GSoC proposal: Enhanced Amarok UI

[Ian Monroe]

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Leonardo Franchi <lfranchi at kde.org> wrote:
> 1) this is a radical change, and i'm not sure I agree with what i think it is
> you're advocating. turn Amarok into a canvas on which you can arrange any
> number of separate components sounds nifty, but i'm not sure how usable in
> practice. we're not trying to become another foobar2000, with an infinitely
> configurable and endlessly confusing interface :D in any case, I think
> something this different needs some significant discussion.

I agree with Leo here. I don't see the appeal of being able to move
stuff around. This is perhaps something to think about after we're
happy with how it looks. Developers not being able to make up their
mind is the worst possible reason to create options. Plus my hatred of
options is legendary. :)

I can easily see people accidentally dragging stuff. I doubt I'm the
only one who has had coworkers and family ask for my help when their
Windows XP start bar somehow ended up in a vertical position

Having it all painted with OpenGL probably wouldn't work well, due to
Qt limitations. We've tried to paint like the QGV with OpenGL and it
didn't work well.


> 2) i am a bit doubtful of the project due to the amount of work it entails.
> ust the componentry part (including acceleration, qtkinetic/statemachine stuff)
> plus the "reacting to variables" is a lot of work.

I don't share this concern, as-stated it seems pretty summer-sized to
me, especially for someone of Enrico's experience.

> (btw, as qtkinetic will be part of qt4.6 and a solution until then, we also
> need to think about if we want to depend on a qtsolution)

I think this is a pretty minor issue. QtKinetic is no Plasma so I
doubt it will be much of a moving target (and we'd have control over
when to upgrade anyways). So it shouldn't be much of an issue to
include it. Porting to cmake will be a hassle, but nothing like
qscriptgenerator. :)

Ian