Plasma and Amarok

[Maximilian Kossick]

SNIP

> > Um, no. I just checked plasma in kdebase, and both applets and data
> > engines
> > are just plugins. And it's no problem to link plugins to libamarok.
> > That's what i'm doing for the  collection plguins for example.
>
> you're most probably right. i'll take a look at your collection plugins to
> see how you're doing it.
> maybe i just don't get something fundamental about how these plugins
> work, but if we query
>  KTrader for plugins that fulfill a certain constraint, and then tell
> KTrader to load one, how can that
> plugin have access to internals of the currently running amarok instance?
>
plugins are just dynamically loaded code. plugins can use any class/method 
that is exported by libamarok using the AMAROK_EXPORT macro

SNIP

> > see above, we can link data engine plugins to libamarok. And I don't see
> > any
> > other reasons for forking plasma atm. Of course, I didn't actually work
> > on it
> > as much as you did, so I'm probably missing something.
>
> i probably need to investigate this further. it seems to me at least that
> we would  need to extend
> plasma's functionality to fit us. on track changes, for example, we need to
> notify plugins. we want to have saved
> "states" of plugins, e.g. when a track ends our context area should return
> to how the home screen looked last.
> that way a user can add a plugin to the home screen and then it would be
> shown every time the home screen is
> shown---and if he moves it around, that is where it will appear on the next
> showing of the home screen. right now
> that doesn't exist in plasma (because there is no use case for it). at
> least, i don't see anything like that.
>
Because data engines can have basically full access to all important 
components of libamarok, it's no problem to make them EngineObservers or 
TrackObservers and notify the applets if the underlying data changes( 
assuming data engines can notify applets, otherwise the applets would have to 
poll)

I'm not sure how to save and restore the contents and layout of the context 
view. I suppose there's some support for it in plasma because it's probably 
able to restore the layout of the desktop after a reboot. We probably need to 
talk to the plasma guys about this if we can't figure out a way to do it 
ourselves. still, i think forking plasma should be the *very* last resort. 
And i'm pretty sure we'll be able to get some support for this from the 
plasma guys if we ask nicely :)

SNIP

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