[Kde-pim] Plugin Question re Kontact Headers

[Lindsay Mathieson]

On Sun, 6 Sep 2009 08:06:37 pm Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> On Sunday 06 September 2009, Lindsay Mathieson wrote:
> > On Sun, 6 Sep 2009 05:50:11 am Ingo Klöcker wrote:
> > > Yes, that way is broken. See above. A possible solution for this
> > > would be to make kontactinterfaces public API. But we do not want
> > > to do so. Just recently there was a short discussion about Kontact
> > > plugins and we decided not to support the development of arbitrary
> > > Kontact plugins by making the plugin interfaces public.
> > > Unfortunately, I cannot remember in which thread this was
> > > discussed.
> >
> > Unfortunately I didn't have much look searching for the thread - my I
> > ask why there will be no public interface for Plugins? will this be a
> > permanent state of affairs?
> 
> Here are the main reasons:
> - A public interface must be stable. We do not want to guarantee stable
> interfaces because we want to be able to change the interfaces whenever
> we feel it's necessary. We have done so regularly.
> - We know of exactly one Kontact plugin that was developed outside of
> kdepim: basKet.

Chicken and Egg there - of course there's very few plugins, no public API and 
you regularly break it.

> - We don't want random Kontact plugins.

Ok - You want control over what plugins can be developed. I appreciate the 
candor.


> 
> > I imagine the move to akonadi and a full component based
> > Kontact/KMail would be one reason, but I'd hope that once that has
> > finalised we could revisit it.
> 
> We (I) see no point in integrating random component plugins into
> Kontact. Where I see value is in externally developed plugins for the
> summary page.

I differ - more later.


> > I was hoping to develop a mythtv status monitor plugin for Kontact,
> > but there no much point if it has to be included in kdepim - that
> > level of dependencies is never going to fly.
> 
> Can you elaborate on what this plugin is supposed to do  why you
> think it is suitable as plugin for Kontact. 
> Shall this plugin be a
> full-fledged component? Or is it a plugin for the summary page? How is
> a mythtv status monitor related to Personal Information Management?


Background:MythTV is a advanced DVR + Other stuff :) (Videos, Weather etc). It 
exports a full control api + a simple XML status web api so you can see 
upcoming recordins, disk usage, recording conflicts, tuner status, system 
status, TV Guide etc. Something I check everyday.

Since I live inside kontact a lot of the time and its an information manager, 
for me it would be very useful to see this info inside a full component + 
selected stuff in the Summary. Maybe someday I'd even extend it to allow 
limited control of Myth. I could use it to generate alerts when recording 
clashes or failure occur.

That would be really useful to me and other MythTV users. However not to the 
general Kontact user. And that's where a plugin architecture comes in really 
useful. It allows third parties to extend and enhance kontact in ways never 
contemplated by the designers, ways that can be extremely useful to niche 
parties, without requiring monolithic changes to the core product.



-- 
Lindsay
http://blackpaw.jalbum.net/home
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