The number of new and useful widgets or plasmoids is stunning. There is even a terminal plasmoid and a web plasmoid. I am working on a WebGL and VR widget and it should be easy with all the examples in Python, C, and javascript. You really need to try KDE 4 if you haven't yet as it is really nice once you get used to the different style.
There is no way to explain it, it just needs to be experienced to be appreciated.
I am impressed with the artistic and programming skills of the people who produced yaWP widget. These people are really talented.
I decided to make a plasmoid that is calendar, clock, and weather together as a 24 hour clock with sunrise, sunset, moon rise, moon set, and a link to viewing the stars at that time with a prediction of the weather. I thought that a spiral would be good and a twister to rotate it in "feature space ". Who knows if I will ever get done, but it will let me test the idea of showing 24 hour time with hands of the moon and sun. It might be a good vehicle to test a kind of webGL widget with python and PyGL implemented in the KDE plasmoid framework.
Above Centigrade °C
I shall soon have the temperature according to Lord Kelvin. It is 261.15 °K and so it does feel quite warm, I feel no urge to superconduct. This module is a better program and it builds well and is easy to use.
yaWP Yet Another Weather Plasmoid is nice and I can easily get Kelvin from it.
Here are some things I learned that may be useful for development and finding things needed:
env set printenv apt-file search <filename> aptitude search <pkgname>
I never really wanted to see °K on the display, I just wanted to know how the plasmoids worked. I watched a couple KDE lectures from conferences and they provided some overview, but I like figuring it out for myself. It is much more fun that way.
This tutorial on Plasmoids ( a kind of Graboid, from "Tremors" ) at KDE is my subject for the night. I just wanted to use a Python weather widget and it was okay with Centigrade, but when I used Fahrenheit it lied to me, and I heard it whisper FIXME, then it said in a loud commanding voice, "Make me an option for degrees °K". Also I noticed that you can rotate desktop widgets and that is interesting. So here it goes, my first widget repair. The snap of console is just to remind me how they can be run and also I need to find where the widgets are located so I can install a new one.
sudo apt-get install plasma-scriptengine-javascript
So I can run widgets and now I need to make a library function repair for the other one. You will need that package above to do testing along with others perhaps:
plasma-scriptengine-webkit kdebase-runtime kdebase-workspace
`plasmapkg` is in "kdebase-runtime" , Other useful commands are:
plasmapkg -l plasmapkg --help
And for reference, here is a link to valid widget names at KDE. Also here is the link to general tutorial on Plasma which I will start a new post for Python and other language widgets. I downloaded yaWP instead and I am using that source to design another widget. The PyWeather was an odd package and not well received so I will learn in C++ implementation for now and later do Python interface to a widget. It isn't real difficult and mostly it is knowing which functions to use. I will do a post on yaWP in C++
