KDE Plasma for Mobile Phones

Introduction KDE Mobile Plasma Mobile

KDE Plasma for Mobile PhonesKDE in your pocket...

Alexis Menard

March 9th 2010

Alexis Menard — KDE Plasma for Mobile Phones 1/32


Outline

1 Introduction

2 KDE Mobile

3 Plasma Mobile



Agenda

1 Introduction

2 KDE Mobile

3 Plasma Mobile



About MeWho am I?

Alexis Menard (IRC : darktears)

Qt Developer since 2008, based in Oslo

Mainly work on QGraphicsView, Dialogs and Widgets

Recently involved in QML development

Started KDE development in 2006 with KPlato

Plasma developer since 2007



French Fast-Food



Norwegian Gastronomy



The Plasma ProjectAn ionized gaz...

The beginning...

Design started somehow in 2006

First code was written in 2007

Came as a replacement of KDE3 technologies :KDesktop, Karamba and Kicker

Released in KDE 4.0 (January 2008)



The Plasma ProjectA long start...

The beginning...

First release was missing many features but add newcapabilities

Many KDE3 features were added during 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and4.4

Last release is KDE 4.4.1 two weeks ago



The Plasma ProjectPlasma Everywhere...

Plasma today

A desktop user interface that will mature in 4.5

A netbook interface released with KDE 4.4 which will becompleted in 4.5

An upcoming interface for mobile phones



Plasma Desktop



Plasma Netbook



Agenda

1 Introduction

2 KDE Mobile

3 Plasma Mobile



KDE on a phone, WTF? (1/4)Well, we have Qt on phones now

KDE Today

Around 48 Mb on disk to use the full platform

Rumors says that on MeeGo 3rd party apps will have32Mb

Kdelibs is one big beast



KDE on a phone, WTF? (2/4)Solving the puzzle...

The strategy

Reduce KDE platform internal dependencies

Modular packaging so you install what you need

No Binary division like Full Desktop/Mobile phone



KDE on a phone, WTF? (3/4)Let’s have a look on the menu...

Three profiles...

KDE Desktop : what we know today

KDE Tablet : mostly the full game aiming for very lowfeature loss, but some modules aren’t recommended

KDE Mobile : only the most useful modules.Dependencies are simplified as much as possible, usefulmodules are marked as mobile suitable



KDE on a phone, WTF? (4/4)The plan...

Action plan

We need to communicate with packagers in order to seemore fine graine packages built, at least for thenon-desktop variant of distros.

We need to add a CMake option to build KDE for a givenprofile

Don’t enforce the KStyle on other platforms

The Mobile platform comes with much more constrainsand there are no kdelibs yet there, so no compatibility canbe broken. We might do some BC breakage here to allowslimmer dependencies



Agenda

1 Introduction

2 KDE Mobile

3 Plasma Mobile



The projectKDE strikes back...

Plasma Mobile

Some research has happened in Maemo Summit whensome people got a N900

Extra research on a complete Plasma inNovember/December 2009

We officially kicked the project in February 2010



Beware of the dog!!

WARNING: The next slides are describing work in progress,everything can change



Tokamak 4 (1/5)The Plasma code camp...

The starting line...

An Intel Compal JAX10 with Moblin

A Nokia N900 with Maemo5

Qt, KDE, Plasma, three developers and a designer




The state of art...

Maemo5 (and almost all others) : Multiple ’desktops’that you can slide + a gridview to launch applications

Moblin : No real dedicated user interface

So pretty crowded but still the same approach more or less




The state of art...

Maemo5 (and almost all others) : Multiple ’desktops’that you can slide + a gridview to launch applications

Moblin : No real dedicated user interface

So pretty crowded but still the same approach more or less




Our ideas

Make the navigation more context aware : where i am,what i am doing, who i am

You should be able to define activities : work, messaging,social, games

A solution

The desktop should be based on activities

No big gridviews with all applications, just the relevantones

An activity switcher not on your way




Our ideas

Make the navigation more context aware : where i am,what i am doing, who i am

You should be able to define activities : work, messaging,social, games

A solution

The desktop should be based on activities

No big gridviews with all applications, just the relevantones

An activity switcher not on your way



Plasma Desktop






How activities work?

Activities can contain widgets (related to the activityitself)

If you want to do more with a given widget you canswitch to full view






How to launch applications?



Technical bits : Plasma core technologiesNo it’s not mega bits...

Applets

have a built-in way to react on form factors they’rerunning on

shares data using data-engines

can be shared on the network

are SVG themable

Containments

are containers for applets

can layout them if you want to

and they are applets!



Technical bits : Plasma core technologiesNo it’s not mega bits...

Applets

have a built-in way to react on form factors they’rerunning on

shares data using data-engines

can be shared on the network

are SVG themable

Containments

are containers for applets

can layout them if you want to

and they are applets!



Technical bits : Plasma Mobile

How it works...

QML is built in

Applets and Containments can be written in QML

Designers can provide QML for different devices

QML script engine : you can package/ship QML appletson kde-apps.org



Disclaimer about the demo

Plasma-mobile is running fullscreen alongside withhildon-desktop

Applets used here are not related to the activities, wellit’s a demo :D

LOTS of things are missing



Demo



Questions ?Join us :[email protected]#plasma on freenode

Alexis Menard : [email protected]


Technology

KDE Plasma for Mobile Phones