Review Request: an overlay effect element for framesvg

[Marco Martin]

On Monday 12 January 2009, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Monday 12 January 2009, Nuno Pinheiro wrote:
> > > define "randomly"
> >
> > The idea for this case was that plasmoid A gets the same exact look every
> > time but the bg of plasmoid A is diferent from plasmoid B.
>
> does it matter what the widget is (e.g. "digital-clock") or just that it's
> the same for that same widget when plasma re-loads?
>
> e.g. would it be alright to randomly pick a location for the applet
> background effect for each widget and then stick to that? or do we need to
> hardcode positions for, e.g., "digital-clock"? (that actually wouldn't work
> in practice, but i'll ask anyways to figure out what you're planning =)
>
> there are five ways this could be done without being too crazy:
>
> * hardcoded locations for different widgets. this could be done per-widget,
> allowing them to specify where the effect "looks best". in this manner, all
> widgets of the same type would have complete control over its positioning
> and each instance of that type of widget would look identical. this does
> remove some of the control from the theme designer as the widget would now
> be involved in saying where the effect should appear.

in metadata.desktop? wouldn't be a bit excessive?

> * random position whenever a widget is created. this would result in every
> widget having a (potentially) unique position, and this position would
> change between launches of plasma.
hmm, fear it would look messy and most important it would kill the cache

> * random position whenever a widget is *first* created. this would result
> in every widget having a (potentially) unique position, but the position
> would remain constant between launches of plasma
maybe two digital clock is better they look the same? not sure about that 

> * random position per widget type. this would would result in each type of
> widget (e.g. "digital-clock") having a (potentially) unique position, but
> all instances of the widget would look the same (so all digital-clocks
> would have the same look). on each launch of plasma, this random position
> would be recalculated whenever a new type of widget appears.
>
> * constant random position per widget type. this would would result in each
> type of widget (e.g. "digital-clock") having a (potentially) unique
> position, but all instances of the widget would look the same (so all
> digital-clocks would have the same look), and this position would be
> maintained between launches of plasma until the configuration files were
> removed.
>
> which most closely matches your vision of things?

how would random positions depending from the type being calculated without 
the applet name? (non i didn't particurarly like the approach of going hunting 
applet name in the parent, just couldn't come up with a saner thing :/)
could be still using the applet name but only for indicizing a generated 
random number? (in a config file? hmm)

Cheers,
Marco Martin