Minimal kdelibs on embedded platforms

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On November 20, 2009, Inge Wallin wrote:
> > the point of the plasma approach is to hopefully avoid the "Nth
> > interface" disease and have one that is simple but scalable and one that
> > is a "full app".
> 
> That sounds intriguing, I wasn't aware of that.  Is this actually spelt out
> anywhere? 

probably not. it's why we have constraints such as FormFactor and Location, 
however, and why we use SVG and QGraphicsView instead of a traditional QWidget 
base.

i am collecting a base of information for a new plasma.kde.org, however, and 
this is part of the focus of that update.

> And does plasma handle touch screens already?

define "handle" :) it works well on them right now, and the elements that are 
mouse-specific (few; mostly things like the applet handles we use in plasma-
desktop) are interchangeable.

> > btw, we already have the start of a plasma shell for the n900. it runs
> > and works, including a special widget to trigger the app switcher. it is
> > currently in playground and needs more work to get it to the point we
> > could actually ship it. so we (plasma peeps) are quite interested in this
> > topic.
> 
> Interesting!  Where can we find out more?

given that this only started in the last month, we don't have any formal 
documentation or information. we have just our intentions and the code that is 
presently in playground.

the code in playground is a little over 1k loc, some of which was boilerplate 
and over 70% of which is in the PlasmaApp class. that class is device and 
shell specific and does things like position the control panel and show the 
add widgets interface. combined with a few hundred other lines of code, this 
got us to a working shell with app switcher plasmoid.

the todo right now is:

* provide a replacement for the applet handles that is more appropriate to the 
screen size (as we did for netbook as well in the "newspaper" layout)

* provide "full screen" widget options (think: iPhone style apps)

* small form factor appropriate widget selector (the new one is good, but 
doesn't really cut it for a screen the size of the n900; so we may either 
provide a whole new UI for it or just provide a modification to the current 
one)

* try and ship a complete shell with the KDE SC 4.5 release schedule

given how radically different the device is from our traditional targets (e.g. 
desktops/laptops) it's kind of impressive how little work was needed to get 
this to the starting line and how little is needed to go from where we are now 
to where we want to be.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-core-devel/attachments/20091120/85c02415/attachment.sig>