System-wide Activities

[Hari krishna Anandhan]

On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 12:39 AM, Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org> wrote:
> there is a dynamic context, and i am using nepomuk to store the various known
> contexts as well as mark which one is the currently active context.
>
> nepomuk is shared storage and a way to connect data to those contexts; plasma
> is a way to manage the contexts (though not necessarily all the related data)
> and define which is the current one.

Oh, I didn't know that nepomuk also has a shared storage *note to
self: get updated with nepomuk architecture*. I was thinking it was
just for sharing a common metadata system across the desktop

>> "user modes", as I see them, are a super-set of "user profiles". In
>> addition to changing certain visuals like cursors, etc, they add a
>> semantic dimension to user status.
>> E.g. when I set my user-mode to "Do Presentation", my cursor
>> automatically changes to an appropriate one easy for highlighting; Any
>> system notifications are not immediately shown and are logged for
>> later perusal. etc etc
>
> i honestly doubt this will get widely used as it would require a lot of work
> on the user's side to configure things, such as the cursors, and require a lot
> of extra complexity in the configuration UI for such things.

hmm.. maybe, but i guess we can pull it off with a decent default
configuration for those who want it. And, may be a decent UI could
also be thought of... *note to self: think of possible UIs for all
context configurations*

I think it is definitely worth a try because of the
semi-Artificial-Intelligence it would bring to the desktop ;)

>> who you are with - nearby people
>
> this is presence info, and something that should be handled via decibel

this would require more than presence (online, offline) and maybe
things like who are in the same locality at that moment. On a side
note, it would be great if presence also has semantic type associated
with it (like free, busy, away, etc). Currently these are just plain
strings and applications have no way to find out what the user is
doing from his presence (like maybe to direct his notifications to his
mobile when he is away from desktop), etc. But, that is another story
...!

I am thinking that adding semantic meaning to a lot of things (aka
"machine readable meaning") would make the desktop more intelligent
*note to self: Come up with a list of such things*

>> resources nearby - any devices attached, or network connections available,
>> etc
>
> this is the role of Solid

I understand that Solid provides that role. But, I am talking a more
generic case, where an  application is not interested in dealing with
Solid API at all, but just needs it at a very-high level , like if it
just needs to be notified when a "particular type of device" is
removed. How to handle that?

>
> better, i think, would be to just start working on implementing the
> infrastructure bits that are missing (e.g. the geoclue integration) and then
> start working outwards from there, bit by bit. perhaps first focus on things
> like contacts<->context associations, since that's an obvious (and obviously
> useful) thing.

cool.. exactly what i was thinking of !
But, still i am getting a little confused here *maybe due to less coffee*

Or Maybe, in that, I understand context to be anything that
related-applications might be interested in, like activity, location,
people nearby, any active search filter, user-modes, etc

And that it is more than a simple "string", it needs more : a semantic
type, unique id (in case the string text changes), etc etc

Are we on the same boat here?

> btw, let's keep this conversation on plasma-devel at kde.org so everyone can stay
> involved =)
Sure! Have already adhered to the protocol ;)