Opening this discussion following a post on this idea: the debate is whether Plasma Widgets should eventually take the place of traditional applications, e.g. in different form-factors to the traditional desktop (as is happening in plasma-mobile), or whether they should remain distinct from applications (e.g. to have widgets on plasma-mobile, but to have full-blown applications as the main interation as is happening in current mobile phone operating systems).

Discuss benefits and issues of each consideration. Go!

Will post at length later - hungry, lazy and tired at the moment >.<'

Thanks for opening the thread.

These are some of my general thoughts concerning the purpose of plasma and plasmoids.

Plasma was generally designed with the idea that a plasmoid is just a small part of an application (if it has any connection to what we consider to be a normal application at all) made to provide a minimal quick-access interface.

One of the examples could be the /now playing/ applet - it is not a full application, just a tiny thing showing the name of the song, album art, and play controls. Another example would be the calendar applet which only shows the dates from Kontact, but doesn't provide the event editor and similar.

Now, although this was the idea, libplasma provides some nifty things for development of normal apps as well - mainly the support for form-factors - so you are (theoretically) able to write one application which would work on both large and small devices and it would automatically adapt to the platform.

As for the plasma-mobile and the rest of the kde*mobile, it is a bit different tale. Plasma is still only a shell with small applets. A bit more powerful applets but still applets.

From my point of view, the normal mobile /apps/ are rather simple compared to their full-blown desktop counterparts so they can easily fit into a /widget/ paradigm. That, coupled with the fact that phone-ui-toolkits went the /fancy-graphics/ way produced the effect we see in plasma-mobile.

I hope anyone was able to understand what I wrote, since I'm not sure I'll be able to if I read it again

I can understand where the idea of Plasma widgets came from but I can remember the Xerox Parc machines from the 1980s where you had widgets and applications running side by side on the screen. From a user perspective they were things than ran in windows on a computer screen - it might be helpful for a developer to classify them in some way depending on the types of demands they make on a computer's resources but to a user they were all just computer programs that did something the user wanted.

I can certainly see a convergence - possibly pushed by netbook interfaces - towards something closer to Xerox Parc where the user has no notion that there is any difference between a Plasma widget and a traditional application.

ivan wrote:As for the plasma-mobile and the rest of the kde*mobile, it is a bit different tale. Plasma is still only a shell with small applets. A bit more powerful applets but still applets.

From my point of view, the normal mobile /apps/ are rather simple compared to their full-blown desktop counterparts so they can easily fit into a /widget/ paradigm. That, coupled with the fact that phone-ui-toolkits went the /fancy-graphics/ way produced the effect we see in plasma-mobile.

The issue I have with plasma-powered widgets replacing proper apps on the mobile phone is that I consider widgets, "always-available" applets for when you whip your phone out of your pocket (e.g. a persistent Phone Dial widget makes sense), while full-blown phone applications are opened as and when the user needs them and at no other time.

While e.g. a basic web-browser widget might come in handy in widget form, is it really an optimal form for including features like history, bookmarks, possibly some kind of browser-identification manipulation (a, "force desktop version for websites" mode comes to mind), password management and the like?

Another example would be text messages and E-mail: if I receive an E-mail, a widget is useful for when I just yank the phone out of my pocket: no navigating through an application menu or anything like that, just reading E-mail straight away. You could also argue that, for quick replies, the widget might be fine. However, what about attachment handling in replies? Signing and encryption? Contact management? I feel like these more specific features lie beyond the scope of widgets.

I'm not saying we should port our Desktop/Netbook apps across - definitely not! - but that phone apps will probably still be, "full" enough to constitute a distinct separation between apps and widgets.