[Panel-devel] Desktop applet: remember icons positions

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Friday 10 August 2007, Matt Broadstone wrote:
> On 8/10/07, Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org> wrote:
> > On Wednesday 08 August 2007, Matías Costa wrote:
> > > Hello list. My intention now is to provide icon position persistence.
> > > But before I'd like to seek people advice.
> >
> > please look at how applet persistence is currently implemented. it's very
> > simple but pretty effective. i suppose you are, however, looking at how
> > to position items in the "desktop applet". personally, i think the
> > desktop applet is a design "bump". it shouldn't be one applet (that then
> > has to reimplemnt a bunch of stuff that's already there and try and stay
> > "out of the way" of the rest of plasma) but multiple applets whose state
> > is maintained by a single class that doesn't necessarily paint anything
> > to screen.
> >
> > essentially, the "desktop applet" really needs to simply call
> > Corona::addApplet() when they appear in the $DESKTOP_PATH or when new
> > devices are announced and remove them as appropriate (and respondt o the
> > user removing said items as well)
>
> I guess I disagree, making the desktop just a management applet for a
> whole bunch of sub applets is really no different than making it a
> single applet with a bunch of sub element icons, except that in a

you'll find that in practice, it's not so similar at all.

> bigger picture view if we made them all applets we have this huge mess
> of applets on the screen as opposed to a single one,

one applet with a huge mess of icons versus a huge mess of applets each of 
which is an icon. ;) i really don't see the difference, other than the 
duplicated code that will innevitably follow...

the context menu issue you already ran into is just one such case that will 
innevitably arise.

> plus imagine a 
> situation where you need to list all loaded applets and have 32 items
> on your desktop.. ouch.

yes, this is why the whole "desktop folder" idea is stupid to begin with. it 
results in massive numbers of things with no real organization. but if people 
want it (and they will) then .. well .. yeah, give it to them =)

i think it is good to try your approach because it will either succeed or it 
won't, and the latter would still be useful as an object lesson for others.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/panel-devel/attachments/20070810/0699af76/attachment.pgp