[GSoC] Proposal: Ubuntu One KDE client

[Diego Casella ([Po]lentino)]

Hi all,

I'm Diego Casella, I'm a student in the College of Engineering at the
University of Padova, and I'm also a GSoC 2009 student who worked on the
PlasMate ide for KDE, specifically on the TimeLine component ( see [0] ).
This year I would like to partecipate with the Ubuntu One client app for
KDE, and below here it is a summary of my proposal ( for further
informations, please have a look on my full proposal listed in [1] )


* Project Name: Ubuntu One KDE client

* Project Description: Ubuntu One is an awesome online service that lets you
synchronize your personal files and folders on a remote server but, up to
now, there isn't a native KDE client so KUbuntu users are forced to install
the gnome client, in order to use Ubuntu One. For this reason, I want to
develop a native KDE application in order to take full advantage of KDE
technology and look homogeneous with standard KDE apps.

* Please describe a tentative project architecture or an approach to it:
Despite of the Ubuntu One Gnome client, my idea is to develop the Kubuntu
One client as a KDE plasmoid. That's because a plasmoid is more flexible
than an application in the tray: you can place the plasmoid in the panel, in
the desktop or, if you don't need to check its status too much repeatedly,
even in the plasma dashboard. Since the KDE system tray allows you to
display plasmoids (i.e. the battery, weather and pastebin plasmoids), with a
small patch it's possible to embed the KUbuntu One plasmoid too, so the user
can use it as a standard trayed app, without even noticing the difference !
About the features that could be implemented, it would be awesome syncing
Konqueror bookmarks, PIM data like Kontact contatcs, calendar and notes, and
also plasmoids dowloaded from kde-look.org/opendesktop.org and current theme
preferences. It Could be also interesting add a "enable automatic
shutdown/suspend" feature (like ktorrent) so, if you have to sync a large
number of files and you have to move away from your pc, the app will
automatically shutdown/suspend the pc once the operation has been performed.
For password management, KWallet will be used.

* Give us details about the milestones for this project
  April 27 - May 23 : studying the ubuntu one storage protocol and source
code, design a good architecture for the plasmoid ;
  May 24 - July 15 : start coding the application, provide a successful
login and password storage,  made syncincg Unbuntu One folder and its files
working ;
  July 16 ~ August 9 : enhancing configuration UI, adding PIM data
synchronization, as well plasmoid, themes
  August 10 - August 16 : write documentation, clean up the code and
refining existing features.

* Why will your proposal benefit Ubuntu? Because a native KDE application
will take full advantage of KDE technology and will look better integrated
than the gnome one, making KUbuntu users happy :)




Any suggestion and advices are very welcome,
Cheers !

-- Diego

Links:
[0]
http://polentino911.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/understanding-and-using-the-timeline/
[1]
http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_proposal/private/google/gsoc2010/diego_casella/t127022924224
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