry for the late reply, again. Frankly, my sleep schedule is 💩. I need to work on that.

@deanishe, re: PayPal - One idea I've had is making it so that repos with PayPal URLs, eg https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=[...], display a button to make it clearer to the reader that it's an option. This could be a way to continue on the no-accounts-necessary path. What do you think?

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Have you tried Vítor's workflow? It's tuned for this forum and the awful, buggy Invision editor.

I haven't, but I've got it now and will use it for this reply. It looks great, kudos @vitor. I'm glad that I'm not alone in not digging the editor.

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I've just been testing Pacmax. It doesn't appear to like "monorepos", where a user keeps all their workflows in a single repo (or perhaps I didn't wait long enough).

You're absolutely right. I had noticed this in another instance; we're only able to grab the entire repo as it stands—I've added it to my todo list!

@vitor, to answer your points 3 & 4:

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And you haven’t answered my previous point: 3. if I want to submit to Pacmax, am I supposed to dump almost 50 Workflows on your lap lap for you to go through? 4. Are you the one who decides which Workflows are added to the website? 5. If yes, why, what’s your criteria for inclusion or refusal?

Re: This is a great question and I apologize for having missed it. Put briefly, I have no interest in curating the site. My #1 concern with submissions has been digging into the repos to try to confirm that the files aren't malicious for the end-user. Beyond that, I believe diversity is good, and my whole goal here has been to try and make sharing and finding workflows easier on everyone. 2 things come to mind for me on this: 1) I want to be clearer about this so I am going to work on that language, and 2) I'd like anyone's feedback about what would make a repository "malicious"; I'll use that to improve the info on the About page, and to better hone my submission workflow. The last thing I want to do is introduce something dangerous to someone who is maybe not looking at the source or even the READMEs.

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That’s my biggest eyebrow raise with Pacmax right now: it isn’t clear (and specific) about what it is or what it wants to be. Awesome Alfred Workflows is shameless about being a subjective biased list: it’s a particular kind of list (from the “Awesome” series) connected to a specific person, and mentions curation right away. Packal is automated and lets anyone submit whatever they want. Pacmax, I don’t know.

So to answer the above, anyone can submit whatever they want on Pacmax. The last thing I'd want to do is build something that aims to improve the discoverability of the amazing workflows that you and others offer the community, only to be selective about what's posted. I simply have no desire to do that

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The optimistic news is you seem like a nice person with a true desire to make something good. Make no mistake, I see Pacmax as having positive potential. But it’s common for projects to die for lack of enthusiasm, and with the subject of sharing Alfred Workflows, every time that happens we get worse off. People submit to what is popular at the moment, and when that dies off most don’t jump on the next thing, so we keep losing Workflows in the process.

So I hope you understand where my worry comes from and why I have some reservations (and many questions) about what Pacmax is and what it wants to be. But I also want to make it clear that I thank you for at least trying, and I understand these may only be your first steps.

If I've seemed unclear about "what Pacmax is and what it wants to be" it's probably only because, frankly, my initial mission was to create a more usable site for developers and non-technical people who haven't gone beyond installing Powerpack. It's a work in progress, but I do think it's improving, especially with everyone's feedback. I hope I've addressed your questions though. It's important to me that I have, so if not please let me know and I'll do my best to.

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Just changing the .zip file to .alfredworkflow file will not work in any situation.

For a very large proportion of workflows that aren't in monorepos, the .alfredworkflow files that Pacmax should be linking to for download are found in the GitHub releases, where built programs are supposed to be.

Thank you for outlining this! I'll do my best to explain this for non-technical users. I'm also going to work on how Pacmax pulls the files (eg the GitHub releases).

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I presume that means that people only have to paste a URL in the box instead of submit a pull request (which is a complex procedure if you're not familiar with git and GitHub).

Yup! That's all I meant. 🤘

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My main issue with Packal was always that it required me to do everything twice. Every time I updated a workflow, I had to update it on both GitHub and on Packal. The later bugginess aggravated this, but having to do everything twice was always the sticking point.

Pacmax has the right idea with "paste repo URL here and that's it". Unfortunately, it doesn't currently do the right thing(s) with repo URLs.

Yes, this is what I'm trying to spare people from. And thanks for seeing that; usability is important to me and I want to make it simple to browse and share on PM because that sort of double-step/bugginess gets old fast. I'm going to work on the way PM works with the repo URLs as well as how the site handles submissions. What might be easier for developers to submit (if they decide to, I mean)? Would a multiline form be better? Perhaps once I get monorepos working, developers may prefer to work that way. But for the time being and for devs who might not, I'm wondering what I can do. Again, open to suggestions. As @dfay mentioned, until there's some sort of standard I am going to do my best to fetch the files a number of ways (to fit the few preferences people have).

