KDE framework 5 - a humble idea
Mark
markg85 at gmail.com
Wed Sep 18 21:33:59 UTC 2013
On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 10:01 PM, Michele Kipiel
<michele.kipiel at gmail.com>wrote:
> Il giorno mer, 18/09/2013 alle 18.10 +0200, Mark ha scritto:
> > -- bottom post please --
> > On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Michele Andrea Kipiel
> > <michele.kipiel at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello
> >
> >
> > thanks for the quick reply :)
> >
> >
> > the interaction you describe as "truly communicating
> > plasmoids" is pretty much what i imagined when i referred to
> > yahoo pipes. i imagined some scenarios for that interactio
> > too: think of a "picture frame" plasmoid which displays a new
> > picture every time a twitter profile (national geographic, for
> > example) posts a picture. that would require a background
> > connection between the two. Another scenario i imagined is a
> > stock based one: imagine you have a "stock ticker" plasmoid on
> > your desk, wich is connected to a "spreadsheet" plasmoid which
> > registers all the variation of a certain stock and then saves
> > them in a file.
> >
> >
> > The core idea of my proposal is to enable a new interaction
> > layer wich is accessible straight from the desktop, without
> > the need to even launch a single application after boot&login.
> > The desktop itself would become an active environmnt, instead
> > of an empty space.
> >
> >
> > Would such a desktop fit your workflow?
> >
> >
> >
> > 2013/9/18 Mark <markg85 at gmail.com>
> > On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 11:26 AM, Michele Andrea
> > Kipiel <michele.kipiel at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > hello everybody,
> >
> >
> > the following message is part of an email i
> > sent a few days ago to Marco Martin, who then
> > asked me to share my thoughts on this mailng
> > list.
> >
> >
> >
> > ***
> > my name is michele kipiel and i am a ux
> > designer. I currently work for the Kering
> > luxury group, where i design and user test the
> > checkout processes and the overall UX of the
> > luxury sites.
> >
> >
> >
> > i recently came across a video showing the new
> > KDE framework 5 improvements (the one posted
> > by phoronics, in case you were wondering).
> >
> > watching that video reminded me of what
> > immediately struck me when i first tried KDE
> > 4: the apparent lack of a true purpose for the
> > plasmoids. as a ux designer i constantly
> > strive towards simplification and
> > rationalization of the user experience, and
> > the first thing i noticed about the plasmoids
> > was that they didn't improve my experience in
> > any relevant way, while taking up lots of
> > space on my small 13" laptop screen.
> >
> >
> >
> > i asked myself a simple question: what do i
> > need on my desktop? what i came to realize is
> > that i could really use a desktop which acts
> > as a connection point between the hundreds of
> > apps that live on my hard drive.
> >
> > current plasmoids act as discrete information
> > bubbles (weather, rss, im, social feeds etc..)
> > and threy don't communicate with each other,
> > which in my opinion hampers their usefulness.
> > in other words: what would happen if KDE added
> > a common backend to connect all the plasmoids
> > (i'm thinking of something similar to what
> > elementary OS is doing with contractor)?
> >
> >
> > imagine this scenario: i have a file manager
> > plasmoid open on my desktop, along with other
> > ones. i want to share one of my pictures to
> > facebook. i drag and drop the picture from the
> > file manager plasmoid onto the "facebook feed"
> > plasmoid, which in turn activates the sharing
> > feature, allowing me to add a caption, tag my
> > friends and eventually share the picture.
> >
> > now imagine i want to turn the picture in b/w
> > before sharing it: i just drag and drop the
> > picture onto the "gimp" plasmoid, which shows
> > me a preview of the picture and lets me select
> > an action form a pool of simple, predefined
> > functions. once my picture is rendered, i just
> > have to drag it from the "gimp" plasmoid onto
> > the "facebook" one to share it.
> >
> >
> > in these scenarios each plasmoid acts as a
> > graphic frontend that exposes some functions
> > of the related programs, which don't even need
> > to be launched. it could be even possible to
> > create predefined sequences connecting
> > different plasmoids (think of yahoo pipes, for
> > instance).
> >
> >
> > i don't know whether this is possible or not,
> > but i believe it could be a massive leap
> > forward for the KDE desktop paradigm.
> > ***
> >
> >
> > thank you in advance for every comment,
> > positive or negative.
> >
> >
> > regards,
> >
> > MK
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Plasma-devel mailing list
> > Plasma-devel at kde.org
> >
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> >
> > First of all, i'm not a plasma developer so i can't
> > really comment on your ideas from a plasma desktop
> > point of view. I can on a technical point of view.
> >
> >
> > What you describe as plasmoids talking to each other
> > with the examples you provide isn't really talking to
> > each other at all. It is just properly implementing
> > drag/drop for all plasmoids. So for example, if you
> > want to "drag" an image from your file browser to the
> > "gimp" plasmoid then the "gimp" plasmoid would have to
> > support dropping that specific image format.
> > Furthermore if you want to manipulate that image on
> > the gimp plasmoid and drag the results to facebook
> > then it would have to support drag functionality as
> > well. The facebook plasmoid would then have to accept
> > a drop with that image type and handle it. That is not
> > easy stuff to implement properly. In fact, in pure QML
> > (which the new plasmoids for plasma 2 are) that only
> > becomes possible in Qt 5.2. Now i think KDE had some
> > custom drag/drop components that implemented the same
> > support.
> >
> >
> > Then for plasmoids _really_ talking to each other. If
> > that where to be implemented (which i doubt) then i
> > guess it should work somewhat like this. Reusing your
> > example here. Imagine you have a facebook plasmoid and
> > you're using it. If you then move to a "file manager
> > plasmoid" it should know that you came from the
> > facebook plasmoid. If you then select and drag an
> > image it could automatically pop up a "gimp" plasmoid
> > to throw some fancy filters over your image. The gimp
> > plasmoid (which then knows you came here from the file
> > browser from facebook) should offer an option:
> > "Publish to facebook" or something alike. That would
> > be really plasmoids communicating with each other and
> > would frankly be quite scarry :)
> >
> >
> > Lastly how i use the plasmoids. I'm a developer so i
> > have an interest in more then one console window. So i
> > simply put a bunch of consoles on my desktop along
> > with a CPU monitor. That works quite well, but only
> > works if you have the screen room for it. It doesn't
> > work on one screen since you just don't have the room
> > to see the plasmoids and other windows. I have two
> > screens so that's why it works for me that way.
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Mark
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Plasma-devel mailing list
> > Plasma-devel at kde.org
> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Plasma-devel mailing list
> > Plasma-devel at kde.org
> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel
> >
> >
> >
> > Err, i actually don't think it would fit my need very much..
> > Lets take my developer example here.
> >
> >
> > How would you make that more interactive?
> >
> >
> > If you follow your example with a stock tracker then it kinda feels
> > like logging functionality.. Not something special as an plasmoid that
> > communicates with - lets say - kexi or some other excel application.
> > And with the twitter profile, that can be done with data engines.
> >
> >
> > In fact, i think all the stuff you want can be either implemented
> > using data engines or (my preference) as a separate QML component.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Plasma-devel mailing list
> > Plasma-devel at kde.org
> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel
>
> What exaclty is a data engine? :)
> i'm not a coder, sorry!
>
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>
http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Plasma/DataEngines
Quote: "DataEngines provide a standardized interface to various data
sources for visualizations to use."
In simple terms: they provide data to a QML plasmoid. Like for instance the
current CPU load, hdd usage, notes, ...
They often are read only (i don't even know if there are dataengines that
allow to write data).
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