Plasma Active 3 Sprint - KDE Edu Notes

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Monday, March 12, 2012 01:27:17 Laszlo Papp wrote:
> dependencies will also be simpler for the Plasma Active App Store than
> Ovi hopefully because we do not hopefully need to bundle the
> dependencies up with our packages.

that is correct :)

> Then there were general realizations about not having enough manpower
> in the project (there are nowadays more and more platforms to port
> to), and it would be nice to improve the collaboration with teachers
> and students as well in the future.

i think having devices with Plasma Active on it will help a lot in this 
regard. as it becomes a "real product" more people are paying attention to it.

> Another smaller, but very important topic to me is that it would be
> nice to get a qml frontend for the khns and get hot new stuff
> functionality. Unfortunately, it is not a big enough task for a GSoC
> student in my opinion, and I have already put many ideas about Gluon
> in there, thus it is not gonna happen as part of that session.

i think that "done right" it is a more significant proposition than one might 
consider at first. 

what would be very nice is to have a general "show the add-ons interface" QML 
component that make it easy to integrate with the platform. GHNS is just one 
possible target, while other platform may have specific requirements that 
differ. imho GHNS is a "KDE desktop platform" component and, as can be seen 
with things like Ovi or Bodega for our tablet, may not translate well to other 
device experiences.

i do not think this makes sense to expose in the khns library, but rather it 
would make sense to have a QML component with a reference implementation that 
uses KHNS but which can be easily swapped out on-device for a different 
provision mechanism.

note that one important / useful feature which khns currently lacks afaics is 
the ability to define a developer account so that in-app purchases can be 
associated with a proper developer.

additionally, getting a touch UI that works really well is not perhaps as 
trivial as it may seem at first. the desktop ghns window is not really directly 
translatable as it is very mouse and keyboard centric. for the average skill 
level of a gsoc student (at least IME) getting that UI to "good" could easily 
take a month of effort.

> == Implementation side ==
> 
> === Packaging ====
> 1) libkdeedu
> 2) analitza
> 3) kalgebra
> 4) kanagram
> 5) khangman
> 
> See my private repository on the Community OBS for details (things are
> there pretty much the results of this event):
> https://build.pub.meego.com/project/packages?project=home%3Adjszapi%3AKDE-De
> vel

coool... btw, a couple people asked specifically about KDE Edu availability for 
Plasma Active at CeBIT. there is interest!

> 1) Kanagram now has a plasma active subfolder with the initial steps
> (metadata desktop file, ui contents, kdeclaratiview, etc). Ui needs to
> be developed (qml files will be added into the package/contents/ui
> folder), but the proper structure is already in place.
> 
> 2) KHangMan has the same establishment, plus I decoupled the "engine"
> and the harmattan relevant code, so the engine I established for
> Harmattan is reusable for the Plasma Active frontend in the future.
> Same thing as with kanagram, ui needs to be developed, thus not much
> happened on that front.

as soon as this is "demo-able" we should definitely blog about it and perhaps 
even use it as an example in a tutorial on Techbase for how to make an app 
ready for Plasma Active and / or touch in general (in addition to the existing 
desktop UI, e.g.)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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