[Kde-pim] Kontact Touch GSOC Project - mentor needed

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 12.04.2013 18:01, Volker Krause wrote:
>>> I did some minor things for PA with PlasmaComponets already and feel
>>> relatively comfortable using it.
>>> The reason I suggested this approach is, that it allows me to got through
>>> a
>>> lot of design ideas with my Co Mentor.
>>
>> Right, I agree with that.

I (now being the main mentor) agree with this approach as well. To me, 
finding good - as in usable and technically feasible - UI concepts is 
the most important goal of this project. Of course since GSoC is mainly 
about programming, not interaction design we also want to have working 
code in the end, but the initial design phase should be very prominent.

>> I am just worried that we will end up with lots of QML files that work
>> really well on demo data but do not fit onto the actual data objects, etc.
>
> Indeed a risk, but OTOH asking for a full rewrite of a mail application UI
> within a single GSOC is asking for a bit much as well ;)
>
> Kontact Touch was started when QML was still in its beginnings (Qt 4.6), and
> with the objective to be feature equivalent to the real Kontact (on an N900-
> like phone), which explains some of the "interesting" solutions you find in
> there, especially all the embedded widgets.
>
> Redoing the UI entirely in QML would mean:
> - heavily compromise on features, at least for the first iteration during GSoC
> - reuse the existing models from Kontact Touch for the message and folder
> lists
> - refactor the remaining required bits of widget based code for model/view
> separation. IIRC this will mainly affect the composer, which is still an
> embedded widget.
>
> The first two seem implicitly already present in the proposal, the last one
> might be a bit underestimated.

Redoing the entire Kmail Touch UI in QML would definitely be too big a 
scope for a GSoC project. What I want to have in the end is something 
which shows the path ahead and can be built upon.

> Also adding Björn Balazs to Cc, he did the original UX design of Kontact
> Touch.

Björn is already on board :)