{"id":492,"date":"2010-01-11T23:57:28","date_gmt":"2010-01-11T22:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.enricoros.com\/blog\/?p=492"},"modified":"2013-04-21T15:51:15","modified_gmt":"2013-04-21T22:51:15","slug":"grab-one-its-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enricoros.com\/oldblog\/2010\/01\/grab-one-its-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Grab one, it’s free!"},"content":{"rendered":"

As promised, here is a list of some KDE ideas that the people left in my previous post<\/a>, along as mine. They’re available for free, so feel free to pick one and make it yours \ud83d\ude09 As a side note, I’m making a\u00a0KDE Prediction for 2010: KDM will receive lots of love<\/strong>! You can see that the\u00a0stars<\/a> are<\/a> aligning<\/a>. In fact I’m going to split this post into 2 ideas scenarios to reflect that.<\/p>\n

KDM Ideas<\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. QML in KDM<\/strong><\/a>
    \nThis is all about animations, user interaction and eye candy. See     this<\/a> for example.<\/li>\n
  2. Plasma in KDM<\/strong><\/a>
    \nThis is about consistence and configurability.<\/li>\n
  3. Webcam Login (face recognition) in KDM<\/strong>
    \nShow your face (or     Mona Lisa<\/a>‘s one) and you’re in! No password typing needed. Integrating with the pam-face-authentication<\/a> may be the smart way to go.<\/li>\n
  4. Fingerprint Login<\/strong><\/a> in KDM<\/strong>
    \nThis is KDE’s most requested feature… you can’t be wrong implementing it \ud83d\ude09<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    KDE Ideas<\/h3>\n
      \n
    1. Unified webcam library<\/strong>
      \nWebcam’s are being utilized a lot lately: they’re cheap, widespread, and they’re working good under Linux. Projects come out with webcam support, like       Fotowall<\/a>, Kamoso<\/a>, Kopete and there are efforts to get it working in Phonon.
      \nNote that a camera is a source of video, images but also can be used for authentication and may even be used for user input – can you imagine manipulating stuff with your fingers? Note that webcams must usually be read in single instance, so the approach here might be 1 Qt-Only userspace daemon supporting multiple connections.<\/li>\n
    2. Unified Theme Manager<\/strong>
      \nOne theme manager to rule them all: styles, colors, plasma theme, windeco & all. Of course the themes must be packed and shared in a binary-compatible manner with any other KDE system (yes, the challenges are there.. \ud83d\ude09<\/li>\n
    3. Unified Configuration Panel
      \n<\/strong>Making systemsettings really the one and only configuration tool and provide backends to the distributions for adding\/changing modules so KDE systems will have the same feeling for configuring the system. Some modules like ‘partition disk’, ‘edit boot menu’ and ‘manage startup programs’ (daemons) should be added and left to the distribution for implementation – I think they will. Note that current systemsettings lets you configure the joystick even if you don’t have one (!).<\/li>\n
    4. KWIN: draggable windows<\/strong>
      \nAnd for windows I mean (actually J. Janz       means<\/a>) the whole non-interactive panel. Blank space as well as inactive labels should be draggable. From the user POV there is no window-deco + window contents. It’s a panel, let’s use it, move it, resize it, context-menu-it as a whole.<\/li>\n
    5. Raytraced UI<\/strong>
      \nI’ll blog more about this, but this is a little thing I’d really like to do but I don’t know if I will find time to do that. Do you think that iPhone gui is cool? Raytrace the .ui high-level gui definition format and you’ll get something better. Glassy too.<\/span> Mail me if you want to know more about this \ud83d\ude09<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Conclusion<\/h3>\n

      I’m sorry I missed some interesting suggestions but I don’t have space here to detail them; just look to my previous blog entry’s comments<\/span><\/a> to find more about\u00a0BasKet<\/span><\/a> note pads integration into Plasma, file browsing enhancements (context dependent actions, menus, warnings and kparts)\u00a0qt4 gui for vi, etc.<\/p>\n

      As someone pointed out there is quite a bit of overlap and dispersion between the ways to collect ideas. I can count:<\/p>\n