Plasma Mobile on the Librem 5

[Eike Hein]

On 08/29/2017 10:28 PM, Matthias Klumpp wrote:
> As some of you might already know, we at Purism are planning to
> develop a mobile phone that uses only free software and Matrix[2] for
> communication. We are currently running a crowdfunding campaign[1] in
> order to be able to make the phone a reality.>
> [...]
>
> Our scope for this project is limited, in order to be able to complete
> it successfully and not end up in a never ending development loop: The
> phone should be able to communicate via Matrix, have a web browser,
> make calls, take pictures. We are not aiming for a massive amount of
> apps, but instead want the basic functionalities of the phone working
> well when we ship it - more apps and features can be delivered later
> via Flatpaks and system updates.

Very interesting!

I'll let others reply about some of the more Plasma Mobile-specific
parts as they're better equipped to do so and will focus on the Matrix
part, as it piqued my interest with my "Konversation developer" hat on.

Konversation is KDE's IRC client. As a by-product of an (ongoing)
conversation within the KDE community on whether we want to stick by IRC
or move on to another chat solution as 'the one' for the community, and
how to transition smoothly, we're currently (a) rewriting the UI to be
more convergent and allow for a mobile version and (b) looking to
retarget it as an IRC/Matrix client.

This is a very early effort currently focused on UI experimentation and
rampup (read: there are no Matrix bits yet, although the Konvi team has
been following Matrix for a while and is to a degree familiar with the
technology). After a few initial sessions of hacking this months, here
are some (working and chatting) mockups of the UI direction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cr7hirDzws&hd=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b88oqdlNyuU&hd=1
http://imgur.com/a/bT7XE

As you can see the UI is headed toward a responsive/convergent bent
(here with desktop-specific concessions) using KDE's Kirigami UI technology.

As one of the main problems the community has with IRC is the poor state
of mobile access, a mobile version of Konversation for both Plasma
Mobile and Android - both platforms Kirigami easily deploys to - is
definitely planned, leveraging both Kirigami's convergent nature (and
meaning it, not buzzword bingo) and the ability to do form
factor-specific customization via KPackage. This work is currently being
done in collab with KDE's Visual Design group and with (code, advice)
support from the Kirigami team as well.

Again, it's the early days of this effort - but I can confirm Matrix is
something we're interested in and gearing up to hack on, motivated in
large part by mobile. We share that one.


Cheers,
Eike