Help request on writing a plasmoid

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Thursday 11 December 2008, Bernhard Mustermann wrote:
> 1.) Would an extender be preferred and a good choice? What I think sounds
> nice may be docking one event-counter to the clock.

you can make this decision later very easily if you make each countdown a 
QGraphicsWidget of its own that the Applet puts into a layout.

> Although I don't know
> if an extender can be iconified for the panel.

sure.. PopupApplet is the easiest way to go about this.

> 2.) As mentioned before the plasmoid should work in panels and on the
> desktop itself... maybe it would be nice that the bigger the panel grows
> the more information are shown.

yes, that's sensible. probably not useful to think in terms of "panels" 
though: the user may wish to make the plasmoid smaller on the desktop as well.

> 3.) another "problem" are the time zones -- different time zones/countries
> -- different dates -- think I'll have to find a solution myself.. don't
> expect anything of use to be in KDE for such a usecase ^^

you can get the current time and date for any timezone from the time 
DataEngine. so if the target date is from some other timezone, don't count 
from the local time but using the time/date from the target timezone.

> 4.) Would themes be of any use? maybe for the basic events like Christmas,
> easter, ....

would be neat, yes. birthdays, aniversaries, vacations .. or let the user put 
their own image as you note. doesn't have to be a whole theme, it could be as 
simple as a picture.

> 5.) I think a dataengine would be the right way on separating the data from
> the view?

depends; do you want to offer the same set of events across all applets? in 
this case i'd imagine it would make about as much sense to just put the target 
date in the applet itself.

being able to pick an event from your akonadi calendar would be cool.

> 6.) and lastly.. would anyone be willing to help me with the artwork when I
> reach the point where I'd need it?

usually there are people around, but i'll let them answer.

best of luck (and fun) making your plasmoid =) feel free to ask questions here 
or in #plasma on irc.

p.s. subscribing to the plasma-devel mailing list might be a good thing so you 
don't miss replies if people forget to CC you =)

-- 
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 Qt Software

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