[nepomuk-kde] Plasma activities and Nepomuk

[Hari krishna Anandhan]

On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 11:22 AM, Ivan Čukić<ivan.cukic+kde at gmail.com> wrote:
>> what would you do with an activity type that you couldn't do with just the
>> activity name?
> The type could be used by the /activity switching/ plasmoid - to group the
> activites, or to show only a certain type of activity...

Activity Type can be used to covey a concrete semantic meaning about
what the activity actually is; While 'activity name' can be used to
restrict display to information pertaining to the current activity
(like emails, people, apps, etc related to that activity), activity
type gives another dimension to it which enables certain display
changes to happen by default (i.e some defaults can be shared by all
your 'official work'-related activities), without any customisation
needed from the user. What comes immediately to my mind is...

Suppose we have three activities:
1. "P's Birthday card" - a personal activity in which you are
designing a card for your child
2. "Plasma Netbook" - a community development activity in which you
are developing the plasma netbook version
3. "Acme Business Project" - an official work which you would need
serious concentration and should not have any distractions

There is a slight difference in the way the desktop can adjust itself
for each activity type. Suppose you are doing...

Activity 1: When an email or IM comes from any of your friends, fellow
OSS developers or anyone, you are notified immediately. The contact
plasmoid on the desktop shows your recent or fav. contacts.
Kickoff/Lancelot/Raptor shows all apps

Activity 2: In this, messages from your fellow developers take
precedence and are notified immediately, but emails from other friends
can also be indicated in a non-intrusive way, by just showing an
unread count. The contacts plasmoid on the desktop shows just the
developers.  Kickoff/Lancelot/Raptor displays just the apps you need
for development work (by default, without any customisation from user;
but allows for user customisation, if needed)

Activity 3: When you switch to this activity, the system sets your
status as busy and queues any messages (other than from your company
colleges, if configured) until you have finished with your activity.
As you should not be disturbed, the system hides any non-urgent
notifications till you finish or switch the activity.
Kickoff/Lancelot/Raptor displays just the apps you need for
productivity work (by default, without any customisation from user;
but allows for user customisation, if needed)

Hope I have made my point clear ;)

Cheers,
Hari