The Contact List Applet

[Aleix Pol]

On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 5:55 PM, David Edmundson <david at davidedmundson.co.uk
> wrote:

> Contact List Applet
>
> The Contact List applet has been doing nothing for a while now, and
> it's time to get it sorted and finished.
> I want to discuss what we actually want to do. Then once we have a
> general consensus I'll turn it into bugzilla lists and get started on
> it.
>
> Who here currently uses it? I don't really. My preferred method of
> starting chats is homerun via krunner.
>
> So, brainstorming:
>
>  - Should it be a popup-plasmoid so it can be docked in a panel. What
> would the icon be?
>
>  - If it's in a vertical panel that's wide enough should it show the
> list properly?
>
>  - Should it use Plasma icons for presence?
>
>  - Do we want to have a search bar? Always shown? or with a button to
> toggle it? Or just instantly if you start typing.
>
>  - Do we want to show groups? What's a good way to use a TreeView in QML.
>
>  - Should it have all the different sort/group-by options the real
> contact list has? In a "toolbar"? or in the plasma config?
>
>  - Do we want call/video/send file buttons?
>
> - Should we have it so that in the config you specify what groups you
> want to show? I think I might use it if I had a list of just people in
> my "friends" group and that's it.
>
>
> Please comment and include your own ideas and suggestions.
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>

Honestly, I think that contact list is something too generic for being
useful on plasma and I think that we have it more because that it
conceptually makes sense more than because it's actually useful.

Integrating with activities would be a good start IMHO, but for that we'd
need to have it configurable. I guess (I'm not much of an activities user)
that being able to select a specific group for the plasmoid would be a good
advantage. I'd say that if plasmoids show too much information they get a
bit overwhelming. Something similar happens with the chat plasmoid: if the
chat gets intense you have to switch to the windowed view. And that's fine.

About the filtering, maybe you could check what I did with the chat
plasmoid (the review board). It's not the best, I know, but with some
refinement it could get useful (the filtering lineedit appears when
hovering the contacts label).

Also integrating with panels is fundamental and currently it's completely
broken, IMHO again. :)

In general, KTP has tried to be more modular so far and I understand it's
been good for pushing the technology forward, but if we want to integrate
properly with Plasma I'd say that we'll have to make it a firm push of the
platform in that direction. For starters I'd suggest to move all K/TP qml
components together and consider it a platform, although it would also make
sense to wait for the People Framework to be ready before considering such
an approach. Stuff will have to be rewritten at that time.

Sorry for the long e-mail, I didn't plan it that way. :(

Aleix
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