[Kde-hardware-devel] Merging new Solid Actions control module and existing control module

[Will Stephenson]

On Wednesday 25 March 2009 09:10:25 Kevin Ottens wrote:
> On Tuesday 24 March 2009 08:14:20 Ben Cooksley wrote:
> > There are currently two control modules for Solid: one for choosing
> > backends, and one for managing actions. At the end of the review of
> > the managing actions module it was suggested that I start a discussion
> > about how to merge these two modules, since they belong together.
>
> Agreed.
>
> > Currently I propose creating a new category and placing both modules
> > under it, so the user can find all the solid configuration under one
> > item in system settings.
> > Before I do this however I would like to know:
> > A) Should both modules be merged at the code level?
>
> At first, I thought it would work better to merge them as one module, not
> two modules under a category. Reason for that was simply that the current
> "Hardware" module just exposes the selectors for the solid backends. Which
> in my opinion is something most user don't do, and then could be in an
> advanced section of another module like the actions one...
>
> But, looking closer at systemsettings, it happens that we also have the
> Network Management and Power Management modules. So it wouldn't make "one
> single module" anyway.
>
> I'm surprised we still don't have a bluetooth one though.
>
> So I'd say the best solution would be the following:
>  1) Add the Hardware category, put the actions, power and network modules
> under it;
>  2) Move the current Hardware module in this same category and rename it as
> something like "Platform Backends" or something equally non user-friendly
> (it'd probably be temporary anyway, see below).
>
> > B) Are there any problems currently with the existing backend
> > selector, which would be corrected by the above?
>
> Yes, currently its layout plain sucks IMO! It's really too tall which makes
> it hard to read IMO. But once we have all the hardware related modules
> under the Hardware category, it might be a good idea to just kill it and
> put the three selectors under their own module (in a specific page? an
> advanced dialog? a tab? whatever but it has to be consistent in all
> modules).
>
> So the network backend selector would go into the Network Management
> module, power management backend selector into the Power Management module.
> The only problem I foresee is where to put the bluetooth backend selector
> as I see no corresponding module in my installation.
>
> Comments from the people responsible for the Power Management and Network
> Management modules are welcome. If anyone has some clues about a Bluetooth
> module, please let me know.

I feel that 

Advanced
  System
    Hardware
      Network Management
      Power Management
      Bluetooth
      Platform Backends

reproduces the implementation structure too closely

These modules could be presented more usably separately, in existing 
categories:

Basic
  Network & Connectivity
    Network Connections
    Bluetooth
  Computer Administration
    Energy Saving
Advanced
  System
    Platform Backends

where I doubt that Platform Backends belongs on any end user system, since 
they should have exactly 1 backend installed by default.  Perhaps we can urge 
that it is packages separately (eg as kdebase4-workspace-hardware-expert) and 
not in the default installs.

Will