How to get Akonadi notes onto Plasma?

[Stephen Kelly]

Hi,

busy day.

Aaron J. Seigo wrote:

> On October 22, 2009, Stephen Kelly wrote:
>> In Akonadi I just create an EntityTreeModel which has api for all of that
>> stuff. If I can forward those calls to plasma somehow, that would be
>> good, but I need a starting point. Do I create my model in a Applet, or a
>> Data Engine etc?
> 
> you're actually asking two different sets of questions here:
> 
> * how do you get to the data
> 
> * how do you display the data

OK.


> 
> i think in this case, maybe start with the intended user experience. i'm
> not sure what you are actually envisioning for the user experience. e.g.:
> 
> should notes appear automatically on your desktop / panel when they appear
> in Akonadi, so if i add a note in Kontact it would appear somewhere on my
> desktop as well?

I think so, yes. At least, new notes should easily be able to appear on the 
desktop. After discussing it on IRC, I think what I'll try is this:

There is one plasma akonadi notes widget. It is like a stack of real world 
post-it sticky notes. Actual notes containing data are extender items, which 
can be moved around the workspace.

If a new note is added in kontact, a new extender item is added to the 
"master" widget. No notification is given about that happening. The user can 
then open the extender to access the new note and drag it anywhere. That way 
new notes do not appear in random positions on the workspace, as someone 
suggested would be a bad idea.

> 
> should notes be individual widgets, or should they be grouped?

Hopefully the above answers this. I'm not certain, as I've also seen 
extendergroups in the plasma api. I don't think that's what you mean though.

> 
> should only notes created by the user in plasma-desktop be shown on
> plasma- desktop? or only notes tagged in some way?

The idea is that notes from a particular collection in akonadi would be 
available. Possibly with different "master" applets in different activities. 
The user would be able to select a particular collection whose notes should 
be displayed. This could be a virtual collection showing only notes tagged 
with "akonadi development" or "notes I created in July containing the word 
'giraffe'". 

> 
> is this meant to be  replacement / augmentation for the current notes
> plasmoid, or something quite different?
> 

The short term plan (within the next few days) is to get a demo together 
with some stuff hardcoded if necessary to show that I can get notes on the 
desktop where their data comes from akonadi.

In a few weeks I have to have a more functional prototype together with a 
couple of extra features.

Long term view is replace/augment the current notes plasmoid, and also try 
to do more data sharing with other note taking solutions on KDE.

Right now though, my priority is a demo by the middle of next week :)


Any more thoughts on the plan and intentions above?



All the best,

Steve.