[Panel-devel] Future of panel applets?

[Aaron J. Seigo]

hi Hans =)

On Monday 29 October 2007, Hans Dembinski wrote:
> While I think that the Plasmoids are great - there is already a nice
> tutorial for creating them on dev.kde.org - I did not see information about
> the future of panel based applets.

here is the main point: there is no such thing as "panel based" anymore. there 
are simply "applets". they may appear anywhere, including a panel.

but the user is, at the end of the day, free to put them where they like: on 
the desktop (which can be brought forward in front of windows eventually), on 
a panel, in a media center presentation or in a plasma enabled application 
(e.g. amarok2).

> Since my applet is a monitoring one, it only makes sense as a small but
> always visible gadjet. As far as I understand Plasmoids, this is something
> that they are not designed for. They are supposed to be large but also get
> covered by windows.

not at all. the user gets to decide where they go, and you get to decide how 
large they should be.

so develop it primarily with the panel in mind if you wish, that doesn't stop 
users from moving it elsewhere. everyone wins.

> So I like to know, whether it is already the time to port my applet and
> whether there are already some examples/tutorials to find out how to do it.

there's the fairly introduction-only tutorial on techbase, but several 
examples in kdebase/workspace/plasma/applets and extragear/plasma/applets/

i'll be adding to the tutorials (e.g. ones on DataEngines, etc) after 4.0 is 
out (i just don't have time before then, i'm afraid) ... of course, others 
might step up and beat me to it... who knows... 

> Best regards and congratulations for the kool direction, in which KDE is
> developing!

thanks for your interest, and please feel free to ask any questions you have 
either here on the mailing list or on irc in #plasma.. =)


-- 
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
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