Tasks

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New tasks popped out in the meeting

First, let's kill the last bits of KDesktop still there:

Put the autostart functionality from KDesktop to ksmserver.
Merge the functionalities of ~/.kde/Autostart with ~/.kde/share/autostart
Complete runner classes in krunner
Integrate ksysguard's process table into krunner

Then, this is what we want to implement:

What plasma will be able to do/what we do want from it:
- Use a widget with background painting.
- Implement the zooming of objects.
- Implement the grouping of objects in collections (with special containers).

And after that, see what can be done for performances:

See if QGV works well for ↑ (Unicode char for ^, arrow up). We will use it until the end of march, then we will see how it worked. We will evaluate alternatives then (if not enough satisfied).
Create widgets aware of zooming, that won't continuously redraw themselves, they will just zoom loosing quality and re-draw themselves at the end of the animation (or something like that... make a good research and use common sense ;-). Needed widgets are:
- A label
- A button
- An svg visualizer
- An html widget
- A line/textedit (does it already exists?)

Before actually coding them we should first define the speed compromizes we want to have for all of them, write this near the widget, and then starting coding it.

What happened in the meeting

This wants to be just a short resume on what happened in the first meeting (21-02-2006)

First thing, Aaron explained us what is his idea of Plasma and why he arrived there. Especially, he said that: «we need an amarok of the desktop so people go "oh. -that's- why"».

For those still not familiar with this concept, he explained also that everything will be "a widget (or, as somehow caught on, "plasmoid")... from the launcher buttons to full on widgets and mini-apps" Especially, the desktop won't be centered anymore on displaying the content of a folder. This will still remain availeable though, you will be able to do a full-screen plasmoid that shows the content of a certain folder. ;-)

After that, we started the discussion on what needs to be done. The first thing is to get all the essential components that still are in KDesktop been moved away. So, we are at a good point in this, because everything but the autostart stuff has been moved into KRunner. KRunner is a new application for KDE 4 that will manage the screensaver, will show a task list (like the windows' key combo Ctrl+Alt+Del), will provide a run dialog and manage app startup notification. KRunner will be a standalone app that will register global keycombos and show things as-needed.

The autostart stuff should probably be merged in ksmserver (it makes much more sense there), and be unique (right now there are ~/.kde/Autostart and ~/.kde/share/Autostart).

After having the old desktop killed, we will work on a replacement, Aaron said, and this means working on two separate parts: zooming and containers and efficient widgets.

Using or not QGraphicsView is a major concern right now, but we end up that probably the final decision about what to use has to be delayed to the next meeting, or to the end of march at most, after have checked with the TT guys about whether it's possible to have a performant QGraphicsView for zooming in Qt 4.3 or not. In case the answer is not, we will implement it, modifying the existing engine. It seems that we all agree on the fact that we'd love to use QGraphicsView, altough it's a tricky decision to take right now. We decided then to use it until the end of march and then see if it's still possible to continue using it.

Transcript

The transcript of the meeting is available here; or, alternatively you can view it in HTML here.