Is it possible to create media center app, using plasma desktop?

I thought about it and it could work like this:
Plasma MC button is on the desktop, it is like other plasmoids. When you click it, all panels, icons and widget disappear and desktop is changed to media center view. It is controlled by remote controller.

My 2nd idea is multitouch capablity. It could work like in other systems. Multitouch gestures are very convinient when you use tabletPC or other devices with multitouch.

Next idea is, that everything is available from everywhere, like in Windows. you can change from dolphin to systemsettings or konqueror instanly, without opening any window.

Are my ideas good? What do you think about them?

siekacz wrote:Is it possible to create media center app, using plasma desktop?

I thought about it and it could work like this:
Plasma MC button is on the desktop, it is like other plasmoids. When you click it, all panels, icons and widget disappear and desktop is changed to media center view. It is controlled by remote controller.

I know this is planned in some form for KDE 4.3 or 4.4, but I do not know the details (I am not sure if there even are details yet). Personally I think this would be better as a containment than as a plasmoid. You could then embed appropriate plasmoids in the containment, but you could also use them elsewhere. In fact the containment-aware plasmoids could make it so that appropriately-programmed plasmoids know they are in a media center containment and set themselves up for it while still being useful in more tradional containments. For instance the amarok control plasmoid could be an interactive box with title and album art on the desktop, a thin strip with play/pause and back and forward buttons on the panel, and a large interactive display with metadata, large album art, the current playlist, and other information when in a media player containment. I think that is one of the big advantages of plasma, plasmoids could know the context under which they are being used and act appropriately.

siekacz wrote:My 2nd idea is multitouch capablity. It could work like in other systems. Multitouch gestures is very convinient when you use tabletPC or other devices with multitouch.

Yeah, it looks like multi-touch is the next big thing. But KDE is sorely lacking in support for input devices. I'll have a bit more hope for this after they implement more basic input like the back and forward buttons on mice.

siekacz wrote:Next idea is, that everything is available from everywhere, like in Windows. you can change from dolphin to systemsettings or konqueror instanly, without opening any window.

My impression was that is the whole idea of konqueror and was basically what they were trying to get away from with dolphin. Dolphin is meant to be just a file browser, nothing more. Having a systemsettings kio slave for konqueror might be a good idea if it doesn't exist already, but I definitely don't think combining dolphin with konqueror would work, or rather it would work but should be redundant. They should make sure konqueror supports all of the features of dolphin (and more). Konqueror already uses dolphin as its file viewer anyway, it just doesn't appear to expose all of dolphin's functionality to the user (for instance as far as I can tell the panels are not there, nor can you opt to use the breadcrumb navigator if you want). Then people who want that sort of combined functionality can just use konqueror alone, while if people want separate apps for separate tasks they can use dolphin and systemsettings. That end result would basically be what you are suggesting while not preventing people from using dolphin if they want.

siekacz wrote:Are my ideas good? What do you think about them?

They seem to be good to me.

I thought about MCE as a one of plasma modes(Desktop, Folder View), not one big plasmoid. Of course, everything(songs database, tv channels, podcasts, etc.) should be synchronized with multimedia apps(Amarok, Kaffeine, etc.)

Dolphin is a good file manager, i like it more than konqueror, but it needs more integration with KDE.

For multitouch we need MPX(MultiPointerX) in x.org, it will be released with x.org 7.5(hopefully).

I highly doubt that a centralized plasma media centre would be part of the plasma desktop. It would probably be a separate application written using libplasma. It also might be a collection of plasmoids that could be used on the desktop, but organized in a coherent way in the Media Centre application. There will probably be more plans showing up after Tokamak II, I think. I'm pretty sure I saw a plan to rename plasma (the desktop shell) to plasma-desktop to open up the ability of independent applications being built on the plasma framework. (Like Amarok, or a plasma media centre). Otherwise, naming becomes an issue as you have to distinguish between plasma settings for the library, and plasma settings for the desktop. The idea is to break the "Plasma is a desktop" concept and replace it with "Plasma provides a desktop, among other things."

This is just from mailing list leaching, this is not the official word.

My another idea is to make using fingerprint scanner easier(logging in, sudo, kwallet, etc.).

Blur transparent plasmoids - it shouldn't be a problem. Make something like windows DreamScene.

More settings in systemsettings(x.org administration, daemons, built-in package manager, mobile devices synchronisation, including Windows Mobile, Android, symbian, iPod/iPhone), all settings in one place. Wallpaper and plasma style settings should be there too.