Blue Blazer

Hello, i've hesitated to put this blog post on KDE, afraid being told this is a crazy idea.Finally i'm open for challenges, at least this post shows an idea.

Plasma is maturing, more widgets have been added. As a result it enables some other possiblites.

Recently i've seen the beauty of Ribbon UI in Office 14 and Windows 7.
And googling the Ribbon UI on Linux, found two implementations:
GTK# version in Mono:

It seems to be (maybe intended to be) 1-1 copy of M$'s Ribbon UI, where's their creativities?

Vtk designer's menustrip:

Looks OK ,and that's all. It's just bigger icons on a bar.....

Not satisfied with the above two, i'm writing my own:

My Korat::MenuBar's Features:

• Adaptive layout according to width (use own greedy relaxing algorithm), similar to M$'s Ribbon UI.
• Users are very easy to wrap their graphics widgets to be adaptive layoutable. You just need to provide only three other functions (typedef QList WeightList;):
  • QList availableWidths();
    
  • qreal getWidth(const WeightList &);
  • void adjustWidth(const WeightList &);
• Use plasma extensively: theme, palette, Plasma::IconWidget, Plasma::LineEdit etc....,

Pics comming....
Widest：

Medium:

Narrow:

Too narrow, scroll button appears:


Also i'm thinking of bringing more powers and beauties of plasma and graphics model/view to normal widget based application, so i start a Korat UI project(plan):

Its goal is to provide a normal QWidget - Korat::MainWindow,
which correctly provide a view on a QGraphicsWidget - Korat::MainWindowGraphics

Feature plan of Korat::MainWindow:

1. Fully QGraphicsWidget based, goes deeper on the way that Plasma::Dialog do, correctly manage the layout for you (handle spacing, margins, theme change etc...), It's auto themed according to your plasma theme, provide animated layout(Kinetic ?), and other animation effects.
   
2. Integrate KRunner into the main window. Application and its plugins can provide its own krunner plugin, the main window manage/merge them, To quickly search this application's actions, help info, quickly tag the document etc... anything that krunner can do. (You can see from my above pics, there's a filter button and a lineedit besides the tabbar, that's it).
   
3. Ribbon like menubar as i mentioned above, but merge the application and its plugins' sub actions( maybe need to extend kde's xml gui somehow )
   
4. Provide optional Drawers on four corners of central graphics widget, optional Docks on four edges of central graphics widget. Manage their position,size,layout to ease your programming .
   
5. A statusbar(notification area) on bottom.

The Korat::MainWindow's base architecture is done and the Ribbon like Menubar is nearly finished (some scrolling bugs not fixed yet).

Future plan:

1. brainstorm and implement the Drawer, Dock, StatusBar.
2. Port(hack) my own version of KJots to use this UI, since it's one of my favourite KDE application, so it deserves to have a beautiful and easy to use GUI.
   
3. Experiment XML Gui support.
   

Source code under trunk/playground/base/plasma/widgets/koratbar

Thanks for reading, finally a pic for "korat“ , kudos for plasma developers.

Hello, i've implement gnome's global menu in Bespin's XBar.
Now xbar users can get global menu both for GTK and Qt4 applications.
Pics comming....
Gnome's Epiphany web browser:

KOffice2's Krita application:

I just dumplicate the mail and add some more pics :)
Moved to kdereview/plasma/applets/

It's mainly an applet for input methods, so that persons use difference input methods can share the same user interface and the unified systemsettings input method configure integration.
And also include a standalone application and a control module for systemsettings now.

Its main features:

• Multiple backend support, currently support SCIM and IBus(1.1.0+ version)
• Able to float out and embbed into panel dynamically, The floating statusbar(a qwidget) is just a view on the same qgraphicswidget.
• Skin support:
  1. You can choose the skin to follow current plasma theme, then it will auto switch skin when user change plasma theme.
  2. Use custom theme, support install theme from Get Hot New Stuff
  3. Internally use javascript to layout svg, enable the abilities to do adaptive svg layout and "theme" the layout.
• KCModule based configure, config pages for ui, backends are combined to one dialog.
• Provide a standalone version with floating statusbar only if you don't want to add the applet to panel.
  

Its design is simple, just provide a dbus service for input methods
Backends(SCIM,IBus, fcitx ...) <-------->dbus<---------->kimpanel (org.kde.impanel)
communicate by signals only.

Currently the above features are finished, Except:

• Only one kcmodule for ui now, haven't provide kcmodule for backend,
• The kcmodule is working, but lack help text, theme auto preview , other eyecandies........
• The extra two themes are only make for horizontal statusbar and horizontal candidate window layout only, but default theme fully working.
  

And it's also stable now, no crashes in my everyday use.

The backend need to be configured before test this applet, see backend/scim/README and backend/ibus/README
You can even mix use SCIM and IBus for different types of programs(eg. scim for qt, IBus for xim and gtk), but you still have the same user interface
and can't tell the difference without looking at their logo icon.

I'd like to include it in KDE 4.3 but it will be soft freeze is in early April,
So i think i have to ask for review now.

Pics comming

As my first post, first say hello to everyone :)

Want a fancy input method user interface?
Want to put it inside your panel ?

I'm currently writing a plasma applet for input method, which enables different input methods (scim etc..) to share same unified user interface under KDE.
Its main features are there and with a fully working scim backend.
Have a look at some pics:

• Not a new input method, user interface only.
  
• DBus-based, signal only backend<->user interface communicate
  
• Svg themed, currently theme according to your plasma theme.
• Layout to try to make the icon as large as possible under certain size.
  
• Can expand/collapse from an applet to widget.
  

Its user interface is modern and highly integrated to KDE, which give you better user experience when typing text.
And it also break the situation which we only have gtk based input method now whose user interface is designed without concern KIG, KDE integration ...

The source code is under playground/base/plasma/applets/kimpanel
If you're a CJK person whom use input method a lot, have a try ！