On 1 February 2011 07:50, John Layt <johnl...@googlemail.com> wrote: > On Saturday 15 January 2011 19:29:29 sunny sharma wrote: > >> To make things clear for me i would reguest you guys to tell me the further >> steps that i should take. >> So that i can clear up my mind and come up with a clear algorithm of what >> should be done. > > [Catching up on my email now that I'm back from holiday] > > The problem here is the old one of balancing features for the power users > against ease of use for the majority of users, it just means we have to make > the code do more of the work instead of the user, or rather just be smarter > about it. > > The most common features of chiming clocks are: > * Quarters, i.e. different chimes at 00, 15, 30 and 45 > * Striking the hour, i.e. 12 strikes at midnight > * The hour chime plays before the hour, with the first hour strike playing > exactly on the hour > > Combined with the "Speak Time" feature, we would obviously want to allow > slightly more options, such as only chiming/speaking on the hour, turning off > striking the hours (which can get very annoying and is meaningless for speak > time), or chiming/speaking every x minutes. I'm sure people can think of > plenty more "nice-to-have-but-rarely-used" options that we don't want to > expose most users to.
I don't know if this falls under the category of "nice-to-have-but-rarely-used" but could there be an option available that allows chimes to be disabled if the computer is actively being used (eg. there are mouse clicks or keyboard button presses or a movie is being played, etc). I myself would like my computer to chime every hour as if I had my own Big Ben in my living room. Big Ben being the large clock tower in London, England :) But, of course, having my computer chime in the middle of watching a movie or something along the lines of that would sooo annoying. > > Expecting a user to configure a ui for all that is just not on. > > The key to keeping it simple is to NOT allow the user to configure the sounds > and when they play in the ui as most users will never need to do this, and > catering for all the options is just too complex. Instead we would define a > Chime Theme file format that we and power users can use to configure how a > Chime Theme works and what sound files to use, and provide the user with a > simple list of available themes to choose from. We could even allow > downloading new themes from GHNS, in which case we would ship KDE with just a > very simple theme. > > Here's how a single ui section for "Audible Feedback" in the "General" tab > would look like: > > A combo for "Feedback Type" with options for: > * None > * Speak Time > * Play Chimes > > A combo for "Frequency" that is activated only if "Feedback Type" is not > "None", with options for: > * Chime Theme Defaults (only show if "Play Chimes" chosen) > * Hourly > * Quarters > * Every x Minutes (better wording needed) > > (Note that Hourly and Quarters are just synonyms for every 60 or 15 minutes.) > > Next to this combo is a minutes input spin box activated when "Every x > Minutes" is chosen. Alternatively we do "Frequency" as a radio button with > the spinbox inline in the "Every x minutes" text. > > A combo for "Chime Theme" which is only activated if "Play Chimes" is > selected, with a list of the currently available themes: > * Beep > * Time Pips > * Westminster > * Cuckoo > * ... > > Next to this could be a GHNS button to download more themes. > > Optionally under this could be a tick-box for "Strike Hours" which is only > activated if "Play Chimes" is activated, to turn off striking hours which > could get annoying. Alternatively it could be integrated into the "Feedback > Type" combo as separate options for "Play Chimes and Strikes" "Play Chimes > Only" and "Play Strikes Only". > > I think 3 or 4 lines of simple config options is not too bad. The "Feedback > Type" and "Chime Theme" could even be merged for an even simpler interface. > > The Chime Theme would actually be a self-contained folder holding a config > file and all required sound files, and would look something like this: > > sounds/chimes/themename/ > themename.desktop - Holds name of theme and default config options > default.ogg - Default sound to play if no specific sound > strike.ogg > hour.ogg > quarterpast.ogg > half.ogg > quarterto.ogg > > In the .desktop file itself, the config options would allow you to point to > other sound files in other locations and set default frequency, e.g.: > > [Sounds] > hour=/media/data/audio/sounds/doh.wav > > There's lots of options that could be set here, but I won't detail them now. > > Some possible Chime Themes: > > Beep: A simple beep with slightly different ones for hours, quarters, > and minutes. Ship with KDE, download the rest. > Time Pips: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Time_Signal > Westminster: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_Quarters > Whittington: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittington_chimes > Ships Bells: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship%27s_bells > > At first glance it may seem a fairly complex solution, but I think the > implementation will actually be fairly simple and not add much overhead, the > hardest part is designing the config file to be flexible enough. > > John. > > P.S. This is what you get from staring at the ceiling at 4am in the morning > thanks to jet-lag :-) > _______________________________________________ > 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
