-- bottom post please -- On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Michele Andrea Kipiel < michele.kip...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello > > thanks for the quick reply :) > > the interaction you describe as "truly communicating plasmoids" is pretty > much what i imagined when i referred to yahoo pipes. i imagined some > scenarios for that interactio too: think of a "picture frame" plasmoid > which displays a new picture every time a twitter profile (national > geographic, for example) posts a picture. that would require a background > connection between the two. Another scenario i imagined is a stock based > one: imagine you have a "stock ticker" plasmoid on your desk, wich is > connected to a "spreadsheet" plasmoid which registers all the variation of > a certain stock and then saves them in a file. > > The core idea of my proposal is to enable a new interaction layer wich is > accessible straight from the desktop, without the need to even launch a > single application after boot&login. The desktop itself would become an > active environmnt, instead of an empty space. > > Would such a desktop fit your workflow? > > > 2013/9/18 Mark <mark...@gmail.com> > >> On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 11:26 AM, Michele Andrea Kipiel < >> michele.kip...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> hello everybody, >>> >>> the following message is part of an email i sent a few days ago to Marco >>> Martin, who then asked me to share my thoughts on this mailng list. >>> >>> *** >>> my name is michele kipiel and i am a ux designer. I currently work for >>> the Kering luxury group, where i design and user test the checkout >>> processes and the overall UX of the luxury sites. >>> >>> i recently came across a video showing the new KDE framework 5 >>> improvements (the one posted by phoronics, in case you were wondering). >>> >>> watching that video reminded me of what immediately struck me when i >>> first tried KDE 4: the apparent lack of a true purpose for the plasmoids. >>> as a ux designer i constantly strive towards simplification and >>> rationalization of the user experience, and the first thing i noticed about >>> the plasmoids was that they didn't improve my experience in any relevant >>> way, while taking up lots of space on my small 13" laptop screen. >>> >>> i asked myself a simple question: what do i need on my desktop? what i >>> came to realize is that i could really use a desktop which acts as a >>> connection point between the hundreds of apps that live on my hard drive. >>> >>> current plasmoids act as discrete information bubbles (weather, rss, im, >>> social feeds etc..) and threy don't communicate with each other, which in >>> my opinion hampers their usefulness. in other words: what would happen if >>> KDE added a common backend to connect all the plasmoids (i'm thinking of >>> something similar to what elementary OS is doing with contractor)? >>> >>> imagine this scenario: i have a file manager plasmoid open on my >>> desktop, along with other ones. i want to share one of my pictures to >>> facebook. i drag and drop the picture from the file manager plasmoid onto >>> the "facebook feed" plasmoid, which in turn activates the sharing feature, >>> allowing me to add a caption, tag my friends and eventually share the >>> picture. >>> >>> now imagine i want to turn the picture in b/w before sharing it: i just >>> drag and drop the picture onto the "gimp" plasmoid, which shows me a >>> preview of the picture and lets me select an action form a pool of simple, >>> predefined functions. once my picture is rendered, i just have to drag it >>> from the "gimp" plasmoid onto the "facebook" one to share it. >>> >>> in these scenarios each plasmoid acts as a graphic frontend that exposes >>> some functions of the related programs, which don't even need to be >>> launched. it could be even possible to create predefined sequences >>> connecting different plasmoids (think of yahoo pipes, for instance). >>> >>> i don't know whether this is possible or not, but i believe it could be >>> a massive leap forward for the KDE desktop paradigm. >>> *** >>> >>> thank you in advance for every comment, positive or negative. >>> >>> regards, >>> MK >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Plasma-devel mailing list >>> Plasma-devel@kde.org >>> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel >>> >>> >> Hi, >> >> First of all, i'm not a plasma developer so i can't really comment on >> your ideas from a plasma desktop point of view. I can on a technical point >> of view. >> >> What you describe as plasmoids talking to each other with the examples >> you provide isn't really talking to each other at all. It is just properly >> implementing drag/drop for all plasmoids. So for example, if you want to >> "drag" an image from your file browser to the "gimp" plasmoid then the >> "gimp" plasmoid would have to support dropping that specific image format. >> Furthermore if you want to manipulate that image on the gimp plasmoid and >> drag the results to facebook then it would have to support drag >> functionality as well. The facebook plasmoid would then have to accept a >> drop with that image type and handle it. That is not easy stuff to >> implement properly. In fact, in pure QML (which the new plasmoids for >> plasma 2 are) that only becomes possible in Qt 5.2. Now i think KDE had >> some custom drag/drop components that implemented the same support. >> >> Then for plasmoids _really_ talking to each other. If that where to be >> implemented (which i doubt) then i guess it should work somewhat like this. >> Reusing your example here. Imagine you have a facebook plasmoid and you're >> using it. If you then move to a "file manager plasmoid" it should know that >> you came from the facebook plasmoid. If you then select and drag an image >> it could automatically pop up a "gimp" plasmoid to throw some fancy filters >> over your image. The gimp plasmoid (which then knows you came here from the >> file browser from facebook) should offer an option: "Publish to facebook" >> or something alike. That would be really plasmoids communicating with each >> other and would frankly be quite scarry :) >> >> Lastly how i use the plasmoids. I'm a developer so i have an interest in >> more then one console window. So i simply put a bunch of consoles on my >> desktop along with a CPU monitor. That works quite well, but only works if >> you have the screen room for it. It doesn't work on one screen since you >> just don't have the room to see the plasmoids and other windows. I have two >> screens so that's why it works for me that way. >> >> Cheers, >> Mark >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Plasma-devel mailing list >> Plasma-devel@kde.org >> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Plasma-devel mailing list > Plasma-devel@kde.org > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/plasma-devel > > Err, i actually don't think it would fit my need very much.. Lets take my developer example here. How would you make that more interactive? If you follow your example with a stock tracker then it kinda feels like logging functionality.. Not something special as an plasmoid that communicates with - lets say - kexi or some other excel application. And with the twitter profile, that can be done with data engines. In fact, i think all the stuff you want can be either implemented using data engines or (my preference) as a separate QML component.
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