KDE 4 GUI framework

Here are some of the ideas for revamping KXMLGUI into a successor to KDE 4, codenamed LiveUi.

The goal of this framework is to provide a facility for creation of graphical user interfaces:

• as quick and easy to use as possible
• which provides all features of XMLGUI, and some important extras (especially, designable actions and action collections)
• as a side benefit, will one day allow for graphical configuration of kiosk mode, without any effort on the developers' part.

Overview:

• Two main methods to creating GUIs: via an api, and using Qt designer.
• For the api, actions are inserted into a component object using a simple stateful builder api.
• For designer, the information in the .ui files is integrated at compile time by uic (or an additional kde uic-like tool), into the autogenerated ui class
• Run-time redesignability will be possible with configuration dialogs/tools embedded into the apps
• User's settings will not be lost when an application version increases.
• Backwards compatibility (from 4.0 onwards) should be maintained (ie. no renaming actions etc)
• Shortcuts will be designable with a special view to see a keyboard and all the shortcuts mapped onto that visual representation of the keyboard
• The API will provide a method for defining application states and associating actions states (enable/disable/hide/show actions depending on the state)

Required tasks to achieve this:

• Create the live ui API and logic
• Port an app (or several) to verify the approach
• Create a designer plugin which exposes kde standard actions
• Create a template for designer which allows creation of a new KMainWindow subclass
• Allow designer to create QAction subclasses
• Create actions to represent merge placeholders, and insert them into the gui to hold that position
• Create KActionCollections
• Allow designer to assign KActions and subclasses to KActionCollections
• Create a tool to extract information from existing apps, and put that information into the new format. Will require either run-time or code extraction mechanisms to get information about actions.
• Create the user configuration code and allow creation of new toolbars

Non required tasks:

• Allow designer to load a part's ui file, and merge it into another ui file currently open; show all non-merged actions as disabled/grayed out so that you're just editing the part's ui file
• Create a graphical tool to load ui files and generate kiosk rules from that
• Allow export of ui files from code which used the liveui api to create the gui instead of designer, for use with the kiosk tool
• Allow the definition of 'global' plugins that apply to all applications. This can be used for plugins such as bridges to script engines that are not application specific.