Updates from MindMirror

From time to time I need a little feature for my own motivation, especially after spending quite some time with the, somewhat boring, implementation of datamodels.

So this time I chose the fullscreen editor as my little feature, which allows you to use the whole screen to write some text. I use this i.e. to draft this blogpost, which gives me exactly what I need (a texteditor), and no distractions.

The mode can easily be toggled with a shortcut, which allows to go back and forth in a snap.
Just after I implemented this, I stumbled upon this neat little tool (http://www.golem.de/1105/83651.html, or just google iA Writer), which is unfortunately for mac only.
However I like the approach of the minimalistic UI and  the focus mode, which highlights always the latest sentence. Also the auto markup looks like a good way of writing structured text without spending to much time on the layout.
Overall I believe they did a very good job on stripping down an application to the essentials for a usecase, and I think this would make for some nice additions to the kde texteditor components, which are also used by MindMirror.
The limiting of the text to an area in the middle of the screen is also something which I want to add to mindmirror, otherwise the lines get very long in fullscreen mode, and/or your sticking on the left half of your monitor.

Also in MindMirror I tried to strip down the UI a bit:
It is now possible to hide the toolbar, which really clutters the UI quite a bit and is not for everyone essential.
In fullscreenmode, where the toolbar is normally shown on top, you can get now a completely white screen, which I really like for writing.
Further I replaced the toolbox on the bottom of the editor component with a custom one, which allows to collapse all boxes, instead of one being always open. As a side effect, the resizing of the toolbox works now properly, meaning there is no space wasted anymore.
I’m now relatively happy with the editor part UI (except for the edit buttons next to title and due date, etc.), but I’m sure there is still a lot to improve.

The control pane on the left on the other hand, is nowhere near where I’d like to have it, and really bad looking. I find I somewhat difficult to get it into shape though.
One thing that really bugs me, is the greyish look of almost all UI’s. I’m not aware of a remedy though, without breaking with the KDE style, or using lots of white boxes, which doesn’t look much better either.
If you have some ideas for the current UI, or know of techniques to alter the look of KDE applications, please tell me.

Apart from the UI bits, the next steps on the way to a first releasable version is a rewrite of the akonadi nepomukfeeders and the fixing of the kreparentingproxymodel so the todo hierarchy works. Also a searchview which uses the relevancy of the matches to sort the items is in the works.

I’m on holiday for the next few weeks, and afterwards I’ll have my exams, so don’t expect too much activity from my side. But afterwards I will get all parts into a releasable shape, to make sure there is a decent release ready for KDE 4.8.

On a side note: I just got a part-time employment (next to my studies) with Kolab Systems, which means I will earn my money with OpenSource software from now on!
About as awesome as it gets =)

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