Well, after reading about Planet kde, Plasmoid tutorial by David Edmundson, and after some kde developers argue that they are happy about the design of the new Plasmoids, who seem more consistent and beautiful than kde 4, I was thinking for future Plasmoids, why not create a new platform on which to put them, instead of kde.look or a new section in kde.look, but they have first to be made available to the public, a kind of Visual design control, Breeze certified or something similar short, say those who make plasmoids that to be accepted must follow the guidelines, as it does with google apps material design or Apple with its app for iOS, and perhaps create a new tool similar to a center app for plasmoids?
I do not know if here there is some good idea or if it's all stupid, but better to distribute its ideas, if it goes wrong you ignore

Lazyit,

i like the idea of having some kind of quality control to check Plasmoids are up to certain standard before being make public (or a stamp of approval like you suggest - like Breeze certified.)

This is a really nice idea, i think that KDELook looks outdated and there are a lot of plasmoids that don't fit with the KDE4 style, making a new sort of "Plasmoid Market" with Plasmoids that follow Plasma's 5 visual rules and overall quality (mainly no bugs and a good optimization) would be fantastic.

I understand, however, that perhaps, is not something easy to implement, but the goal of my idea is still to get a way to enforce the HIG!
Example of what I mean is the following:
Now things work so:
I create a plasmoid and place directly on kde look, without any control, the only control is the choice if the user installs it or not!
The way I understand it should be:
I build a plasmoid, and instead of sending directly to kde look, send it to the VDG team may decide to approve or reject the plasmoid!
If it is rejected, send me a message telling you to follow HIG; If it is accepted, it will be the VDG Team that will put directly on KDE look, Bodega, App Store or other

send it to the VDG team may decide to approve or reject the plasmoid!

I think the problem about this is not establishing the "pipeline", but maintain it the whole time. What happens, if nobody has time for reviewing a plasmoid. What happens if the idea is great, but the HIG is not followed correctly?

A solution could be: If you create a plasmoid, you can upload it on <Platform for Plasmoids>, but it's "uncertified", first. Now it can be downloaded.
The developer can easily request a review by VDG (?) and the plasmoid will get the certificate if it passed.

Now how it could work for the user:
The user will see only certified plasmoids by default and can activate that uncertified plasmoids are shown. Maybe this option could be "Show only user friendly plasmoids" (The next thing I can "translate" 'follows HIG' to easy language*)

Also there could be more than the HIG certificate, the plasmoid platform should be able to ...

• ... support "Breeze certified"/(user friedly plasmoid)
• ... separate between "geek playground" (New and maybe unstable plasmoids for advanced users) and "safe to use" (stable)
• More?

I separate between "Breeze certified" and "geek playground", because a stable plasmoid could be still uncertified by breeze.


* Easy language is very important!

There's also another thing: kde-look is not the only way to get Plasmoids.
There is also the plasma-addons repository hosted directly by KDE. Plasmoids that go there are usually designed with the help of the VDG and we have the chance to make them HIG-compliant.

And to be honest, I'd like to stick with that method (though advertise it better) for the time being.

What we could do is

1. Identify good Plasmoids on kde-look
2. Contact the author and invite him or her to refine the UI design together with us
3. Put the code through review by the developers
4. When it meets both our design and code quality standards, integrate it in plasma-addons

@colomar
you're right, I had foolishly forgotten that many plasmoids, probably the official site of kde, are located directly in the repo of various distro

colomar wrote:What we could do is

1. Identify good Plasmoids on kde-look
2. Contact the author and invite him or her to refine the UI design together with us
3. Put the code through review by the developers
4. When it meets both our design and code quality standards, integrate it in plasma-addons

What if a plasmoid meets both design and code quality standards, but its functionality caters to a very small niche and would needlessly bloat the plasma-addons package for most users?

My vote would be for having some kind of endorsement / approval system / logo to say that the particular plasmoid has received a bit of usability and visual design love from us, complies with the HIG and the code's OK too. You can still share unapproved plasmoids but people would be aware that they should maybe not expect them to be as 'good' as the approved ones. Maybe having a filter so that only approved ones are shown by default so that you need to click to say 'show me the unapproved ones' is the way to go (as rumangerst suggested)??

One of the things that's great about open source stuff is the whole 'sharing & working together' principal that it represents. if we're going to try and have a system that says 'the only way that you can share anything is if we approve it first', isn't that behaving like one of those tech companies??

colomar wrote:There is also the plasma-addons repository hosted directly by KDE. Plasmoids that go there are usually designed with the help of the VDG and we have the chance to make them HIG-compliant.

And to be honest, I'd like to stick with that method (though advertise it better) for the time being.

What we could do is

1. Identify good Plasmoids on kde-look
2. Contact the author and invite him or her to refine the UI design together with us
3. Put the code through review by the developers
4. When it meets both our design and code quality standards, integrate it in plasma-addons

That sounds like a good idea

ken300 wrote:My vote would be for having some kind of endorsement / approval system / logo to say that the particular plasmoid has received a bit of usability and visual design love from us, complies with the HIG and the code's OK too. You can still share unapproved plasmoids but people would be aware that they should maybe not expect them to be as 'good' as the approved ones. Maybe having a filter so that only approved ones are shown by default so that you need to click to say 'show me the unapproved ones' is the way to go (as rumangerst suggested)??

One of the things that's great about open source stuff is the whole 'sharing & working together' principal that it represents. if we're going to try and have a system that says 'the only way that you can share anything is if we approve it first', isn't that behaving like one of those tech companies??

@ken300
I understand what you mean, but as I see it, open is not equal to anarchy, it can still be open by following the rules and guidelines, open in coherence with the ecosystem in which it operates, some corporate decisions are not necessarily absolute evil, but sometimes behind them because there is a lot less evil

Lazyit,

Our aim is to make KDE & its plasmoids better, but if we're not careful it will be easy to do this in a way that's quite restrictive.

Rumangerst's idea of filtering the plasmoids to show only 'approved' ones by default, the 'unapproved' ones are just a click away (but you accept the risk that those ones may have 'issues') will acheive the aim of improving the 'approved' plasmoids whilst maintaining the freedom to share plasmoids with others whether they're approved or not.

If we went down the 'apply to us & if everything meets our standards it can go on otherwise forget it' route then that freedom would be lost.

A company's sole reason for existance is to make profit - they'll often need to be restrictive to get one over on the competition & make more of that profit for its shareholders - but we don't, so why not go for the option that maintains our users freedom? Both options will lead to better plasmoids anyway.