Is it possible for a plasmoid to overlap the panel?

[Ken Vermette]

One thing that I (kind of) pitched during a sprint, I'll mention it here
for discussion;

What if we created a new class of widget called a "dock widget".
Behaviourally, these widgets would be clamped to a screen edge, owning that
edge in the same ways as a panel. Dock widgets could anchor and place items
to that edge in a fairly free-form manner. They would define an arbitrary
"size" (denoting width for vertically clamped widgets, height for
horizontal) for the reserved screen space, which they could draw outside of.

The main use-case of dock widgets is allowing functional and aesthetic
designs which are impractical with panels as we have now. Dock widgets
could use scale, flyouts, animations, and transformations which modular
panels cannot perform, as our panels require specific sizing information
from contained widgets.

I'll note that "dock widgets" wouldn't be beholden to simply emulating
Gnome-like or MacOS-style docks. Maynard has showcased a very unique dock
which heavily uses flyouts and "peeking". In some ways, Yakkuke and KRunner
are in similar positions; widget-like, clamped to an edge. There are
creative possibilities here.

The downside of these "dock widgets" are that they would be as configurable
as any individual widget - lacking the modularity of panels. But for users
who prefer "real" docks and dock-like widgets with a higher degree of
polish which work "as is", this would be the way to do it. I'd be
interested in the creative possibilities of Plasma offering several unique
"dock widgets" users could choose from. I think our current approach to
making "docks" is kludgy and overcomplicated, and trying to let users
emulate docks via panels has lead to panels being a bit more complex than
necessary. If we simply allowed "dock widgets" to take over these more
dynamic layouts, we could probably streamline panel customisation a bit if
we treat them as being more "static" in size, too.



On Wed, Jul 20, 2016 at 2:53 PM, Marco Martin <notmart at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wednesday 20 July 2016 21:15:33 Michail Vοurlakos wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I am trying to implement a plasmoid task manager that behaves
> > like the Mac or the Plank one..
> > the code can be found here:
> https://github.com/psifidotos/plasmaqmldock[1]
> > it is in a very early stage but the animation is there and showing
> > and hiding windows also...
>
> I tought about an use case like that in the past...
>
> you would need to have a very big panel, mostly completely transparent (so
> it
> means you couldn't use always visible mode, and you depend from having
> composite)
> but for 3rd party things may be ok-ish.
>
> what the panel on our side would need to do, is not to draw its background
> in
> that case, basically just respect the background hints, just like applets
> do.
> I am thinking to add that never the less in 5.8, wouldn't change for the
> default one, but could be a little fun quirky possibility for kdelook stuff
>
> --
> Marco Martin
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