[Kde-pim] GSoC Proposal - basKet KDE SC 4 port

Sat Feb 27 21:40:26 GMT 2010

On Saturday 27 February 2010 4:03:15 pm Ryan Rix wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 

Hi Ryan,

It would be good to have you working on basKet as a SoC project.  I'm not sure 
how useful a Plasma interface to basKet would be at this point (without 
Akonadi support), but it's an interesting goal.  

> A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post detailing an idea of mine to port KDE
> SC 3's basKet note taking application to KDE SC 4, and in the process
> taking advantage of the various technologies that have evolved since
> basKet's last official release.[1]

A. Basket has already been ported to KDE 4.  It is true that we don't use 
Akonadi/Nepomuk/Plasma and so forth yet, but basKet is no longer a KDE 3 
application.  We have removed all the legacy code and now rely almost entirely 
on KDE 4/Qt4 classes.  The only remaining support class is the Q3ScrollView we 
inherit in the main window.  I'm working on replacing it with a QGraphicsView 
widget instead, but I haven't had time to finish that port -- it requires some 
pretty significant and tedious restructuring of the BNPView and Basket View 
displays.  I'm pretty close, though -- I just need the time to get it done.

We have not released the KDE 4 enabled basKet yet, but that is mostly because 
we haven't had time to get release materials together yet.  We were supposed 
to release two weeks ago, but dropped the ball.  However, the KDE 4 version of 
basKet in Kelvie's gitorious repository (and mine) is nearly ready for 
release.  It's more a matter of deciding who's going to do what and getting 
the web site updated...

B.  Adding Akonadi support to basKet is a definite desideratum.  However, it 
also will require major refactoring of the existing codebase.  We had a GSoC 
proposal last year to do that, but it didn't make the cut.  It's a much harder 
task than it looks.  Currently, the different properties of notes, baskets, 
tags, and so forth are spread out all over the code.  Kelvie had worked on 
restructuring things a little, but I don't know where he is at with this.  

C.  We also already have drag-and-drop support for links, images, etc..  It 
may be a little buggy, though.  I fixed a few bug reports about D-n-D a few 
weeks ago, but please let me know if you encounter other issues.

D.  Adding Nepomuk support might actually be the easiest and most useful way 
in which you could contribute to basKet.  Being able to search using semantic 
information (such as the basKet tag) would be a big win in terms of usability.  

E.  A basKet plasma applet would be much easier to write once Akonadi support 
is available.  Otherwise, you will need to worry about data synchronization 
issues, parsing, and a whole slough of problems.  

I've actually thought about this a little bit -- what would a basKet plasma 
applet look like?

The design I like best is to allow the user to create notes in a special 
"Desktop" folder.  Notes in that folder (and only in that folder) would show 
up as "sticky notes" on the desktop.  This would use less desktop real estate 
than embedding the basKet kpart in a plasma applet, but would still make it 
easy to view/edit these notes.  

Alternatively, we could add a new property to the basket configuration that 
makes it viewable on the Desktop.  

Robert
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