Plasma [kdepipa notes]

These are my notes on the talk Plasma by Jure Repinc.

Plasma – the hottest Desktop environment

Desktop computing has changed radically in the last 20 years,
yet our desktops are essentially the same as they were in 1984.
It’s time the desktop caught up with us.

Manifesto from plasma.kde.org

There was many developments throughout the year, but without very good planning. Once you fixed something it broke something else. It also presented a big problem for new developers because of the complexity.

The story of Plasma

In 2006 they started KDE 4 planning and took opportuninty to redo Desktop. Their goals were:

• extensible
• though out structure
• easy for new developers to contribute
• “beauty”
• usability

Basic elements of Plasma

• Widget – you can setup your Desktop the way you want it. It can be location dependent.
• Plasmoid – it’s a package containing new Widgets
• Corona – canvas on which Widgets live. They are grouped together using containers
• Data engine – it feeds data to Widgets. Each data engine has different sources of data and it’s built around fetching and updating data.
• Script engine – support for different widgets written in JavaScript, python, etc. They support also OS X widgets and such through this.

Future roadmap

• Packaging and moving of Desktop around
• Moving of Widgets between devices
• Studio application for quick Widget building
• Continuing work on ZUI – Zoomable User Interface

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