Questions about Plasma Activities

[Jesse L. Zamora]

> On Saturday 22 November 2008, Jesse L. Zamora wrote:
> > 1. Why does Plasma slow down so much when you zoom out to see the
> > activities?
>
> because it does all the scaling in software. that == slowness.
>
> > Is there any way to increase the performance?
>
> not doing it software. qt 4.5 is probably when this will be available to
>  us

I sure hope so! :-) I was getting kinda scared at that slow performance!! :-O

>
> > 2. Why doesn't it have the capability to just click on the activity you
> > want to zoom in to it? I find that clicking the cashew is somewhat
> > burdensome.
>
> clicking on the activity would mean you can't interact with them when
> zoomed out ... that's not what we want. it's a little bit of magic
> behaviour.

In that case, then why not have the ability to drag widgets between 
activities? That sounds like a sensible idea! Other wise, dragging widgets 
around zoomed out (from what I can see) doesn't have much of a purpose.

>
> the plan (for 4.2 even) is to hide the cashew when zoomed and instead show
> a "control bar" beneath each containment with some basic action buttons.
> not unlike the panel controler in that way.

That sounds pretty sweet.......

> > 3. Why is the background the color it is? The transparent
> > checkered box background looks, well, it looks unpolished.
>
> it's a simple, fast to paint background that says very clearly "this is
> blank space". it's common in other canvas based apps that users are more
> likely to be famliar with: drawing and painting apps.
>
> when it wasn't that checkerboard people would ask what was going on when
> they zoomed out, what happened to the background, etc.
>
> so i put clarity over beauty in this case.
>
> i've thought about a gradient, but that would be a rather unecessary abuse
> of horsepower imo ... i've though about putting a default wallpaper there
> but that stands a really good chance of making the activities harder to
> see.

That makes plenty of sense. But still, I wonder if there isn't a more elegant 
solution.


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