Q: PlasmaDesktopScripting : Sizing widget PopUps in Panels, best methods of handling some tasks

[Stephen Dowdy]

(AFAICT, 'plasma-devel' is the only mailing list this
question might apply, but please let me know if i should
pursue assistance somewhere else)


I'm attempting to construct a default new-user setup via:

    $(kde4-config --install data)/plasma-desktop/init/99-SITEDEFAULT.js

that loads a panel template from .../plasma/layout-templates/site-layout/...
(first wiping all existing panels&activities created by 00-Default.
This seems the best way to not conflict with my distribution's
(Debian Wheezy) ownership of files)

I'm not really wanting to use a "skel" homedir splatting technique
(populating ~/.kde/... with hardcoded setups) as this leads to 
inconsistencies with screensizes, etc, so PlasmaDesktop Scripting
looked to be a great tool for managing user account configurations.
    

Q1: Is it possible in PlasmaDesktopScripting (PDS) to set the size
(HxW) of the Popup for a widget loaded in the panel?

e.g. 
   var clock = panel.addWidget("digital-clock")
   clock.writeConfig("dateStyle", "4") // ISO date

I find the default Popup size displaying the calendar and
"events/holidays" to be too small (both height and width).
writeConfig() and writeGlobalConfig() create Group labels not used
for the PopUp group labels. (addition of [Configuration] and [AppletGlobals]'
that aren't in the '[PopupApplet]' label)

Any way to do that in the plasma-desktop/init/* + plasma/layout-templates/*
toolkit?



Q2:  How best to handle situations where a PDS interface is only partially
    managed, something like:

    var pager = panel.addWidget("pager")

Where I want to set pager to 2x2. Even the info from the System
Adminstrator PDS document implies that:

    pager.writeGlobalConfig("rows", "2")

Should set the rows to 2, but the default pager is only 1 desktop (1x1)

There seems to be no interface to change this, and what makes it
worse is that this seems to only be a visual interface to properties
managed by KWin (kwinrc [Desktops] keys 'Number' and 'Rows')

Also, for 'kickoff', i'd like to run through my ".desktop" locator function
(finding various apps by alternate names, to generalize our deployment
of laptops and desktops that find things in different places or
by install), building a Favorite_URLs and then stuff that into
'kickoff's Favorites listing.  but PDS seems to only manage
groups/keys within 'plasma-desktop-appletsrc', and kickoff uses
a global .kickoffrc (ignoring what's set in p-d-appletsrc).

There seems to be no generalized "kwriteconfig/kreadconfig" type
interface in PDS (which would be great), so best i can guess i'd
have to script this stuff up some other way.

So, my question would be how best to leverage the existing PDS
layout-templates + plasma-desktop/init structure with some auxiliary
tools?


Thanks,
--stephen

-- 
Stephen Dowdy  -  Systems Administrator  -  NCAR/RAL
303.497.2869   -  sdowdy at ucar.edu        -  http://www.ral.ucar.edu/~sdowdy/