Is it possible to add a different panel implementation for plasma?

[Michail Vourlakos]

> please reconsider this.
> Is not a good idea for several reasons
> * will duplicate bugs
I know, it feels like a fork and it's not of my own taste either... I 
have put so much energy and faith in Now Dock, the only thing I want is 
the foundations of my architecture to be able to provide what is needed...
> * nightmare to implement
this is almost working in a test branch... but in the long run I can 
agree it can not be maintained...

for the wayland issue, I dindnt know about the security concerns, when I 
had talked with Martin we were discussing for a Dock window inside 
plasmashelll, the implementation would use the KWayland to provide the 
functionality needed...

> I like the idea of a 3rd party dock, and I'm open to add a  bit of flexibility
> to the shell (still, under certain constraints), but if you go in the
> direction of doing your own thing, it's not going to work for long and
> wouldn't really get support from us.
>
the thing is that this isnt a personal decision but a technological one. 
The current implementation from plasma is much restrict for alternative 
panels. The design decisions chosen for the original panel conflict many 
times with alternative solutions.

When Now Dock started had a specific vision, simplicity and elegance (of 
course Plank showed the road for this but I wanted the simplicity and 
easy of use in a clean plasma environment)... With version 0.5 all the 
basic pieces took their place but I havethe following that I can not 
overcome...

       What an alternative panel needs and is not there:
1. must be able to access all the options from plasma's PanelView 
(strange thing is that this is already there for the javascript layout 
scripts and not for qml). (options as thickness, maximumLength, 
minimumLength, visibility are too important to not be accessed from 3rd 
docks)

2. it must be able to provide its own configuration window in the place 
of the original one in order to hide functionality that it isnt relevant 
and add functionality that it is only specific to the 3rd dock (in my 
current implementation I could hide the toolBox and use my own 
configuration window but I can not alter from it the settings provided 
from PanelView).
I think that solving 1 is enough to solve 2 also...


what do you think? Is it possible to expose PanelView's configuration 
options to 3rd docks?


regards,
michail