If you remember, in my last blog wrote that I’m searching for someone to finish the KCategorizedItemsView widget for Plasma. And I got lucky yesterday - I volunteered for the job. Yes, that’s right, I’m volunteering to finish the project I have no time to finish. :)
So, what has been done yesterday?
First of all, the widget/dialog is redesigned to follow some Aaron’s suggestions. The categories list is removed and the categories are in the drop down on the top.
The new delegate for painting the list items is awesome and cool, and awesome, and … did I mention cool?
It has a clickable star for making an applet favorite/bookmarked.
It has emblems for applets that are under special categories such as ‘Recommended by KDE’ and ‘Used in past’.
Everything mentioned before is enclosed in the KCategorizedItemsView widget which can be reused outside of Plasma.
As for Plasma-specific stuff, you can now use the browser to add the applets to the desktop in a drag-and-drop style.
You’ll have to wait a bit for the screenshots/screencasts because I’m doing a clean KDE4 build at the moment - so it’ll take some time.
Here goes the message I have just posted to panel-devel:
It is a general purpose displaying component with categories a on the left side, search bar and filters on the top. (the thing we’ve discussed earlier on this list)
The state of the widget is as follows:
The UI layout is finished
Abstract classes for models/items defined
All filtering capabilities working (categories, search and special filters)
What needs to be done:
The Delegate for the items. The curent implementation of the delegate only renders the item in a fancy [but ugly] way, but does not provide the favorite alteration icon, nor ‘more details’ option.
NOW THE IMPORTANT PART: Since I have no time to continue working on this at the moment (exams, bloody exams), I have submitted the code to the SVN. (trunk/playground/base/plasma/appletbrowser/)
So are there any wolonteers for the only TODO item that needs to be finished before it can be used in Plasma?
Posle depresije koju je ostavio prvi dan Exita zahvaljujući činjenici da sam dobio akreditaciju sa tuđom fotografijom (lik na njoj ima plave oči i punačak je), i utiska koji je ostavio Robert Plant (novi nadimak koji sam mu dao zbog uništavanja pesme “Whole lotta love” nije prikladan ovom blogu), došao je poslednji dan za koji sam bio planiran da drzim prezentaciju o FSN-u i Slobodnom softveru.
Nismo kasnili onoliko koliko je Jelic - samo pola sata.
Ispred bine je bilo poredjano nekoliko pretežno praznih redova stolica - ljudi je bilo samo sa desne i leve strane, a sredina je bila prazna. Počeo sam, naravno, sa zahvalnicom što su se odazvali u tolikom broju.
Odatle je sve krenulo “nizbrdo” - kad jednom počnem da se glupiram, ne mogu da prestanem. Za sledeću godinu ću morati da se prijavim kao “stand-up” komičar (što bi rekao PetarZ zato što sam “stand up guy”).
Dakle prvih nekoliko minuta je prošlo u mom zasmejavanju publike, pa sam počeo sa prezentacijom. Ubrzo se ispostavilo da mi je Jelke opet uvalio da držim prezentaciju pred pogrešnim ljudima - kad sam pitao ko sve iz publike ima računar, samo je jedan lik podigao ruku (prošlog puta sam pokazivao uber-geekovima kako da instalisu Ubuntu, ako se sećate).
Kad sam počeo sa “suvoparnom” teorijom, imao sam prilike da čujem iz susednih kafića po koji zvižduk i slično, ali sam bio previše dobro raspoložen da bi mi smetalo - čak sam “malo” počeo i da ih prozivam.
Po završetku prezentacije, pošto mi se nije silazilo, počeo sam da komuniciram malo sa publikom pa sam im čak ponudio i da pevam pošto nisu bili zainteresovani za pitanja vezana za Slobodan softver. Dotična ponuda je izmamila velike ovacije. Verujem da je to bilo prvi i poslednji put da se Exitom prostro zvuk sovjetske himne “Союз нерушимый республик свободных …”. Publika je bila u delirijumu :D
Pošto nisam dobio dovoljno zvižduka do tada, morao sam da se “šalim” malo i na račun Exita i da govorim kako je Beer-Fest mnogo bolji… reakcija je bila očekivana i zanimljiva. Čak sam uzrokovao i diskusiju o tome kako je Beer-Fest samo plagijat “Dana piva” i slično.
Za kraj, moram da uputim ogromnu zahvalnicu fantastičnoj ekipi koja je radila na Agora bini. Momci su legende… jedan od njih (kome ne znam ime) je dobio i Ubuntu CD kao zahvalnicu :)
P.S. Da ne ispadne da je prezentacija bila baš uzaludna, posle nje sam imao prilike da upoznam neke ljude koji su bili oduševljeni jer nisu očekivali da će na Exitu čuti bilo šta o Slobodnom sw.
Just to notify the world of a new and awesome and … data engine for Plasma. The name should not be spoken out loud, so I will write it down - the name is FileBrowser engine.
If you do not want to watch the screencast, the engine returns the list of files and subdirectories if a client requests a directory, and meta data about files if the file is requested. The information returned is dynamic so if a file/dir changes (or is deleted), the client is notified.
Expect it in the SVN soon. Edit: It has been committed to the SVN.
Later, I will integrate the Nepomuk into the engine.
Edit: The main purpose (the purpose I started making it) is to use the engine to provide the data for the KMenu replacement / any type of application launcher actually…