Fwd: [Kde-pim] GSoC: Plasma in Kontact

[Ryan Rix]

FW at Chani's suggestion, since this is pertaining to Plasma as well.
My proposal is at http://rix.si/files/soc-2010.txt

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Hello everyone,

My name is Ryan Rix, I've been involved in KDE lightly since January, having 
contributed a few patches to Konversation and Plasma, and I'm currently 
working to improve onscreen keyboard support. I'm also at some point going to 
maintain KPilot after I have a better understanding of Akonadi.

In my playing around (see my previous mails to this list regarding a Plasma-
based BasKet), I've gained a fair understanding of the structure and functions 
of the different Plasma structures (Containments, a general overview of 
Corona, DataEngines) and would like to apply them to different areas of KDE, 
including, hey you guessed it! KDEPIM :)

I'm pretty interested in doing this, and I've been involved in KDE for a while 
now, and don't plan on leaving any time soon so.. no dead code :) What exactly 
would this project consist of? Plasma already has an Akonadi dataengine, so it 
would be a matter of writing the plasma applets around the dataengine and 
placing them in a newspaper containment, I would think...

As it is, I haven't submitted an application because I'm mostly unsure of what 
constitutes a good application. Is there anyone willing to help me draft an 
application, or guide to me to where I could get more ideas?

(a bit about me)
My name is Ryan Rix, I'm currently enrolled in high school at Deer Valley High 
in Phoenix Arizona, and next year I will be majoring Computer Science at 
Arizona State University. I became involved in KDE mostly as a result of 
wanting to become more involved of the coding aspects of  Free Software. I'm 
fairly involved in the Fedora community working as a packager of a few KDE 
packages, in the marketing team, and am a member of the ambassador team.
My little Bio is probably http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Rrix

Thanks everyone!
Ryan Rix

PS: And also some discussion that will make it into my updated proposal 
tomorrow:

[00:40] <Chani> rrix: your proposal sounds like a lot of work. I hope you'll 
be able to pull it off...   of course, if you find yourself getting behind 
schedule there is the option to drop one applet and do it after gsoc, perhaps.
[00:40] <rrix> you think so? :/
[00:40] * Chani isn't sure how hard those applets will be
[00:40] <rrix> Chani: the dataengine is already there, that would have been 
the bulk of the work, I'd think
[00:41] <Chani> my mouse plugins I only allocated a week each to several of 
them, so maybe it's not as much work after all
[00:41] <Chani> depends on how hard that akonadi stuff is, I suppose
[00:41] * rrix goes to look at the dataengine api
[00:41] <Chani> oh right, you have that whole month to get the dataengine 
playing nicely
[00:41] * rrix nods
[00:42] <Chani> and I seem to remember an akonadi person saying something 
about certain premade widgets being available for some things
[00:42] <rrix> yeah, I've seen a few in kmail
[00:42] <rrix> errr
[00:42] <rrix> kpilot
[00:43] <rrix> there is a widget existing in there I could even use... 
resource selecter
[00:43] <Chani> hmm
[00:44] <Chani> how do you want them to be different on the desktop? you 
mentioned being able to edit stuff
[00:44] <rrix> looks like the engine may had to be extended...     ::Sources 
--> return QStringList() << "EmailCollections" << "ContactCollections" << 
"MicroBlogs";
[00:45] <rrix> Chani: well, I think that having the widgets be r/w on the 
summary page is dumb.. read only would be fine. But if the applets are also 
placed on the desktop I should be able to click a button to add a calendar 
entry, or a contact
[00:46] <rrix> heh
[00:47] <rrix> Yeah, this ting doesn't have any calendar shit in it... guess 
that makes sense though since akonadi isn't used by default there
[00:47] <rrix> still
[00:47] <rrix> gotta do that
[00:49] <Chani> rrix: but is it worth it to develop a non-akonadi dataengine 
for that stuff? how much work will that be?
[00:49] <rrix> Chani: by the time August rolls around all this stuff is 
running Akonadi though
[00:49] <rrix> at least that's the plan
[00:50] <rrix> kmail is maybe going to cause me some hell, but...
[00:50] <rrix> I spose I can add a "if kdepim misses a beat..." section about 
that. I wonder if there's any way I could embed the existing summary items 
into a plasma applet
[00:50] <insanity> I want to take a ride on your disco stick
[00:50] <rrix> insanity: fu :)
[00:55] <rrix> if I went through this kontact code at !1am, I could probably 
figure out a way to expose each summary plugin as an QWidget... at that point, 
I could plausibly embed any that don't have akonadi backend at the end of 
summar.
[00:55] <rrix> summer.
[00:56] <rrix>     KontactInterface::Summary *summary = plugin-
>createSummaryWidget( mFrame ); <--
[00:57] <rrix> where plugin is any of the kontact summary plugins which 
already exist



-- 
Ryan Rix
== http://hackersramblings.wordpress.com | http://rix.si/ ==

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