Fwd: Plasma Mobile Components -> Kirigami (?)

[Marco Martin]

Hi all,
I'm forwarding this message here, because apparently the discussion on
plasma-devel at kde.org was too narrow, we tought we did reach a
consensus, while in reality we didn't.
What plasma mobile components (or kirigami) is:

* A set of QML imports, aimed to be a Tier1 framework, for help in
creating QML based mobile applications (eventually in the future
becoming not completely limited to mobiole but expanded to the desktop
as well) to have a conformity of toolkit, look and feel for KDE
applications ported to mobile (even tough we already have a notable
3rd party adopter: subsurface https://subsurface-divelog.org )
* higher level components: things like buttons and textboxes are in
the scope of QtQuickControls and QtQuickControls2, we want to
integrate well with them, not step on their toes.
* support for Plasma mobile as well as Android both as first class
citizens (that's why it has to be tier 1)
* A set of User interface and design guidelines for conforming
applications (such as
https://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/HIG/GlobalDrawer)

right now They are called Plasma mobile components, but the concern is
that "it depends on plasma", it's intended just to be used on plasma,
but that's not true.
Another name was proposed: Kirigami, below the rationale by the
proposal first written by Thomas.

I'm asking here because: as developers of Qt application, If you were
to consider things to use to port your applications to a mobile
interface, what would you prefer?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Thomas Pfeiffer <thomas.pfeiffer at kde.org>
Date: Tue, Feb 23, 2016 at 12:51 PM
Subject: Plasma Mobile Components -> Kirigami (?)
To: plasma-devel at kde.org


Dear fellow Plasma team members,
about two weeks ago, Marco came to the VDG asking for a new name for Plasma
Mobile Components.
The reasoning behind this request was that with them becoming their own KDE
framework and Subsurface mobile showing that they work very well outside of
Plasma Mobile as well, we don't want people to associate them strongly with
Plasma Mobile (as Martin Gräßlin had pointed out).

With that request, we started brainstorming. What we wanted the name to
express was
- Physicality (because it does have some similarities to Material Design,
while still being quite different in some areas)
- A tool for expressing your creativity in UI design
- Moving layers of things (because of the central role of drawers)

We had ideas like "slide", "paper" or "blocks" flying around, but then Alex
Longo came up with Origami, which in turn led him to "Kirigami".
For those of you who (like the rest of the brainstorming team) don't know what
Kirigami is: It's a technique similar to Origami, which adds cutting to
folding.

It is physical, it is creative, kinda playful without being childish, and it's
far less common than Origami, which helps with searchability.

Now you might think "Won't people make fun of the name because it has a K in
it?". They might, but the cool thing is: Whenever someone does, all we need to
reply with is " http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Kirigami " and they'll feel like the lazy
dumbos that they are.
We could even play with it immediately when announcing the name, saying
something like "You all know how much we love names with a K, but this time,
instead of just randomly replacing Cs with Ks, we found a name that comes with
a built-in K (thank you, Japanese)!"

Like Material Design, Kirigami would be more than just a set of UI components,
it comes with its own design philosophy documented in the HIG.

Since it would in the future encompass not only mobile, but - following the
convergence paradigm - QtQuick-based desktop applications as well, we want all
of the team to be on board with the name.
So, does anybody see potential pitfalls or other problems with the name? If
so, speak up!

Cheers,
Thomas