Wired-Marker and DASISH Web Annotator Firefox extensions cannot be installed simultaneously

[sroth]

When using the xpi-version for Wired-Marker and the proxy file install method for the "extended Wired-Marker", i.e. the DASISH Web Annotator Client extension, the latter got "overwritten" by the Wired-Marker extension, possibly because principally the same functions, variables and xul files are used. TODO: Test whether this is true even if the DASISH Web Annotator Client source code is packaged as an xpi file and installed. TO DECIDE: If yes, is this acceptable for us?

[sroth]

Having tested with a packaged xpi version of the current source code version of the DASISH Web Annotator Client, it is now verified that both Firefox extensions cannot be used simultaneously, probably for the reasons given above. Whichever of the two extensions is installed last, will be visible and usable only. Which means there is a forced choice between either Wired-Marker or the Wired-Marker fork, i.e. the DASISH Web Annotator extension. This might become an issue when passing on the DASISH Annotator Client to a broader user community.

[sroth]

The Wired-Marker and the DASISH Web Annotator Firefox extensions cannot be installed simultaneously. If both are installed, the two are in fact visible in the Add-ons Manager window, but only one of the two extensions is visible in the browser chrome and can be used.

[twagoo]

Here's a belated comment from our (the Nijmegen crew's) side. We think it's strongly preferable to have the option to have both installed, even though we don't expect such a situation to occur very regularly in practice in an early stage. None of us have much experience developing Firefox extensions but an obvious explanation could be that you are accidentally recycling the extension identifier and/or namespace of the original WiredMarker extension. Probably you have already investigated this and the cause of the issue is less obvious. In any case, we agree that this is problematic and should ideally be resolved before making the plugin widely available.

[sroth]

Currently, in the DASISH-web annotator install.rdf file the ID definition
<em:id>webannotator@dasish.eu</em:id>
is used, whereas the Wired-Marker extension defines a GUID like so
<em:id>{e36db930-f18d-4449-b45f-e286cfb9e03a}</em:id>
in its respective install.rdf file. Obviously, this is not sufficient to solve the issue. We will have a more in-depth look into the extension's namespace architecture, it might be that some refactoring work will help towards resolving this ticket.