Funny, after blogging I got some more feedback, Aaron put in a small fix and Stephen suggested another Akonadi related improvement so that I could remove another 20 lines of code that were not overly nice.
So here is the update and I get to post first screenshots (yeah, that’s what we all have been waiting for, me included 😉 since I worked blind in a way). The tool when you write a Plasma DataEngine that you’ll have a close relationship with (of hate-love possibly) is plasmaengineexplorer. It will simply show you the data offered by your engine and saves you from guessing what’s going on in there.
Starting it with the engine as parameter plasmaengineexplorer --engine=calendar saves some nerve… (I discovered this after getting tired of selecting the right engine in the combo box in it).
Plasma Engine Explorer – of course this is a developer tool. But it’s of great utility when writing applets also.
For Akonadi I found akonadict start/stop helpful. I have my Akonadi from 4.4 and my build from trunk in parallel and they happen to be incompatibel, so I need to start/stop them in the right environment. With akonadiconsole you can peak at the internals, so you know what’s going on and if your calendar events actually exist. This avoids waiting for data that is simply not there…
Early preview – not the final state… but it’s all there, waiting for beautification:
As you can see in the screenshot, we’re ready to rock… but not quite. As Aaron remarked, it still looks quite ugly. But it’s great how quickly we got this working! When you move the mouse over a particular date, you will get the tooltip that you see at the top of the screenshot. It’s just a matter of cleaning it up and maybe showing each event just once 😉
I think it’s time that Plasma and other parts of KDE get closer to each other again. I’m happy that there are some Summer of Code projects about this. Especially better integration of the PIM suite and desktop shell is great! Both Plasma and Akonadi/KDE PIM are very welcoming for new contributors… just like all other parts of KDE, so please talk to each other 😀
Maybe I should add the default disclaimer about unreleased software, yada yada: This is a preview, it will enrich your life with KDE SC 4.5, but until then it lives in a dark and dangerous place and dreams of becoming a butterfly. Or maybe not.