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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: kactions, toolbars and pop up menus in KCModules
From:       Pupeno <pupeno () pupeno ! com>
Date:       2004-01-27 2:57:41
Message-ID: 200401270259.03753.pupeno () pupeno ! com
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On Monday 26 January 2004 20:49, Frans Englich wrote:
> On Tuesday 27 January 2004 01:45, Pupeno wrote:
> > On Monday 26 January 2004 16:48, Frans Englich wrote:
> > > On Monday 26 January 2004 16:55, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > > > On January 25, 2004 11:42, Pupeno wrote:
> > > > > Hi kde developers...
> > > > > I've been reading documentation about kaction, kaction collection,
> > > > > ktoolbar, qdockbar, etc, etc, and I can't find the solution to
> > > > > this. I want to create some KActions in a KCModule and have them in
> > > > > a toolbar and some pop up (right click on a klistview) menus.
> > > >
> > > > you need to manually plug() them in rather than use an XMLUI .rc file
> > > > ... seeing as toolbars, etc should be the exception rather than the
> > > > rule in kcms (they are dialogs, not apps!) i don't think this
> > > > warrants making kcm a XMLUI-integrated class ...
> > >
> > > Regarding toolbars in kcms.. usability wise I personally react a little
> > > awkward. Is toolbars in kcms something we think is a good idea or is it
> > > a Bad Thing? (Something to put in KCM_CONVENTIONS I guess)
> > >
> > > I would say there's many good reasons to say it is a bad idea.
> >
> > I'm making a user management kcm, I want a toolbar to add users, remove
>
> Cool :) It is definitely appreciated and needed.
Yeah, I know.

> > users, change passwords, comments, etc... do you think it is a bad idea ?
>
> I can easily imagine that interaction is helped by toolbars considering
> what functionality your kcm provides, no doubt. The problem lies not on
> your particular kcm but rather at KControl and the kcm "technology". IMHO,
> KControl is too ambitious - it covers a too wide content and is designed to
> be used in certain way(it collects and presents small amounts of settings
> and the way of interaction that means).
> For example, your kcm and other "units" which provides administration
> functionality, is really not just "settings" but something the user will
> work in a whole another way with, hence the need for toolbars and xmlui.
> Putting everything in KControl hurts KControl as well as ie. your kcm could
> be in a better place(for example the space the KCM widget gets is way to
> small in order to "work" in).
> As graphical server administration such as user management, mail server,
> kernel config, etc ad infinitum becomes more common in KDE this problem
> will be more and more clear. Furthermore, it is also suitable if all those
> different admin tasks were collected under one umbrella task such as
> KControl, although it perhaps needs to be more sophisticated, somewhere
> inbetween a kcm and kpart perhaps. I don't thing it is handy from a
> development nor user perspective having it as separate programs. This issue
> was highlighted a couple of weeks ago on kde-usability, the imaginative
> umbrella app was called "KAdmin".
>
> You definitely should get in touch with kde-debian who focus on issues like
> yours. I would bet they work on something similar already and it could be a
> good idea trying to unify work and avoid duplicate work. They also got more
> decent stuff to say in this matter, in contrast to my guessing. (CC'ing,
> feel free to cross post, IMHO).

I see what you mean.
I'm not making a generic User Management Tool but a very specific one for a 
distribution called Ark Linux: http://www.arklinux.org which is intended as a 
desktop for newbies, very newbies so, my application tries to be extremely 
explicative and simple and implements lots of particular ways of doing 
things, for example, access control lists based on PAM.
Going back to the original question.
I was dreaming to instead of developing yet another configuration tool we 
could KControl because I found KControl very powerfull, so, we could move 
things arround to best fit our needs in KControl and develop some KCModules 
for the task KControl doesn't do (like xconfig, network config, user 
management) and use KControl as our configuration tool.
But I'm finding that a KCModule is not very well suited for a user management 
tool and I'm consider going back to develop a KApplication *sighs*.
In the long term what I think would be kewl is to develop an application (for 
Ark Linux) that would be able to load some KParts for Managing and KCModules 
so we wouldn't have to rewrite everything that is already written as 
KCModules, but I find that solution kinda hard to implement an unclean.
What do you people think ?

- -- 
Pupeno: pupeno@pupeno.com
http://www.pupeno.com
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