plasma-mid (Mobile Internet Device)

[Aaron J. Seigo]

hi all..

some of us huddled together at Akademy on the last day and discussed what we'd 
like to do for things like the Nokia N Series and EEE PC computers, or as they 
are more generally known "mobile internet devices" or MIDs.

in the meeting we came up with a few action items:

0. create a plasma shell for MIDs
1. create a specialized containment
2. create a full screen app launcher
3. create a control bar applet that could replace window title bars
4. create an expanding/collapsing area for notifications and tray icons, aka 
"systray"
5. create artwork for all this specific to the devices
6. research!

here's some more detail on each:

Shell
===
you may have noticed that there is now a kdebase/workspace/plasma/shells 
directory; in there we now have 4 directories containing 4 different kinds of 
shells: desktop, screensaver, plasmoidviewer and mid.

plasma-mid is essentially a stripped down version of desktop: it only has one 
view, the view (MidView) is very simple, the corona (MidCorona) has the start 
of a custom loadCustomLayout with a single containment .. and that's about it.

it supports command line options for desktop, width and height which means you 
can work on it initially without a scratchbox or other similar set up.

App Launcher
=========
the app launcher needs to be full screen (modulo the control bar). for a first 
draft we're going to try a layout with a category listing down the left and 
nice large fingerable buttons representing launchable actions on the right. 
simple, effective, beautiful. that's the goal anyways =)

Control Bar
=======
this will contain a title for the current application and buttons for home, 
put away and quit. it will also contain on the right hand side the MID system 
tray, which actually won't really be a system tray as much as a place for 
really small applets (battery, network status, etc).

Ivan has worked on a similar concept for a project he is working on; it is in 
playground/plasma/applets/embedded-ivan/titlebar/ .. we should look into 
Ivan's work here.

Systray
=====
we should be able to simply re-use the existing systray+notifier plasmoid for 
this! it will need some additional work, such as implementing a new icon type 
that is really just a wrapper for a plasmoid and implementing expand/collapse 
to show/hide icons. this will have use on the desktop as well, so it's time 
well spent

Artwork
=====
as this all comes together, we're going to want some new artwork. my thoughts 
are that we should have artwork that:

* is pre-sized to the device screen (no scaling of the wallpaper should be 
necessary for instance)
* harmonizes with the hardware itself, so it looks like it all belongs 
together

obviously, this part is device specific. i'd like to start by targetting the 
N810 so we have a first example of what can be done.

Research
======
some research topics will include:

* will a KPixmapCache for Plasma::Theme help start up times?
* how to integrate with special buttons on these devices?
* how to do configuration and applet addition?
* how to most effectively present a widget dashboard area?


thoughts, ideas, scary warnings, complaints, etc?

-- 
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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