[Konversation-devel] replacement for IRCView

[Fela Winkelmolen]

Hello to all,
I was thinking to write the new IRCView widget for konvi4. Mostly my idea is 
based on my Summer of Code proposal which I quote here:

"Project description:

Design and implement a replacement for the IRCView widget, with focus on 
rendering speed even with thousands of lines of text.

The main features of the widget will be:
- based on Qt4/KDE4, the konversation port hasn't started yet, but it will be 
possible to use the widget as soon as the port will start
- support for different kind of alignments, for example a la xchat (witch can 
be accomplished by separating time, nick and message text in different 
columns)
- support for different foreground/background colors, font and fontsize for 
different parts of a line (timestamp, nick, message, highlined word, own 
nick)
- theming support, making use of the previous functionalities
- log reader, possibility to read log files (with a configurable format using 
regular expressions) rendering it in the same way as the real chat sessions 
and being able to edit the logfile. This feature is also usefull to test the 
widget untill the port of konversation is started, it may also be useful to 
make a kpart out of this.

Additionally, supporting any other features that comes in mind and are 
approved by the core konversation developers or suggested by them.

The work will be based on khtml, witch will be forked and stripped down, than 
it will be optimized to render faster with very long texts and with dinamic 
content if needed. At least this is the most promising idea, but I'll have a 
look to the chat-text widget of other qtbased chat programs too(kopete, 
kvirc, etc.)."

I've never done anything based on kde before, however I've done some very 
simple projects with Qt4. I think this is a good idea to start with, as it 
can be a standalone application (log reader), so I can initially develop it 
locally, and I can make make mistakes without being afraid to break konvi and 
I've understood that the port to KDE4 won't start very soon, so I have some 
time to play with it, before it has to get merged with the official 
konversation branch.

Fist I will have a look at the code of the current IRCView, of khtml, and of 
other possible replacements. Then surely I'll have to ask some questions 
here. And as soon as I have something usable I'll let you know, so maybe 
somebody can put it somewhere on svn, or perhaps I can even ask for an 
account, so that I can share my work in real time and whoever wants can give 
me advice or help me. But that will be later...

Let me know if you have suggestions.

kind regards

-fela
(IRC: nimatar || unpofuori @ freenode)