plasma-mid

[Marco Martin]

On Friday 20 February 2009, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> hi all ...
>
> there was some discussion on #plasma today about plasma-mid. the short
> story is that we got all excited about it at the last akademy and then
> subsequently got sidetracked from it when we all focused on making the
> traditional desktop rock a little harder. fair enough.
>
> but we ought to turn some guns on plasma-mid as well, but only if we have
> them to spare.
>
> realistically, i'm already maxed out and can't give it the care, attention
> and love it will take to make plasma-mid all that it should be. i can be
> here to support that effort and even contribute, but for it to become a
> reality, someone needs to make it Their Baby.
>
> is there anyone on the list who'd be up for that? it would mean:
>
> * ensuring there's a coherent design for the netbook/mid style interface
>
> * watching patches as they go in
>
> * coordinating (not doing :) artwork and other design bits for it
>
> * communicating the needs of plasma-mid to the plasma community here on 
the
> list
>
> the good news is that there is already a pretty good start to things in
> playground and a lot of the work we're doing elsewhere is applicable so
> it's not a from-the-ground-up or you're-on-your-own project. it just needs
> a caretaker who can concentrate on it.
yeah, the thing it's actually two separate things: the plasmaapp, that kinda 
works but needs a big amount of love and the applets, that some of them could 
be existing stuff with a little adaption (like systemtray, battery, clock, 
networkmanager) some other stuff will need to be written nearly from scratch 
and could be quite long.

what i would like to see for a start is the plasmaapp in good shape and a bit 
more generic: something that is simple, used to load a desired layout of 
applets, maybe even able to load different config files with the commandline, 
a kinda of a plasmoidviewer on steroids (in a mid i think would be sensible to 
have one loaded for the main interface and one for plasma based applications, 
or even one per aplication, since there are plasmoids that on a mid would make 
sense as real apps, like twitter and rememberthemilk plasmoids), so everytime 
we nees a shell for some strange plasma-based application here we have it 
without rewriting the really same stuff every time, unless we need something 
really specific.

aaanyways, realistically what i would like to do, is if the mediacenter gsoc 
goes starts well (it will Alessandro, right? :)  would be to put the plasma-id 
app in shape to make the mediacenter components run into it, useful if we want 
the mediacenter to run as a separate app, or even the only app and even other 
work on the mediacenter could be recicled, since they are not so different 
beasts (little screen to be watched near or big far screen, end up always as a 
little screen..)

or, could be a gsoc for its own, but seems a bit big and not immediately 
useful...

in the end, if nothing change i plan to mantain the thing still in suspended 
animation with some patches-a-month as is now, i'm disturbingly perseverant 
sometimes :p
> if you're already busy with other important plasma things (yes, i'm looking
> at you marco ;) please don't shift your attention just because of this
> email. worst case scenario is plasma-mid sits for a little longer, best
eh, yeah, moreover wouldn't be really honest from my part to take charge of a 
big project right now (probably if i still was studying i would give a try:p), 
since having finished university from not too much i'm in a constant phase of 
"well, now i know i have time, even too much, a month from now who knows?" 
it's a constant thing in open source, but now i'm feeling that even more...
> case is that someone with some time available each week who hasn't found
> "their niche" yet in plasma will be excited about helping create the future
> of netbooks and get obsessed with plasma-mid. :)