CV states

[Bart Cerneels]

On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 1:37 AM, Big O <illogical1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 7:23 PM, Big O <illogical1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 7:19 PM, Leo Franchi <lfranchi at kde.org> wrote:
>>> hey all,
>>>
>>> right now, the contextview is completely stateless. that is, when you
>>> start or stop playing a track, etc, applets do not change. applets do
>>> get notification of the track change (like the current track applet),
>>> but they remain there there as they were before.
>>>
>>> some of you may remember that back when i first implemented the CV,
>>> there were different "states", e.g. playing, home, etc. so if you
>>> added an applet to the home state, say, last.fm events, and you
>>> started playing a track, it would disappear (and come back when you
>>> pressed stop).
>> I hated that. Actually loathed would be the ideal word to use. :-/
> BECAUSE:
> If i put something in the CV i want it there at all times. Adding
> something to the CV implies that I want it viewable. Why wouldn't I
> want Last.fm events showing when I play my music.
> I'd rather decide for myself what is relevant and what isn't (and
> organize it into different CV views based on these preferences)
> Also the implementation previously was bloody annoying and stuff would
> disappear all the time that I actually wanted to see. Hate, hate,
> hate.  but that's just me.
>
>>
>>>
>>> personally, i prefer the state-ful technique, as i think it allows the
>>> user to see the most relevant information at any given time---say the
>>> user likes the lyrics of currently playing songs, but wants to use the
>>> same space in more useful ways when a song is not playing---currently,
>>> he would have to put the applets on different containments and zoom or
>>> switch between them. this of course requires more mouse clicks.
>>>
>>> what do you guys think (i'm willing to convert the CV to be stateful,
>>> and it shouldn't take more than a day)? we need to get this sorted out
>>> Real Soon Now...
>>>
>>> leo
>>>

I like the state-ful concept as well. It wouldn't be hard to do by
defining the 4 CV "areas" as belonging to some activity (IDLE,
PLAYING, BROWSING and perhaps EDITING or CONFIGURING) and switching to
that part automatically. Make the auto-switching configurable and
everyone should be happy. Default should be auto-switch though.

Bart