Semi-modal sidebar paradigm

[Marco Martin]

On Monday 04 November 2013, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:

> 
> putting that support in kwin would make it a moot point. on x11 these semi-
> modal UI bits would just overlap things as they do now in your screenshots,
> but on wayland kwin could have a desktop effect that takes these windows
> and Adds Awesome(tm).
> 
> the only reason it makes sense to think about this *now* rather than later
> is that kwin would then need a way to identify such windows.

<implementation detail>
if it may help, for the bits that are done by plasma-shell itself (would be 
possible for widget explorer and activity manager, not for window switcher and 
krunner so) the thing doesn't even have to be a window, since the window 
object itself is instantiated in QML (this done for Active that has the 
activity switcher on the desktop itself)

so they could be in the desktop view, making the desktop containment slide at 
one side and all (but yeah, doesn't help much since it still needed a solution 
for when it's drawn by another process)

Cheers,
Marco Martin