After a couple more tweaks to the P.A.B. I’ve made a screen-cast I’ve promised in the last post.

The main visible change since last post is that the items are smaller so that more applets are shown at once.

EDIT: There are some clarifications in the comments section that I am to lazy to digest and write here, so before asking questions, please read them.

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.

First the screenshot:

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?

Cheers, Ivan

p.s. I hate QT’s model/view design…

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

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0Y2JmguJO8

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…

Well, most of the participants of this year’s aKademy left Glasgow way to early, and have missed to see the city go live on Saturday. Since I had no company, I decided to drift alone – the thing I love to do here in Belgrade.

First of all, it was sunny (wonders happen) and the streets were filled with non-drunk but happy people (again, wonders happen). Every street had it’s own musician or stunt performer so you could choose between blues, rock, folk music, acrobats and more. Or you could join the religious corrtege or the demonstrations against terrorism an the George Square.

A few days ago near the hostel I was intercepted by a girl that works for some against-cancer organization and we talked for a while, and lucky me, we met once again so we chatted a bit more and exchanged some memories.

The next thing on my todo list was to say goodbye to the girl that worked in the shop we used to buy sandwiches in. It seamed like we know each other for ages and both of us were sad that I need to go home.

And finally, when I didn’t know where else to go, I went to the library and sat in front of it on the concrete block like a hobo. People passed and smiled to me (not at me) and nodded while passing… I felt almost like I was a part of the city… I enjoyed.

Iako sam planirao da se javljam malo cesce sa KDE aKademije 2007, bilo je problema i sa netom, i sa vremenom, tako da do sada nisam stigao da napisem bilo sta. A i dalje postoje problemi sa Bloggerom – nemoguce je ulogovati se na isti sa racunara na kojima radimo, ali uspeo sam i to da “zaobidjem” danas (do sada sam zaobilazio mnoge stvari vezane za Kubuntu sisteme koje su instalisali ovde).

Pre svega, samo da kazem da je do sada bilo dosta veselo. Imao sam prilike (koju sam i iskoristio) da se raspravljam sa “svemircem” to jest Markom Shuttleworthom u vezi nekeih stvari koje je spomenuo u svojoj govoranjciji o cemu cete moci da citate u GNUzilli kad se vratim u BG iz GB…

Imali smo i organizovano kisnjenje pored jezera Lomond uz miomirise koji su dolazili sa plinskih rostilja koje smo poneli. Mislim da je ovo prvi put da sam video vegetarijanske kobasice na rostilju. Naravno, nisam ih probao.

Od Mandrive smo dobili 2GB usb flasheve, od ostalih neke cd-ove, solje i slicno. Dobili smo i po primerak Linux Magazina (aktuelno izdanje) za koji mislim da ipak ne moze da se meri sa Linux Format Magazinom. (GNUzilla, naravno van ikakve konkurencije)
Pozdrav za sada… mada, interesuje me kako cete naleteti na ovo sta pisem, sad kad planet FSN ne radi…

Well, for the last few days I didn’t have a chance to connect to blogger (like the most of the people here at aKademy who do not have their laptops with them).

So this is the attempt to override the blogger problems with the help of the Flock web browser.

So, here you are, a few updates about stuff finished at the hacking sessions here in Glasgow:

Kamion now follows some Accessibility stuff concerning colors and styles thanks to Olaf’s presentation. It will need some love, but the main idea is implemented.

The second is that I’ve made my first Plasma engine for monitoring the items in the filesystem. For example if you give it a directory, it will return the contents of it; if you give it a file it will return the basic meta info about the file. If you give it a non-existant path, the engine will return empty data. When anything changes – file is changed, deleted, directory is deleted or created, everything is updated automatically. So the node that was non-existant (empty) will show the appropriate data about a file or directory the moment it is created.