unity-like interface

[heathmatlock]

I'm sure almost everyone here has seen the videos which make the
Plasma Desktop shell like the Unity interface. I think these setups
are beautiful, but my my gripe with them is that when a window is
maximized, the window isn't integrated with the default panel on top.
So when you sling your mouse to the top right of the screen and left
click, you aren't closing the window like you do in Unity or in the
default setup for Plasma Desktop, which makes for an accessibility
problem. Because I find the oxygenized Unity-like interface appealing,
I want to fix this problem and I'm going to dedicate some of my time
to working on this; but I need guidance. This is where you guys can
help! ...hopefully :)

Ideally this work can be downloaded as an activity template, right? Or
should activities not be confused with shells? There's someone else
working on a Kwin-QML interface similar to what you would get
combining Moblin and Gnome, and he's looking at making it a shell.
Aaron, you mentioned that there is some work needed "so that script
packages can advertise a bit more clearly what they do (e.g. 'remake
the whole desktop') and then present that in the UI", are you
referring to shells or activities? You also stated, "we just need to
add the ability to run a kwin js after the plasma-desktop js for the
full effect," how do you propose doing this?

Assuming activities are the way forward for this oxygenized-Unity
interface idea (henceforth called Amity) , here's a link which may be
relevant to this work:

http://techbase.kde.org/KDE_System_Administration/PlasmaDesktopScripting#Templates

In the metadata.desktop file, can you specify in
X-KDE-PluginInfo-Depends=  other widgets the activity depends uses? In
my case, initially, I need the Icon-only task manager and Takeoff
widgets.

Also, what do I need to look into in integrating a maximized window's
titlebar into the default panel? This should be enough to get me
started.

Best regards Plasma dev team!

-- 
Heath Matlock
+1 256 274 4225