@deanishe Sure thing. I will un-publish your repositories. If I may though, as I expect to have this cleaned up before very long at all, I'd love to get at you so that I can confirm it is working as you'd expect it to. You do amazing work and I'd hate to not see your contributions on Pacmax; it'd be a major loss to me. Mind if I shoot you a message here once I have, to see if I have?

Thanks again for everyone's feedback. I hope I was clear; I may make an edit if I think I can be more concise.

Cheers!

Hi all, I am thrilled to see this post & that my original post was unhidden. Sorry for the late reply; I had no idea it was visible or that this post was here until this morning. I'm going to do my best to follow up on each point now; please let me know if there is anything else that I can touch on more.

Thanks for the mention @Vero and @nikivi  for posting this thread!

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Saw that, too. Looks good, but I'd feel much better about it if the gent who built it were at least a forum member.

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Packal was never official, but it was built in close communication with the Alfred team.

Understandable—I've been a long-time lurker and have been talking some via email with an Alfred admin (who has been great, by the way). I've been excited to hear from the community at large, which is why I wound up posting what I did to Reddit. Hopefully, now I'll be able to better communicate here.

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Yeah, it's somewhat similar to the frontend I've been planning to build (though my plan includes a spider, not just manual submissions). I've been waiting for Alfred's built-in update mechanism to crystallise, so there's a standard metadata format to work with, rather than having to build a (hit-and-miss) spider.

This sounds great and if you're interested I'd love to learn more about that. With the spider being a hit or miss, that was my major concern and why I opted (for now) to have things be manually submitted; automation has absolutely been on my mind though. And, even the possibility of having major contributors be given more control over adding packages to PM. Anyways, I am all ears and would love to learn more.

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I feel the same. Right now, there’s not much difference between this and the old http://alfredworkflow.com/ or the still current https://github.com/Derimagia/awesome-alfred-workflows.

 

And with a manual adding process, it doesn’t really make me want to submit there. Am I supposed to just dump almost 50 Workflows on Pacmax’s creator’s lap?

 

It’s a nice effort, but I wonder if at this point it isn’t making the situation worse, by fragmenting the community even more.

 

I agree with Deanishe that the AAW repo is a different matter; I've actually recently contributed to Awesome Alfred Workflows because I think it's great and wanted to see it be a little sharper. I believe in making the adding of packages more accessible for not just developers but non-developers; which is where I think I was sort of coming from when I decided to undertake a sort of Packal-like site.

As an aside: That XKCD is too real. Haha.

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Now I look more closely, I think it questionable that the site doesn't mention workflow authors at all. Every page says "Maxwell Jordan White" but never mentions the people who're providing the content that makes the site anything but completely pointless.

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Notably, there's also a big "Donate to Me!" link, but none for the workflow authors (which Packal always had).

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Quite likely an oversight by Max, but all the same, not super cool.

I see what you mean and that is definitely an oversight on my part. Honestly, I added it because I felt like once and a blue moon someone might help pay for even a portion of the web hosting which really isn't much; I've probably invested more time than anything. How would you suggest I add Donation options for the developers? I'd love to incorporate this. I've also been working on making it more clear on each post who made what and where they can find more from them.

In closing, I want to do anything and everything I can to automate the submissions of packages & better highlight the developers. This is new to me, but I do want to make the most of this. I know I started out with the aim to make a more usable site, and I think I'm in the right direction, but I look forward to improving it further. It was great reading the above and I look forward to more! If anyone would like to reach out to me about more in-depth feedback or feature suggestions, about anything we've discussed here or otherwise, please don't hesitate to shoot me a message here or at hi@pacmax.org.

Cheers,

Max

P.S. I apologize for my wonky formatting here. I wrote this all in MD and it didn't convert very well. I am sure I will come around to the editor here in the forums. I also didn't maybe go as in depth as I'd like to but I have a few projects going on for work that I need to get to now. So, to reiterate, please reach out if there's anything I can improve on.

👋 Hi. Long time lurker stopping by to share something I've been working on. I'm calling it Pacmax (PM).

Akin to Packal (which is a great website that I'm sure we all know and love) PM is my attempt to fill what voids I feel exist in the current landscape for the other Alfred lovers out there, like myself. Namely:

1. It works from the source, dynamically updating content from GitHub.
2. No accounts are necessary to add Workflows and Themes, because I'm curating submissions.
3. Adding to PM is as simple as submitting the GitHub repository. Repos with files that use the appropriate .alfredappearance & .alfredworkflow extensions will enable PM to display Import (themes will open directly with Alfred) and Get Import File (workflows).

Your feedback is very important! I hope you'll check it out and let me know what you think. Don't forget to add your favorite Workflows & Extensions (at the bottom of the page)! I added a few of my favorites to start (but it's grown significantly since this post was published).

If anyone is interested, you can learn more about Pacmax at pacmax.org. If you have any kind of feedback or are interested in getting involved on a deeper level, I welcome your feedback at feedback@pacmax.org.

Thanks, and all the best,

Maxwell