My first two Plasmoids are very simple but gave me a brief look into the possibilities of the Plasma Workspace, and I had to ask a lot of newbie questions on plasma-devel which is a very responsive mailing list. I cannot remember any of my questions that have gone unanswered and most of them with very good solutions and/or answers.

My latest endeavor is a bit more challenging. Plasma doesn’t have a simple ListView so you’ll have to use a Plasma.ScrollWidget and implement the methods yourself. For me that was somewhat annoying primarily because I’m still fighting a stale battle with the Qt layouts

Now I have to figure out how I’m gonna the cache Last.fm feed and all the pics that I’m downloading. For 3 reasons, the most important is of course performance, followed by the fact that the tests I’ve run on my crappy HW results in X pixmaps getting corrupted [*], and lastly that it’s a part of the Last.fm ToS…

For now I use job = KIO.get(KUrl(url), KIO.NoReload, KIO.HideProgressInfo) and connect to job‘s signals to get the the feed and to download the thumbnail pics of the events I use KIO.file_copy(from, to). This basically works but how can I get the HTTP Headers? I need to know if I should reuse the data I already have or if I should download it again.

Regarding the actual caching I was considering using a combination of:

KStandardDirs::addResourceDir()

KIconLoader::KIconLoader(const QString &appname = QString(), KStandardDirs *dirs = 0, QObject *parent = 0)

KIcon (const QString &iconName, KIconLoader *iconLoader)

But I’m uncertain how to use them.

Comments are very welcome as I’m a bit stuck here.

[*] I have no idea what I’m talking about here, but I get black icons after running X number of tests :-/

And are no screen shots in this post as the work has mostly been "under the hood".

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I’ve just started implementing a mashup that lists music events going on your own location (from Last.fm) and adds links to Google Maps, Social Services etc.

But the beast needs a name as I think “Last.fm Events” is a tad too generic. It has to be a name that gives the user an idea of what the widget does, so it shouldn’t be too imaginatively – like say Plasma, Akonadi, Funambol etc. No offense intended

BTW a name is also needed because I need to register at Last.fm to get an API key and I have to inform them about the applications name. It’s a bit premature for something that hasn’t been released even at Alpha level but that is in their ToS…

There’s still a long way to go but here are some screenies as an appetizer for what can be expected:

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Well maybe that’s a bit exaggerated because the User Interface hasn’t changed a bit, but there’s a lot of new stuff going on under the hood that will also soon benefit the Currency Converter Plasmoid.

Head on to Google Code or KDE-Look for downloads or get it via "Add Widgets" from the Plasma Desktop.

Changes can be found in the Changelog.

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Head on to Google Code or KDE-Look for downloads or get it via "Add Widgets" from the Plasma Desktop.

Changes can be found in the Changelog.

Head on to Google Code or KDE-Look for downloads or get it via "Add Widgets" from the Plasma Desktop.

Changes can be found in the Changelog.

Changes since I last updated this blog includes:

• 0.4.2
  Much improved error handling when no network connection using Solid. The Plasmoid is now disabled until a connection is established instead of just giving up and dying
  The Plasmoid is now installed under the "Language" section.
• 0.4.1
  Improved KIO handling to be able to handle longer text while at the same time limit text to 1200 characters to avoid errors on too long queries.
• 0.4
  Added a "Swap languages" button.
  TransferJobs are no longer shown in KDE Notifier.
• 0.3.2
  Languages weren’t sorted after change to KLocale.
• 0.3.1
  Quick fix for layout error when adding Plasmoid.
• 0.3
  Use KLocale for getting languages. This cuts down on code lines and it will i18n the language names. Also I don’t have to keep up with the number of Google translations. It’s now a race between Google and KDE
  Act on no network connection.
  Added nice little Google attribution logo

• Currency Converter version 0.2
• Google Translator version 0.2