On 5/13/09, Alan Alpert <alan.alp...@nokia.com> wrote: > Hi Plasma devs, > > Those of you following Qt Labs closely will have heard about Qt Kinetic's > Declarative UI > http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/05/13/qt-declarative-ui/ . As > Declarative UI is targeted towards enhancing the same sorts of applications > as Plasma, plasma integration is a good real-world fit. So we've throw > something together (it's in playground/base/plasma/kinetic-declarative) and > hope that it might be useful in your plans to add Netbook and media center > components; declarative UI is designed to help create embedded device style > UIs! The Plasma integration we've done allows plasmoids to be written > exclusively in QML, or in conjunction with C++. I'll let the blog posting > handle all the riveting details on Declarative UI itself, and focus on > providing more technical details about the plasma integration we've done. > > Firstly the suggested plan for the plasma integration is that it lives in > playground and is not intended for general use until Qt Declarative > stabilizes. Where it goes in terms of technical improvements is unknown; but > we'd love to see what people do with it. So far it's not complete, but > provides a good glimpse of how Declarative UI could benefit a project like > Plasma. Gaps in the integration that we're aware of include setting the > background hint from QML, using plasma widgets from QML and refactoring the > QML frontend part of the kinetic plasmoid into a library class you can just > inherit from and call setQml() on. > > If you checkout the plasma integration repository you'll find that it > provides > a script engine that can run packages comprised of QML files, a plasmoid > that > acts like the qmlviewer program and an example of an applet written in C++ > that draws on a QML file for its fluid UI. There is also a file explaining > how to use plasma features like the data engines and theme easily in your > QML
oh, a problem i've found in this is that if a qml file had some keyboard actions defined in it (like a listview that changes the active item with arrow keys) they won't work when embedded in the plasmoid, while they work fine in qmlviewer (just a wild guess: perhaps is due to the fact er're using a qgraphicsview and not a qfxview here?) > files, along with the standard QML described in the labs post. You need only > the Qt Kinetic Declarative UI repository and KDE trunk as recent as 4.3 beta > 1 (r964546) and you can add Declaratively styled plasmoids to your desktop. > The attached screenshot shows my desktop covered in QML plasmoids, although > the animation doesn't get conveyed well in pictures. The plasmoids to the > left are the plasma-integration examples, and the plasmoids to the right are > examples for just regular Qt Declarative. Sadly I'm not technically > competent > in graphic design and so the plasma integration repository contains a dearth > of compelling examples. But on the plus side it's easy to run any of the > Declarative UI examples as simple plasmoids if you really like them. Note > that the examples in the screenshot that weren't designed as plasmoids have > had minor changes (set 'clip: true' on the root item and remove any opaque > background image) to make them fit in better. > > There is only one good example in the plasma integration repository, a > weather > plasmoid. Because there's only one, it has been a little warped so that it > can be used in a variety of different ways (you can run it as an applet, as > a > non-applet C++, through the script engine and through the kinetic plasmoid). > Despite this the weather example is still a surprisingly small amount of > code > to get a fairly fluid visualization of the weather data engine. And > that 'code' does not need to include C++ (although the weather data engine > is > not designed to be set up declaratively). If even I can make something that > looks decent I can't wait to see what actual designers do with it. > > Qt Kinetic Declarative UI is still under development and not ready for > general > use, the plasma integration doubly so. However, we'd love for you to play > around with it and tell us your thoughts. This will help us improve > Declarative UI even further before release. > > -- > Alan Alpert > Software Engineer > Nokia, Qt Software > _______________________________________________ > 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
