Looking around and thinking ahead

[Marco Martin]

On Thursday 12 December 2013, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Thursday, December 12, 2013 02:26:42 Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> > Today, I'm running Plasma 2 almost exclusively on my laptop. The most
> 
> you wonderful, crazy man. :)
> 
> > In plasma-shell, we have some construction sites as well. Kickoff still
> > feels quite unfinished (some would say broken ;)), configuration of
> 
> do we even want to keep kickoff? we need the menu based launcher for legacy
> support, but i really really wonder if the kickoff UX is at all relevant
> anymore. that’s a different thread, though.

I would like still giving by default a menu, but way simpler, even somewhat 
more similar to a traditional menu (kickoff ui should really go i think, 
some/most of the code of the qml port may be saved/reused tough)

> > plasma-framework needs some work on APIs, too. With large version number
> > change, we can reduce the delta between libplasma and our declarative
> > imports. There are some candidates which currently use quite some glue
> > code for our declarative bindings. Can cook this down and maybe move
> > some implementations into libplasma, or adding necessary Q_PROPERTYs to
> > our API?
> 
> sounds like a perfect candidate for a class-by-class examination of what is
> in the declarative imports.

yes, a tough api review of the qml imports is something i wish since uuh, 3 
years :p (may be an argument for the sprint, maybe the last couple of days 
when we are too cooked for doing productive hacking anyways)

> > We're not very well equipped in the artwork department. Perhaps we can
> > try to find artists more actively. I think we have some very exciting
> > work to be done, with a large audience. There *must* be good designers
> > around who want to help us making Plasma beautiful.
> 
> i have worked with 2 groups now .. and despite regular and supportive
> feedback and assistance from my side, both failed to produce completed
> results.
> 

I think it's again a bit social/culture barrier (in a sense not unlike the 
"fun" we're having with hardware people)
Currently opensource software has the reputation (deserved or not, this is a 
completely different argument) to be badly designed, and i guess many 
designers don't particularly want to be involved in something that in their 
community has a bad reputation. This combined to a more diffused adversion to 
work for free (and after all there are paid developers to work on code right 
now)

other problems may be collaboration, it's difficult to find a designer willing 
to collaborate with others.
Right now at the current state of development, to have art/design work we can 
actually use, we need a designer capable of thinking *inside* the box, quality 
very difficult to find in that field ;)
I'm sure someone does exist tough ;)

In the end, I'm favourable of even paying someone, if $ for that do exist at 
all, as long as is *not* a contest.

> > Part of this communication is that we should settle the name question. We
> > had a good discussion about that some time ago, but it died out before
> > reaching a conclusion. Let's put the options back on the table, and come
> > to a decision there. (Relevant thread is "naming the next major release"
> > on 19th August on plasma-devel.)
> 
> i’m all for `Plasma 2` with the shells named after the form factor they
> target. Plasma Desktop, Plasma Netbook (renamed to?), Plasma Tablet, etc.

for Plasma Netbook in my long sleepless nights (meh) I tought about a slight, 
not radical redesign that besides being i think a bit better would allow to 
reuse pieces of most of the desktop and active ui bits, so hopefully little 
effort involved (last famous words)

Cheers,
Marco Martin