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List:       kde-panel-devel
Subject:    KWin Scripting Situation
From:       Martin =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Gr=E4=DFlin?= <mgraesslin () kde ! org>
Date:       2011-06-30 17:24:51
Message-ID: 2009905.hjiu6FtRcB () martin-desktop
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Hi all,

writing to KWin and Plasma as I want more input.

Since 4.6 KWin has a JavaScript interface which has been developed as a GSoC project last 
year. Unfortunately we have not received any further development on the scripting area in 
KWin. The last commit on the scripting subdirectory has been my coding-style change back in 
January. Since the end of GSoC there has only been one commit by the student.

Half a year without any commits means the code is in bitrot state. Especially given that we 
don't have any documentation about how the whole system works and no documentation for 
the users about how to write scripts (including myself). There have been some blog posts 
about it, but the request to move the documentation to techbase and community have not 
been honoured.

Furthermore I have noticed while working with KWin core that some of the signals for 
interaction between core and scripting are emitted at the wrong place. E.g. window activated 
is emitted at a state where KWin might still decide to not activate the window. Also some 
parts use direct method invocation instead of signal'n'slot which violates the design I have in 
mind for KWin.

My conclusion so far is, that:
1. we are not able to maintain KWin scripting. It is likely that Arthur's refactoring project will 
break scripting without we even noticing.
2. we are not able to extend it. E.g. Wayland will not support scripting
3. it is not of any use for our users and nobody is using it (no bugreport so far)

I am very unsure on how to go ahead with this code. The most honest thing would to 
withdraw the feature again, but I don't want to do that as KDE gave a GSoC slot to it.

I would appreciate some input on how to proceed in such a situation. Especially the input 
from Plasma devs who have gone through similar situations (e.g. widget explorer) could help 
me a lot.

Cheers
Martin
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