[Panel-devel] Desktop applet: remember icons positions

[Matt Broadstone]

On 8/10/07, Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org> wrote:
> 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.
Well as far as I can see, given the current code which creates sub
Icons, it could be changed to making them Applets with about 1 line of
code (maybe 2 because we can't just load the applet with initial
information).

>
> > 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...
Not sure exactly what the duplicate code is here, maybe you mean
layout stuff vs desktop organizers? (we can use the layout stuff in
libplasma to layout widgets or applets) Maybe you're talking about the
url applet versus our Launcher classes. That's fine, except that the
url applet sucks and is not maintained, though we could  improve it by
moving the Launcher code in there.

> 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 =)
Well personally, I use the desktop on my macbook quite frequently. It
works well, is organized neatly, I only have a few folders and files
on it and it personally really helps my workflow. It seems to me that
your "pain" wrt the Desktop concept comes from a) KDesktop just
seriously sucks, especially at providing a desktop b) too many people
just use the desktop as a dumping ground (including apps like firefox
which just download all files by default to the desktop) and then end
up with a huge friggin mess of a desktop.

We're providing ways to organize the desktop (the generic
vertical/horizontal layout of items), but also new concepts that
Matias has been working on for item grouping on the desktop - which I
personally think could be pretty cool and useful.

So let's not get into trashing the idea of a desktop off the bat,
there's probably a good reason its been around since the mid 80's, and
I don't really think that's because "nobody thought of anything
better."

> 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.
>
Agreed. I guess off the bat I can think of duplication if we start
wanting to use anything other than launchers on the desktop (maybe
Icon stacks/piles or something), that might want to be used in other
applets. As I said with the current design switching to using applets
is trivial, so we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

Cheers,
   Mateo


> --
> Aaron J. Seigo
> humru othro a kohnu se
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