Notes from "Async and representation"

[Mark Gaiser]

On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 10:56 AM, Marco Martin <notmart at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Saturday 18 January 2014, Mark Gaiser wrote:
>
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Plasma-devel mailing list
>> > Plasma-devel at kde.org
>> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel
>>
>> I guess my arguments for going with the "Plasmoid" name rather then
>> "Applet" are just ignored then?
>> Sebas did gave "some" (few lines) explanation before my bunch of
>> arguments. Yet i still think "Plasmoid" would suit it better.
>
> possibly, but right now wether calling it Applet, Plasmoid or Bob is kinda the
> last of the problems.
>
No, it is not. I will explain that down below.

> personally i would prefer plasmoid as well, but if and only if the component
> can be merged with AppletInterface, that is providing the "plasmoid" object at
> the moment. otherwise wou have two "plasmoid" things that do two completely
> different things.
>
As i said, that should be resolvable. However, i lack the knowledge
(not a plasma developer!). You or the other folks replying in here do
have that hat on and probably know very well if this is a problem or
not.

> what i'm interested at the moment is about a strategy to correctly switch
> between representations, to correctly propagate size hints while keeping an
> intuitive, as small as possible api.

That is indeed important as well :)
>
> bikeshedding about the name won't make it happen.
> looking at, and experimenting with the code will :p
>
Oh sure. I can make patches for you and send them to you. Code isn't
the issue. However, i'm not a plasma dev and don't know what
implications it might have so it obviously isn't a good idea if i
start refactoring something this fundamental.

As for the "I will explain that down below". You folks - plasma - have
a big opportunity right now. Plasma 2 is basically re-developed from
the ground up so now is the best time to fix inconsistency issues. To
the outside world you call the small plasma applications "plasmoids"
so i'd expect the naming to start moving to a consistent manner and
name it as such in the important places. Just be consistent! If you go
for applet then call it applet from now on.

There is only one time when you can move in a more naming consistency
manner without worrying about backwards compatibility and for plasma
that is right now.