[PATCH] KOnScreenDisplay

[George Staikos]

On Tuesday 25 March 2003 13:59, Jakob Schroeter wrote:
> >    The screenshot looks good, and I think we probably should have a
> > global OSD.  However you should have a look at all the OSDs in KDE. 
> > There is one in kdeui, one in kdeaddons, at least one in kdenonbeta, and
> > of course this one in kdelibs.  Does it provide everything that those
> > ones need?  The one in kdenonbeta, and soon the one in kdeutils, are
> > "skinnable" for instance. You can make the OSD look how you like.  The
> > one that you display in the screenshot does not look like it will work
> > too well for all applications, and in that case, it should either be
> > enhanced or used just in specific cases and not kdeui.
>
> Please excuse my ignorance, but I am not aware of any other class in KDE
> that does what this one does. Also it should not be a replacement to any
> existing notification type (like KPassivePopup, if you have this in mind
> when saying "all the OSDs in KDE"), but an addition.
> My intention was to make an On Screen Display like the one found in sim-icq
> available for all KDE apps and especially for kopete.
> Do you have any hints for me where to look for those existing OSDs?

   Yes, there is one in kdeaddons/noatun-plugins/jefferson, one in 
kdenonbeta/kwintv3/qtvision that is operated by plugins (two exist so far), 
one in kdeutils/kmilo (ready for plugins as well).  Note that the one in 
"qtvision" is actually widget based -  it displays the OSD on top of a given 
widget.  This is perhaps ideal - an OSD that can display on any given widget.

   The one in kmilo, alternatively, displays on the desktop and is triggered 
either by DCOP or by plugins.

> >    I'm really not convinced that you can make a "one size fits all" OSD
> > though.  I really suspect that it will be very confusing to the user to
> > have 3-4 applications all using the same class (and thus the same style
> > of output) for on-screen display.  Which applications are using it so
> > far?
>
> I did not want to create a "one size fits all" OSD. What it does now is
> exactly what I had in mind when starting to hack on it.
> No app uses this class "hardwired" yet. But any app could use it via
> knotify. Personally I use it with kopete and kmail.

   If you don't want to create a "one size fits all" OSD, then it doesn't 
belong in kdeui.  kdeui gets linked into virtually every KDE application, and 
if none of them use the class, then it doesn't belong there.

> But it could be of use for, say, any media player to present an on-screen
> notification the user might know from a TV set or a VCR like "Playing" or
> "Paused".

   Yes that is one of the ones we already have.  Quite honestly it would 
probably be a good idea to have a one-size fits all system,  but it's 
complicated.  Making a system that only one or two apps will use doesn't make 
sense for kdelibs.

-- 

George Staikos