Plasma Media Center Branding

[Stuart Jarvis]

On Thursday, July 15, 2010 12:25:48 pm Thomas Fjellstrom wrote:
> On July 15, 2010, Alessandro Diaferia wrote:
> > Also adding plasma-devel to the CC
> > 2010/7/15 Stuart Jarvis <stuart.jarvis at gmail.com>
> > > Is Plasma Media Center going to be a workspace or an app that runs in
> > > another
> > > workspace?
> > > 
> > > If it's the latter then we'd better give some serious thought to the
> > > branding:
> > > Plasma is the brand for our workspaces and things can get confusing if
> > > we break with that.
> > > 
> > > KDE's product groups:
> > > Libs -> KDE Platform
> > > Workspaces -> Plasma Desktop, Plasma Netbook, Plasma Mobile
> > > Apps -> Many names, but not Plasma something
> > 
> > Hey Stu, first of all thanks for the point which is really important.
> > Actually, Plasma Media Center is intended as a stand-alone application
> > and its development is going into this direction. The fact that we call
> > it Plasma Media Center is due to the use of the Plasma technologies to
> > develop it.
Ok, I gathered at Akademy (probably at your talk) that it would be a 
standalone app. The branding issue didn't occur to me at the time, but I had 
assumed it was a workspace because of the Plasma label and also written about 
it as if it was a workspace in a few places.

Possibly the use of the Plasma libraries is a good reason to call it Plasma, 
we just need to discuss.

Alternatively, maybe we have the app which is called $something  and can run 
anywhere and also a very simple Plasma Media Center workspace for full-time 
Media Center pcs that pretty much Plasma Desktop with different defaults: no 
panels and maybe just a couple of system monitor widgets, a button to launch 
$something and that launches $something full screen on login. So you can use 
$something on your Plasma Netbook powered laptop that you plug in to your TV 
to watch a video, but your little PC that sits under the TV all the time has 
Plasma Media Center because you don't use it for anything else.

> > So, probably, your point is valid and we should start
> > thinkin' about a proper name for it.
> > I'd like some other Plasma-devs to give their opinion on this.

Cool. There's time up until 1.0 or a tech preview push with one of the distros 
to get this worked out.

> I've been interested in Plasma Media Center for quite some time now. And I
> think it makes the most sense to be a workspace app like plasma-desktop.
> Though it would make even more sense to take over some minimal window
> manager duties too, or at least integrate somewhat with kwin. That way if
> other applications are launched they don't take completely over, like if
> you wanted to start firefox or rekonq to view some web site on your TV,
> getting back to the media center interface isn't a struggle if you only
> have a remote control. Kinda like how the plasma mobile and plasma phone
> interfaces change how things work, the plasma media center probably should
> too.

I'm not going to get involved in that discussion (if there is one).

Cheers,
Stu