battery monitor plasmoid changes

[Sebastian Kügler]

Hi Roman,

CC:ing kubuntu-devel, plasma-devel and Nuno, for reasons, read on.

On Wednesday 11 February 2009 05:25:17 Roman Shtylman wrote:
> I pulled the kde 4.2 source for the battery monitor plasmoid and made
> a few changes which I will detail below. I am new to actually
> contributing to such a large project and have read that the best way
> to start is to just email patch files to the developer, so I have
> aimed to do just that.

Posting to plasma-devel is even better, in terms of bus numbers and latency 
of my inbox, which is especially high when traveling.

> My biggest gripe with the plasmoid was that the battery display
> (graphical representation) sectioned off the battery charge indication
> into 4 large chunks. I instead wanted to be able to have a continuous
> display (common to other battery meters) that would be more clear
> graphically about what the battery level was.

Fair enough.

> To accomplish this I added another layer to the svgz icon as well as a
> configuration option to allow the user to choose the old style display
> (4 separate blocks) or my continuous mode display.

I personally think it doesn't need its own config option, instead I'd go for 
just making it default. Thing is that it's an artwork issue, which is Nuno's 
domain.

Basically, additionally to your issue (which I think is a valid point, 
especially interesting for larger / higher dpi representations of the applet
Nuno asked me if I could do some stepping, so we don't get the SVG rendered 
at for example 27 pixels which *will* produce bad results. Instead the applet 
should, based on its size be rendered at 16, 22, 32 and 48 pixels. Starting 
with that size, it could probably just scale up.

Is that something you'd like to tackle? I'd be happy to provide feedback to 
the code. Not sure if Nuno wants to put a completely new SVG in, for a 
continuous display of fill rate, that might be a good idea.

Nuno, any input on this?

> I tried to adhere to the kde coding style guidelines and what the
> program already had.

The patch looks technically good.

> The tar file contains the two new icons (inkscape version and plain
> svgz version) as well as a patch file that describes the changes made
> to the .cpp, .h, and .ui files. (from the kdebase-workspace package,
> in folder (plasma/applets/battery)
>
> If you approve of the changes, my goal was to have them integrated
> into the app (thus I am emailing you) and possibly make it into the
> next kubuntu release (depending on when they have their freeze and
> such).

Kubuntu is likely to ship KDE 4.2.x, which is feature frozen. That means 
bugfix and translation updates only, and only in rare circumstances new 
strings in the UI -- those need to be translated.

So, it's a no-go for KDE 4.2.x upstream. You might get the Kubuntu team to 
merge it as local patch, that's their call. Since it's not really something 
critical, I wouldn't be surprised if they denied because it adds work for 
them to carry around patches that make Kubuntu different from upstream.

Still, tackling this for 4.3 would be good, see above.

> Thanks for reading.
>
> ** You were listed in the battery.h file so this email is going to
> you. If there is someone else it should go to please let me know and I
> apologize for sending it to you.

It's fine, as said above you could also use the plasma-devel list, which I'm 
reading regularly.

Thanks for the patch,
-- 
sebas

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