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I was playing with GIMP and thought that perspective capable plasmoids would be an amazing idea.

I'm sure somebody has already thought of it, but I couldn't resist. I'm not a programmer so I can't do it sadly, but maybe this will spark someone's imagination .

I was thinking more along the lines of this being a feature of Plasma, not just making individual plasmoids.

IE alongside the "resize" tool on each plasmoid, you would have a "perspective" tool so that you can set each individual plasmoid to however you wanted it. That way you can simply change each plasmoid's perspective to suit your wallpaper and taste.

This is simply "eye-candy", and I make no apologies for that because that was the idea.

It would certainly make KDE4 a step ahead of anything that "other O/S's" have in terms of "wow" factor.

I joined and posted here on the suggestion of a user from kde-look.org as the idea seems to be quite popular over there.

The original is here if anyone is interested:

http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.ph ... ent=102271

Well as it was already mentioned in KDE-Look it could be possible with wolfen-qt:
http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2008/12 ... -wolfenqt/

Wolfen-Qt is an example-application and not a usable library.
Wolfen-Qt simply uses the ability to transform QGraphicsItems. So Plasmoids could be transformed in a similar way. I think something like an Applet-cube should be easy to implement. There could be a 3D-Layoutmanager.

Would it be possible to implement Qt's ability to transform QGraphicsItems without manipulating a 3D surface? Or is the 3D surface essential to the concept?

The User wrote:Wolfen-Qt is an example-application and not a usable library.
Wolfen-Qt simply uses the ability to transform QGraphicsItems. So Plasmoids could be transformed in a similar way. I think something like an Applet-cube should be easy to implement. There could be a 3D-Layoutmanager.

Yeah sorry, I didn't use the right words.
Wolfenqt is example, but it does show you the power of Qt. If 3D is what "we" want 3D-Layout manager could be the thing.


I think that it could be done with moving plasmoids on 3D axis and not having the whole desktop 3D.
But on the end we must ask ourselves is this even useful? It sure looks nice, but even rotating plasmoids makes little sense and it's useful more or less only for picture frame.
It's a good idea, but it has to be put to use not just add it for eye candy.

Of course, this would be a low-priority-type feature. It's obviously just another, "Look what I can do!" thing, but I believe that this (as well as the current rotate feature) helps to make the desktop feel more natural, more, "organic" then the typical everything-must-be-on-the-same-axis-and-grid.

There are only a few uses I can think of. One is setting up a "desk" or "room" type 3D-desktop, where plasmoids are mapped onto objects in a static photographic or 3D wallpaper. So for instance a wallpaper of a physical desk with plasmoids on computer screens, or a wallpaper of room with plasmoids on the TV, in picture frames, etc.

See here: http://lifehacker.com/5162764/the-deskt ... -a-desktop

It is pretty cool-looking, but there are two problems. One is that the widgets are not rotated correctly. Plasma can already take care of that. The other is that the perspective is not right. Plasma cannot handle that currently, but this idea would be able to. You would also be able to, for instance, put the notes plasmoids flat on the desk, or put a picture, clock, or calendar plasmoid on the wall.

I think a good way to do this is to have a "3D rotation" button that when clicked temporarily freezes the plasmoid and then maps it onto a semi-transparent cube that can be freely rotated in 3 dimensions. Then, once you let go of the cube, it determines the angle of the cube relative to the screen, the cube disappears, plasma stores that rotation information to the plasmoid's data, then uses that angle to reshape the plasmoid. Then it turns the plasmoid back into a 2D shape that has been changes so that it looks like it was still on the cube.

So in other words it maps a 2D plasmoid onto the face of a 3D cube, allows you to rotate the cube, then uses perspective to map the plasmoid back into a 2D shape that looks like it is still on the cube. That gives you the freedom of working with a 3D object, but not the cost of permanently having a bunch of 3D plasmoids on your desktop. I think it is a lot more natural to try to manipulate a solid object than an infinitely thin sheet, but would cost a lot more computing power if it was always that way. So I think keeping the plasmoids as 2D objects except at the exact moment they are being rotated in 3 dimensions then immediately turning them back to 2D after would be the best tradeoff.

^^ That sounds like a pretty good implementation - but I found one thing a little niggly: you wouldn't be able to read the notes!
If that's the case, you'd have to have ANOTHER button on the plasmoid handle to, "restore to 2D", when it would smoothly animate the plasmoid jumping from the 3D state to a 2D state in its current location.

What concerns me now, is that the plasmoid handles would be getting crowded with buttons that many users don't know the functions of, nor really care.

You would only have a problem with the notes if you did a really big rotation with small fonts. If you kept the rotation small and/or the fonts large it should be fine.

As for the clutter issue, perhaps using the existing rotate button with some keyboard combination, like ctrl+drag, would be better. That would actually be more natural (it is really just a rotation along different axes), would not add any clutter, would make it harder to do by accident, and would be analogous to the ctrl+drag on the resize button to change its functionality so would be easier to discover.

TheBlackCat wrote:You would only have a problem with the notes if you did a really big rotation with small fonts. If you kept the rotation small and/or the fonts large it should be fine.

As for the clutter issue, perhaps using the existing rotate button with some keyboard combination, like ctrl+drag, would be better. That would actually be more natural (it is really just a rotation along different axes), would not add any clutter, would make it harder to do by accident, and would be analogous to the ctrl+drag on the resize button to change its functionality so would be easier to discover.

I like to think this is plausible. Just move the rotate button to the bottom, so when you're rotating on an axis you're rotating it from that corner rather then from some strange co-ordinates just below the top corner.

or we have an new background type like "3d room". In this room you can place 3d plasmoids like a table (with a stack of papers if you have a lot of todos), a door (switch to another screen), a lamp (turn off = shutdown dialog) and maybe with a physic engine. So you after your work you can kick the lamp off or something else

the great thing can be combining this and the 'zoom out' feature (in the plasma menu on the top right of the desktop)

imagine that the desktop activities are not on a board that you can zoom out to but as walls or 3D objects in a virtual 'real life'

then imagine a 3D world game (like one of those wii minigames) that you go thru with ur mouse or keyboard and have to complete some journey to walk between activities (the minigames can be built as part of kdegames or as external plugin and ship kde with the existimg zoom feature by default)

ash wrote:then imagine a 3D world game (like one of those wii minigames) that you go thru with ur mouse or keyboard and have to complete some journey to walk between activities (the minigames can be built as part of kdegames or as external plugin and ship kde with the existimg zoom feature by default)

Have you seen Wolfen qt? It is just a tech demo, but is very much like what you described.

This would be very interesting!

We can put all plamoids on the screen and still can keep screen clean. And then go to that room and view the necessary plasmoids and again come back to clean room.

These walls may be desktops and thus we can couple desktops with 3 D navigating effects and create this possibility.

I wonder if a completely separate desktop type could be "Bumptop".

http://www.ted.com/talks/anand_agarawal ... sktop.html