playground's plasma spacer

[Marcos Dione]

    as I might have mentioned either in this list and/or the irc
channel, I'm very fond of the panel spacer that's in playground right
now. I even hacked a little in the Plasma::Applet class so the default
policy is not to ocupy as much as possible, but to yield to greedy
applets (commit 915261), and made both the spacer and the taskbar to be
greedy.

    now, since a couple of weeks I think, the spacer does not work as
(at least I) spected. other applets compit with it for space, so I think
some kind of rollback has happened. I really don't mind, as I explain in
the next parragraph.

    back in those days aaron said that the panel spacer should not
exist, but that plasma should have some internal thing, but not an
applet, to provide that functionality, and that it should exist for
kde4.3. when I mentioned similarities to a toolbar, aseigo said 'plasma
is not a toolbar'.

    so, now that the spacer doesn't work again, I thought that instead
of trying make it work again, I should tackle aseigo's dream. but then
again, fixing the spacer and try to push it to kdereview is more simple,
and we all know developers are lazy :-P

    so, before even striking any key in any direction, here are several
questions:

    is the spacer a good enough to be fixed, pushed into kdereview and
maybe kde4.3 or kde4.4 while we do the right thing(tm)? or is it even a
good solution after all, and maybe we'll later pursue the right thing?

    if the right thing(tm) is the right and only thing(tm²) (TRAOT), how
do you think it would behave? I mean, how do you think TRAOT should be
added and manipulated in the panel? and 'add an spacer before this
applet' entry in an applet's contex menu and a context menu for the
spacer itself where one can set it as a simple separator or as a
stretching space? I really can't think of any alternative, and surely
seems to me not very different to how the current spacer works.

    so, any ideas?

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