Thoughts on the Iteration Sprint, discussions and criticism

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Wednesday, June 6, 2012 11:27:39 Martin Gräßlin wrote:
> My understanding: Plasma is a technology to create user experiences.
> One of the experience is desktop, one is active. That active nowadays
> seems also related to the desktop formfactor is complete news to me.

perhaps you can help me understand this a bit more, because i'm a little 
confused myself. consider the following list of properties, and then please 
help me understand how it was that it never occured to you that they are 
related (which is an understatement of the actual relationship):


we use the same technology and the technical design is identical: 
shell/windowanager, plasmoids and containments, DataEngines and models, .... 

we use the same components on both: nearly every element in the active panel 
was originally developed on the desktop, and they remain shared to this day. 
ditto for plasmoids.

the elements that debuted in the Active shell are usable in Desktop, and the 
intention is, and has always been, to bring things like SLC to the default 
desktop layout (we're waiting on a few key library adjustments, for Active we 
just patch kdelibs; so desktop integration may need to wait for frameworks 5 / 
libplasma2 as a result). this has been discussed at sprints and on mailing 
lists which i know you are on.

beyond code, we share concepts from one to the other constantly. activities is 
one major area, and we've discussed for at least 6 months now how we can 
eventually make it possible to easily sync activities between devices 
(laptops, desktops, tablets, $WHATEVER)

development in support layers like QML lands in the all workspaces 
simultaneously.

it's done by the same team of people.

we've been talking about device spectrum on this list for years, i've been 
giving presentations about it at conferences, including kde ones, for probably 
just as long. we've blogged about it many times over several years. here's two 
examples google found for me:

	http://aseigo.blogspot.ch/2011/09/plasma-active-entering-beta.html
	http://aseigo.blogspot.ch/2010/01/key-quest-device-spectrum.html

we've done this before with plasma netbook.



so yes, we have multiple targetted user experiences. one targets touch 
appliances, the other general purpose laptop/desktops, another netbooks. but 
they target the same kind of audience, they share technology, they are 
designed to work together.

i'm shocked that these ideas are not being internalized by people who have 
been on this and other relevant mailing lists for some time. :/ we're doing 
something wrong here. 

is the idea too radical?
are we not paying attention to each other, head down in our code?
do we not think about architectural issues?

please help me understand where the disconnect is happening.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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