Project Submission

[Aleix Pol]

Hi Farkas,
Looking good! Including the Plasma mailing list as it seems mostly
related to the shell.
Also I'd suggest you talk to the KDE Visual Design Group, they may be
interested in working with you on it.

Cheers!
Aleix

On Fri, Sep 17, 2021 at 11:18 AM Farkas Máté <wolfom at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear KDE Team,
>
> hereby I would like to submit a project I have been working on in the last months with the aim of incubating it within the KDE project, as I believe it could contribute to the user experience on touch-capable devices (such as Microsoft Surface-like hybrid laptops, tablet users, Wacom-tablet users, etc.).
>
> It is an application launcher aiming for ease of use on the above mentioned devices. I believe Kicker is a simple and powerful launcher, but it still uses a classical old-style approach (i.e. menu-submenu-sub-submenu-navigation) to help the user to find the app he/she wants to launch. Using a pen or an equivalent device, this procedure (with misclicks and spending time looking for the right category, subcategory, etc.) could unnecessarily worsen the user experience, which motivated me to implement a launcher similar to those seen on smart devices and other modern desktop operating systems.
>
> The launcher (which I have named Rocket) places the user's applications in a grid and allows him/her to categorize them by making folders. It supports searching, so opening the launcher with a shortcut and typing the desired program's name into the already focused search field already yields results to keep a fluent workflow for keyboard-oriented power-users too. It aims to be customizable and uses the KF5 framework to communicate with the environment.
>
> Having reached an inflection point in the project (where all the features I need have already been implemented with some bugs and inconsistencies still being present), I am asking you whether you have any interest in incorporating it in Plasma. If you have, I would be more than happy to continue the development while focusing on the needs of other users and improving on the codebase; if not, I would continue only improving things for myself only. In case of interest, I am also ready to comply with the standards required by the community.
>
> Things which need care include improving the customizability options, fixing some graphical glitches, improving support for multi-touch input (including double-finger trackpad scrolling which I – due to my hardware restrictions – did not manage to implement as flawlessly as desired) and some "complex usage cases" (i.e. cases where the user does a lot of things while dragging and dropping an application icon). I would like to emphasize that none of these things are of the kind which heavily restrict everyday use, but they still force the user to make some compromises (and thus make Rocket less "market-ready"); it is thus beyond the prototype/designing phase. I am also sending you a video regarding the current state of development attached. Regarding the future of the project, I have been thinking about adding support for plasmoids (such that the user is allowed to add widgets to the menu) and to allow the user to use KRunner as a backend search tool.
>
> Some months ago I posted a small video on a more primitive version of Rocket in the official KDE Reddit-channel [1], which was also well-received (despite not having as many customization options and not being able to create folders yet). Also, the KDE store provides some less-powerful alternatives with a non-negligible user base [2]. I also believe you have to know that I am not a professional developer, which can be easily seen by looking into the code [3]. With some help from fellow developers however, I think I can quickly improve on my programming skills (which I am also happy to do).
>
> If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask me. You can reach me in English, German, French or in Hungarian, if the people in charge or the community prefer it differently.
>
> Thank you for your consideration,
> Yours faithfully,
> Mate Farkas
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/mq408q/i_have_developed_an_application_launcher_for_kde/
> [2]: https://store.kde.org/p/1364064/
> [3]: https://github.com/friciwolf/Rocket
> Please make sure to create the folder ~/.config/rocket if you compile the code yourself (using qmake and make or Qt Designer), as this folder is necessary for Rocket to launch – another small thing to be fixed for the general audience. Also, please turn on the blurring effect in the system settings for it to take effect (an option using the system wallpaper as background is also possible, albeit yet only by recompiling the code manually).