KDE Releases Plasmate 1.0, A Plasma Workspaces SDK

jrepin writes "The KDE Plasma Workspaces team is excited to announce the first stable release of Plasmate: an add-ons SDK that focuses on ease of use. Plasmate follows the UNIX philosophy of "do one thing, and do it well". As such, it is not a general purpose IDE but rather a tool specifically tailored to creating Plasma Workspace add-ons using non-compiled languages such as QML and Javascript. It guides each step in the process, simplifying and speeding up project creation, development, adding new assets, testing and publishing. The goal of Plasmate is to enable creating something new in seconds and publishing it immediately."

Comments

they are misusing the term "UNIX philosophy"

[Anonymous Coward]

Plasmate follows the UNIX philosophy of "do one thing, and do it well".

This specific bit of the "UNIX philosophy" is referring to the transformation of STDIO to facilitate piping. That is clearly not what this tool is designed to do: Plasmate clearly encompasses every part of a specific task, instead of being a general tool designed for reuse in any context to achieve any task.

Re:they are misusing the term "UNIX philosophy"

[CajunArson]

a general tool designed for reuse in any context to achieve any task.

[awk] is not designed for reuse in [my dishawasher] to achieve [cure for cancer].

Therefore awk does not follow the UNIX philosophy. Lather, rinse, repeat for any and all UNIX utilities, functions, etc.

Oh any "everything is a file" is a lie too. I can't open a TCP connection by opening a file, I have to use sockets, which are a different paradigm. Don't even get me started on shared memory!

Re:they are misusing the term "UNIX philosophy"

[bcmm]

Bash 3 can pretend TCP sockets are files.

The goal

[c0lo]

The goal of Plasmate is to enable creating something new in seconds and publishing it immediately.

May I chose a tool that helps create something of good quality? I'm quite sick of crap published in seconds only because it's new.

"do one thing, and do it well"

[Rob Y.]

Is "do one thing, and do it well" really still the Unix philosophy - for GUI stuff as well? This works great for command-line stuff, where you incorporate commands into pipes and scripts. But user expectations for GUI apps are more like "anticipate my needs and surprise me by being able to do obscure function x that I didn't even know I needed until now". Some would call that bloat, but whatever. My point is that GUI stuff is different than command line stuff, if only because you don't paste multiple GUI apps together to accomplish more complex stuff. The app's got to do it, or it doesn't get done.

Re:"do one thing, and do it well"

[Teun]

Come on, this is the third millennium.

I call it utter crap to describe a useful GUI as bloat.
A useful GUI will be a graphical front end (really!) to the actual tools a nerd or specialist would employ via command prompts. The non-specialist does have little knowledge of the proper names or spelling of tools he otherwise knows to exist, the GUI is the reminder, the pick list if you like, and a good GUI will lead him to a workable solution.
The useful GUI will also supply sufficient information for the non-specialist to make up his mind and lead to a correct order of operations.

Re:"do one thing, and do it well"

[TheRealMindChild]

My point is that GUI stuff is different than command line stuff, if only because you don't paste multiple GUI apps together to accomplish more complex stuff.

So you mean COM/ActiveX?

Re:"do one thing, and do it well"

[jvillain]

I agree that a gui doesn't fit the description but a gui can be made up of components that do.

Re:"do one thing, and do it well"

[K. S. Kyosuke]

My point is that GUI stuff is different than command line stuff, if only because you don't paste multiple GUI apps together to accomplish more complex stuff.

Clearly he's never seen a tangible functional interface with direct manipulation before.

Re:"do one thing, and do it well"

[HiThere]

Not really. There are many GUI applications that delegate the actual performance of the functions to other parts of the code. Sometimes libraries, and sometimes separate application. No *real* difference here, except for packaging.

OTOH, that's a "slippery slope", as libraries tend to be integrated into code in ways that separate applications can't be. But still, it's basically the same thing.

That said, I will admit that MOST GUI applications are of the more tightly integrated variety. There are good performance reasons for that. But it's not clear that as computers develop an increasing number of cores that the advantage will remain with the integrated applications.

Re:"do one thing, and do it well"

[drinkypoo]

Is "do one thing, and do it well" really still the Unix philosophy - for GUI stuff as well?

Well, it can be.

This works great for command-line stuff, where you incorporate commands into pipes and scripts.

There are many programs which consist of one or more command-line tools which perform the heavy lifting, and a GUI which calls them. That is an example of GUI programs which follow the Unix way. If this program works that way, then it follows the Unix way. If not, then not, because it could.

Re:"do one thing, and do it well"

[Anonymous Coward]

The CLI side pipe is on GUI side the mouse drag'n'drop.

You search a file with filemanager like Dolphin by clicking folders, while on CLI you use cd function of shell and ls program to give you listings of that specific directory.

When you find it, you open it clicking it in Dolphin what launch wanted application. On CLI you type program name and then filename with wanted options etc.

Where with CLI you need to use one program with options and then pipe it to other etc, on GUI side you save file and open it again in other application. With files what allows, you can just drag and drop file from application to another to work with it.

Example you first use Gwenview to browse your pictures, you find wanted and you open it to image editor. Then you want to add another picture as well. So you use again Gwenview to browse wanted picture and then you drag and drop the picture to image editor and you can choose to add it as new layer or new image or to current layer depending where you drag and drop it.
There is no equilevant easiness on CLI side.

Re:"do one thing, and do it well"

[drinkypoo]

The performance reasons are often overplayed anyway. Unix has cheap process creation and anything you call frequently will be cached.