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Giving Plasma an option for enabling a physics engine could revolutionize the desktop user's experience. Initially, it would simply be eye candy, but it could pave the way for developers to make their applications more intuitive.

Imagine these types of scenarios.. don't think of this list as a bunch of end-goals, but examples of an entirely different philosophy behind interacting with your desktop environment. ways of making the desktop obey rules similar to those we operate under outside of the virtual world.

A physics engine could make this possible and is worth exploring..
* draw an "O" with a crayon-like tool and drag it over the desktop.. whenever the "O" touches something a menu pops up showing methods for interacting with it.. like a right-click, but it would make it easier to scan large lists for things you want to do
* draw an "I" with a crayon-like tool and drag it over the desktop.. whenever the "I" touches something that has meta-data (parent window, current working directory, image size, etc..) it displays that information..
* draw a box on the desktop.. creating a temporary directory on your desktop where you can drag files into.. or make sure that no windows that are drawn afterwords cover that are of the desktop... just crayon an "X" over that area to delete it..
* windows could be thrown to the right and they would coast until they made their way to the next virtual desktop
* shake a window's title-bar and watch it fall into a pile of applications minimized at the bottom of the screen
* circle a corner of a window so that the application is anchored with the desktop or another application. If two applications are anchored, then moving one window will move the other.. if the application window is anchored to the desktop it will always be visible
* grab the corner of a window and turn the window upside down to reveal meta-information about that application (eg. memory/swap usage, owner, current working directory, what time it was launched, parent window, devices used)
* (for kids) one could then write a theme to interact with the desktop as if were a 2D side-scrolling game (ala Mario Brothers) as a tutorial introducing how to use it..

stuff like that.. just an idea :^)

This sounds reminiscent of BumpTop, only using window/desktop interactions instead icon/desktop interactions. It sounds very interesting, but it would take a heck of a lot of work. I would also note that while it would have great applicability to pen-based interactions, executing some of your example with a mouse could be a bit more tricky. I like the idea of a temporary "box" to throw files in. Something like that could be done with a plasmoid (without the gesture, that is), and if you expanded the idea, could be quite useful. I'll (+1) this for innovative thinking, at any rate.

notslad wrote:Giving Plasma an option for enabling a physics engine could revolutionize the desktop user's experience. Initially, it would simply be eye candy, but it could pave the way for developers to make their applications more intuitive.

Imagine these types of scenarios.. don't think of this list as a bunch of end-goals, but examples of an entirely different philosophy behind interacting with your desktop environment. ways of making the desktop obey rules similar to those we operate under outside of the virtual world.

A physics engine could make this possible and is worth exploring..
* draw an "O" with a crayon-like tool and drag it over the desktop.. whenever the "O" touches something a menu pops up showing methods for interacting with it.. like a right-click, but it would make it easier to scan large lists for things you want to do
* draw an "I" with a crayon-like tool and drag it over the desktop.. whenever the "I" touches something that has meta-data (parent window, current working directory, image size, etc..) it displays that information..
* draw a box on the desktop.. creating a temporary directory on your desktop where you can drag files into.. or make sure that no windows that are drawn afterwords cover that are of the desktop... just crayon an "X" over that area to delete it..
* windows could be thrown to the right and they would coast until they made their way to the next virtual desktop
* shake a window's title-bar and watch it fall into a pile of applications minimized at the bottom of the screen
* circle a corner of a window so that the application is anchored with the desktop or another application. If two applications are anchored, then moving one window will move the other.. if the application window is anchored to the desktop it will always be visible
* grab the corner of a window and turn the window upside down to reveal meta-information about that application (eg. memory/swap usage, owner, current working directory, what time it was launched, parent window, devices used)
* (for kids) one could then write a theme to interact with the desktop as if were a 2D side-scrolling game (ala Mario Brothers) as a tutorial introducing how to use it..

stuff like that.. just an idea :^)

This is a very good idea, recently I installed BumpTop and I really like it. I think that similar idea could be a great addition do kde and would finally allow some use of kde on tablet pcs.