Review Request: KDE Observatory (new plasmoid)

[Sandro Andrade]

Hi Aaron, thanks for the review. I'm answering the questions below
while suggestions will be done asap.

> does Plasma::SignalPlotter give
> you something similar?

Apparently yes, investigating.

> * the collectors really look like something that would be better as a
> DataEngine. putting data and visualization into one plugin is generally
> frowned upon in plasma. things like the periodic updates of the collectors are
> taken care of for you if you use a DataEngine, other widgets can more easily
> use the results, the data can be shared between multiple instances of the
> kdeobservatory widget and the widget would be more ready for remote widget
> use. perhaps not necessary for 4.4, but should definitely be considered for
> 4.5.

Yes, I was already considering the DataEngine. Since this should raise
a major impact I'll keep as a lower priority change for 4.4.

> * collectFinished is probably getting called more often than needed as its
> connected to multiple collectors; that means views and what not will get
> updated for collectors that don't have new data?

Although it's called by multiple collectors, views are updated only
when all collectors finish. Since collectors run in a asynchronous way
I don't know each one is going to finish sooner (and consequently
later).

> * calls like m_right->nativeWidget()->setIcon are generally unecessary. use
> m_right->setIcon() i'd look through all the nativeWidget() calls and see which
> can be removed.

I tried this and it's working when using plasmoidviewer. But when
adding the plasmoid in desktop the arrows icons didn't appear. This
was fixed by using nativeWidget()->setIcon. Note: I'm not running
plasma-desktop from trunk, instead I'm just using 4.3.3. I'll try this
in trunk.

> * the icon button in the Configure KDE Observatory page seems to have some
> layout issues; here it overlaps the divider line at the bottom?

Strange, I can't reproduce this here.

> * sync'ing every minute might be a bit much for the default. 5 or 10 minutes
> should be plenty for a default?

For sure :)

>
> * speaking of defaults, is showing just one day of operations really enough to
> give a decent and moral boosting overview? would the last week's worth of data
> be better? a lot of projects see sporadic but regular commits and "one day"
> may not be a whole lot of progress. plasma is active daily as are some of the
> other big projects like kdepim ... but not all are so lucky. this does make
> the db building problem worse, of course.

Yes, I agree a week would be a nice overview. I'll change this as soon
as database issues are fixed.

>
> * why is "enable transition effects" an option?

Just to disable sliding effect for those people with labyrinthitis :)

>
> * why are some view options in the global config options and others in the
> Views page?

Ok, in Views page you can select which projects should appear in each
view. Projects are globally created in Projects page and are
automatically inserted in all views. For example, you might want to
see Krazy Report for Plasma but not for Extragear. In Global Config
Options you can disable a given view (including *all* its projects)
and set their appearance order.

>
> * from a user's perspective, why is there a "global config options"? would
> another name be more useful?

General ?

>
> * the automatic transitions are nice, but when trying to page through them
> with the left/right buttons it really gets in the way. perhaps a "play/pause"
> button could be added to the interface and automatically set it to "pause"
> when one of the arrow buttons are manually pressed?

Yes, or just re-starting timers giving them a short pause.

> perhaps the transition
> could also pause when the mouse is placed over a graph; this would make the
> tooltips more easily reachable, as right now getting tooltips is a bit of a
> challenge when the animations are ongoing.

Deal :)

> * the scroll arrows feel "backwards": the right arrow should take me to the
> "next" item, which means things should scroll to the left not the right.

Yes, I'm touchscreen influenced :)

>
> * it would be really nice if it were possible to aggregate some project data;
> e.g. "plasma" is really kdelibs/plasma + kdebase/runtime/plasma +
> kdebase/workspace/plasmas + kdeplasma-addons ... not a required feature for
> sure, but a nice one to have perhaps

It *was* working that way when I was using regular expressions for
catching commit subjects from QMaps. It was great but I can't query a
SQL database by using a regular expression. Any suggestions ?

> * it would make the widget much more immediately approachable if there were
> some project presets shipped, such as ones for kdelibs, kdepim, kdegames,
> plasma, etc. do you have thoughts on how that would be best achieved?

Yes, that's expected soon. Project information are stored in config
files. I just need to set up those presets as the default values for
new created config files. After that user can include/exclude/edit
project information.

>
> ok, that's probably more than enough for now :)

Thanks a lot ...
Sandro