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Wouldn't it be great if plasma could run an Android Application as a widget. I think there will be soon a lot of Android applications around as android becomes more common.

Then Plasma would be able to handel Mac-OS-X widgets, Google widgets, Plasma widgets and android widgets(apps) all seamslessly.

This shouldn't be that hard as android apps are very similar to little java apps which already work as plasmoids.

Sounds good. There is Java-support in Kross.

"little java apps which already work as plasmoids"
where did you find that?

Even if the above was correct, and there were Java (awt/swing/swt) applets for plasma, having support for android would still be *that* hard. Android shares only so much with the Java platform - the UI classes mechanism is completely different (the most important difference as far as Plasma is concerned).

Running android apps in a normal environment itself is not a trivial task (this is what Ubuntu team tries to do). And having them running inside the plasma - that is, to force them to live inside the graphic canvas so that you could manipulate them as normal applets is virtually impossible.

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With all that said, I don't consider this to be a good idea at all. Plasma is not meant to be a new operating system and is not meant to hold real/full applications as applets. (example is the folderview and dolphin). Android applications are real/full (albeit designed for constrained screens and cpus) applications.

Being able to run them as normal applications inside a GNU/Linux environment would be a great thing, but IMO there is absolutely no point in making them applets. (nothing more than making blender or gimp a plasma applet)

i suppose he's referring to JavaScript (which is not the same as Java!).

No, I'm not.
Kross has Java-support (in kdebindings) and Android uses Java. There's also a Plasmoid in SVN to embed jar-files as desktop-applets.
But I think the JavaScript-support is even better. I forgot the huge Android-API. I think porting it shouldn't be Plasma's task.

I think NoobSaibot was thinking that the original poster meant JavaScript...

@The User
I know that Kross has Java support, but that is not the question. Kross is a scripting framework - that is you can access plasma's structures from different programming languages. Those are not even full kde bindings.

Could you please point me to the playground applet you're talking about since I can't find it?

Compilable SVN-Branch: svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/pl ... ase/plasma
Java-Applet: applets/java

PS:
It uses Jambi not Kross.

no, i was actually talking about The User. as i didn't know that Kross supports Java and *lots* of people confuse Java and JavaScript. my appologise The User

@The User
Ok, I was afraid you are talking about that, and hoping that you're not

You see, that applet was something I (if you don't trust me, see who committed it ) had whipped up when I thought that Jambi will be something grand and beautiful - that it will provide full KDE bindings for Java (as it was hinted back then).

It is not running java applets/jars/whatever in plasma. It is just a demonstration that, by using Jambi, you could theoretically write plasma applets using Java. Theoretically, because it doesn't have access to any of Plasma's features that are not already in Qt (because there are no libplasma bindings for Java).

So, that has nothing to do with the /real/ Java. In a sense that it uses Qt based classes (QGraphicsView, QGraphicsWidget ...) for UI and all, and not the standard Java UI (Swing and AWT). I was hoping that Jambi will gain support for Swing/AWT but I don't really know what is the state of that project.

I read somewhere that Canonical put some effort in making Android Apps run under ubuntu, maybe looking at the code could help:

Here's an article:
http://http://www.ditii.com/2009/05/27/canonical-showed-android-apps-run-in-an-ubuntu-netbook/

Just brainstorming..

HI running Java applet in Plasma was blogged on by Aaron Seigo himself.Python,Javascript or Web
In this artical he reviews someone elses plasmoid that uses a python script to load and run a Java applet. he then proposes a number of other was to do it the lasy of which just uses webkit to run the Java

X-Plasma-API=webkit
X-Plasma-MainScript=jstet.html

I realise that this is not the same as running Java directly in the plasmoid but even if it involves a python script wraper or something.

As for it's use case. I know Plasma is not meant for full sized applications but some proper applications (android or otherwise) are small, simple and may be usefull as a desktop widget. Android apps especially are usually small and often widget like in functionallity.

If ubuntu are successful in running Android Apps on the desktop then that code could be made availbale in plasma maybe through a simple wrapper.

:lightbulb:
I just had an idea that might satisfy both sides of this argument. What if instead of building Android App support into Plasma, We made a Plasma widget that was just a wrapper to run any normal desktop App. That way Plasma stays lightweight but those who really want a particular Desktop App (or through ubuntu's Android on the desktop work, an Android App) could do so if they wished.
The addvantages of doing this would be that the Desktop/Android App in question could be sized, possitioned and rotated with other plasma Apps and associated with a Plasma activity.

:lightbulb:
Alternativly Maybe Kwin windows manager could be made to support Plasma like scalling, rotation and association with an Activity (maybe even hide from taskbar). Then embeding an App into plasma would become redundent.

What do people think?:-S

That article is about a JavaScript game, not a Java game. [1]

I don't think that nsplugins (java, flash...) are working in the plasma's web browser. If you have some of them installed (to be visible by Qt) try loading some site that uses such plugins in the 'Web Browser' plasma applet.

As for 'wrap any normal app into plasma' - there already exists such an applet (although the rotation doesn't work). It is based on XEMBED protocol and is located in the playground. Your idea about rotating etc. could work but only when compositing is enabled.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript ... t_and_Java

On QtLabs there are sometimes examples for xembed. There the windows can also be rotated. Couldn't that be possible for the embed-applet?

Again, without a link to the story you're referring to, I can't say much about that.

From my experience with XEmbed and Qt that is not possible. The only thing I saw that was related to /rotating windows/ is the 'Widgets on Canvas' thing that allows Qt's widgets to live inside the graphic canvas (and that we [plasma] use extensively since it was included in Qt)

Sorry: X11 Widget Mirror