Feedback to the Dot story

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

Hi Carl,
thank you for writing the article!
Here are a few comments:

> Plasma Active is a user interface from the KDE community intended
> for tablets, smartphones and touch computing devices such as settop
> boxes, smart TVs, home automation and in-vehicle infotainment.

Even though this is not factually wrong, I still find it misleading: Our
intention for the future is for PA to be used on all these device
classes. However, PA4 is intended for tablets only. If we write it like
this, people may think PA4 is already intended for everything, will
install it on their e.g. settop box or smart TV and complain that it
works like shit on there (because their TV does not have a touchscreen).
See also my recent blog post on the topic:
http://sessellift.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/you-can-use-it-that-way-but-dont-expect-it-to-work-well/

My suggestion:
"Plasma Active is a user interface from the KDE community intended for
tablets. It can be customized to work on smartphones, settop boxes,
smart TVs, and touch computing devices such as home automation and
in-vehicle infotainment."

That way we don't say "It cannot work on those devices", but nobody can
blame us if it doesn't work well as it is, because they'd have to
customize it (as in pretty much redesigning the UI, but technically it's
not a problem) first.

Notice also that I intentionally did not include smart TVs and settop
boxes in "touch computing devices", because they are not, and probably
will never be. Who wants to stand up form the couch and walk over to the
TV to use touch controls on it? These things are controlled via some
kind of remote interface (even controls via Kinect and such are not
"touch").

> This release is intended to complete the evolution of Plasma Active
> to a polished product from its proof of concept first release.

I would not call PA4 a "Polished product" yet. It's still for early 
adopters only, ordinary consumers would still hate us for PA4.
The rest of the paragraph is spot-on.

> client-side touch-optimized email application

Kontact Touch has been part of PA for a long time and nothing has 
changed about it since then. So it's definitely not new in PA4. Michael 
Bohlender currently develops a new KMail Active UI, but that's not there 
yet.

Other than that, it's a great article!
Cheers,
Thomas