PlasMate - planned features

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On February 16, 2010, you wrote:
> I'm writing an article about PlasMate for one of the biggest czech Linux
> portals ABCLinuxu.cz

very cool :)

> and I hope You could spare a few minutes to answer a
> few questions for me that could help me writing something more about
> PlasMate.

absolutely...

> Are You going to integrate QtDesigner for editing .ui files or QtLinguist
> for translations?

We plan on integrating QtDesigner, though that will probably happen after the 
first release (v0.1, planned for a summer release alongside KDE SC 4.5). We 
likely won't integrate QtLinguist, however, but instead use the KDE 
translation tool Lokalize (http://userbase.kde.org/Lokalize). We will also be 
integrating the QML editor when that becomes available from Qt Development 
Labs.
 
> How exactly will "Publish plasmoid" work and where do You intend to upload
> the Plasmoids?

The Publishing page already allows one to install the Plasmoid locally or to 
create a local package, which is a zip compressed file with a *.plasmoid 
suffix. This file can be uploaded directly to websites like kde-look.org or 
shared with others. We also want to eliminate this step for Plasmoid writers, 
however, by offering to publish the Plasmoid package file (for end users), the 
git repository (for other developers) or both just by clicking on the Upload 
button in the Publishing page.

> Are You going to distribute PlasMate with offline API documentation (like
> QtDoc for example)?

Yes, offline documentation will be available. This may not make it into the 
0.1 release, however, in which case the documentation browser will require an 
Internet connection for at least the first version of Plasmate. One benefit of 
using the online documentation is that we can continuously update it, and even 
users of Plasmate can add things since it is all hosted on a Wiki.

> And finally, which features are You planning for the first stable release?

The main feature we are aiming for is a usable workflow for creating 
Plasmoids. This means no more than four clicks, and as few as one click,  to 
be ready to get down to work. The embedded previewer, the git-based revision 
control (which makes "save/open" of files unnecessary), the documentation 
browser and the Publishing page are all targets for completion for the first 
release.

Support for writing DataEngines and Runners (search plugins) is also mostly 
there, with only previewers for them being needed. We hope to have those in 
place for the first stable release as well.

After that first release, we will continue to do new stable releases at least 
twice a year if not more frequently. Plasmate won't ever become a "full" IDE, 
that is not the intention. So subsequent releases will aim to increase the 
polish, fill in the features that are missing in the existing workflow and 
improve the usability of the Plasmate workflow itself. This focus on achieving 
a very specific vision, along with using the excellent KDE and Qt libraries, 
means it should become a stable application that does what it does well 
relatively quickly.

> As an occassional plasmoids developer I'm really enthusiastic about
> PlasMate. You (all) are doing a great job, not just on PlasMate but on KDE
> at all! Keep rocking ;)

Thanks! I'll pass on your words of encouragement to the rest of the team. :)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks