[Panel-devel] Tasks applet and the panel

[Robert Knight]

Hi,

> By the way, that recalls to me that the actual concept of formfactors is not
> enough, and we need to extend it with sub-formfactors or formfactors
> parameters
> For example we need to make each applet know the size of the
> panel,

This can be covered by adding support for applets in layouts.  This means:

1)  Add a method to Plasma::Applet to set its size and then implement
support for that in the most important panel applets such as launcher,
task bar, clock.

2)  Write a LayoutItem-derived class ( AppletLayoutItem? ) which the
layouts can use to resize and position applets.

> Then, when the user composes the panel, the plasmoids should glue toghether,
> with an animation

I'm working on support for animations in layouts, that should work for
this as well.  The tricky part is probably going to be allowing the
user to manually adjust and re-arrange layouts.  The tasks applet
prototype has a somewhat crude example of this with moving task icons
around.

> Nuno Pinheiro should have some mock of that, look for example here:

Some quick comments on that:

- Colour scheme looks good, I'm not sure whether KColorScheme supports
'inverted' ( light text on dark background ) color schemes though.
Something to think about for accessibility.
- Important panel features should be at the edges of the screen so
that they are easy to reach with the mouse.  This means that the
border in the mockup would need to go.

Regards,
Robert.


On 07/08/07, Riccardo Iaconelli <riccardo at kde.org> wrote:
> On Monday 06 August 2007 01:16:09 Robert Knight wrote:
> > The next question I have is about how inter-applet layout and moving
> > applets around the panel should work?  The main thing required is to
> > get the tasks applet to fill the height of the panel (assuming it is a
> > panel at the bottom of the screen) and to give the tasks applet the
> > space it needs until it reaches a maximum allowable size.
>
> Not very simple to be explained with words. Anyway, the panels should look
> like "grouped" plasmoid, like a unique merged thing, "sticked" to the screen
> (so, if the panel is the one on the bottom part of the screen, the central
> plasmoids will have borders only on top, while the one on the borders will
> have them also laterally).
> Then, when the user composes the panel, the plasmoids should glue toghether,
> with an animation, the same when an user removes one plasmoid from the
> middle
> of the panel, the others should fill the gap with a smooth animation. Think
> of them like they are a gelatin, or liquid thingys. Nuno Pinheiro should
> have
> some mock of that, look for example here:
> http://www.nuno-icons.com/images/estilo/image4282.png
>
> By the way, that recalls to me that the actual concept of formfactors is not
> enough, and we need to extend it with sub-formfactors or formfactors
> parameters. For example we need to make each applet know the size of the
> panel, or whether it is in the middle or in the border, etc...
> I had some other use cases but I cannot actually remember that.
>
> Ah, what about corner plasmoids? Similar to a panel but instead of staying
> at
> the {top,left,bottom,right} they stay in a corner.
>
> Bye,
> -Riccardo
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