kdelibs/TODO

This file is meant to be a place to track of medium to large-scale API changes
that we would like to make for the next binary incompatible release.

- Check for forked classes in kde pim and other modules
  (Danimo)

- Make KSystemTray add its own reference to KApp, so tray apps that adhere to the
  style guide can safely close their main window without having to worry about
  the app quitting instead.
  (Martijn)

- Sort out reference counting of applications and KMainWindows: Add a setRefCountEnabled()
  function to KApplication; deref()ing the last reference should only quit the application
  if reference counts are enabled, and the reference count should be disabled by default
  so apps that don't use a KMainWindow mostly continue to work. Make the KMainWindow
  constructor call setRefCountEnabled(true), and make each KMainWindow hold its own
  reference to the application. The KMainWindow should drop its app reference on hide, and
  regain it on show.

  Make KSysTray also hold a reference to the app. Then apps that use more than one main
  window and the tray (like KSIrc and Kopete) will quit at the right time without nasty
  hacks.
  (Richard Smith)

- Make some long-lasting operations threaded. There are some operations in KDE that
  take too long on at least ~500MHz hardware to be done using event loops. Examples
  are the use of KLibLoader to dlopen plugins and KRun to fire up other processes.
  Konqueror and KMail tend to stall occasionally too, but that's harder to refactor
  because the bulk of the work there is X11-related.
  (Martijn)

- Make it possible to use SSL-ed sockets outside KIO. KSSL isn't very suitable for
  reuse, and the certificate dialogs are not even available in public API at all,
  leading e.g. to Kopete IRC duplicating a lot of stuff and all KDE Jabber clients
  based on libpsi (PSI, Light Hawk and Kopete) using homebrewn solutions.  [How
  does this have to do with changing KIO?  It's just a request to have that
  code in a different form....]
  (Martijn)

- Solve need for casting when using bitfield enums (e.g. K3Process::Communication)
  by the use of Q_DECLARE_FLAGS/Q_DECLARE_OPERATORS_FOR_FLAGS
  (Simon)

- KParts: remove plugin loading from setInstance, add an explicit loadPlugins() call
  in all parts that should load plugins (at the end of the derived-part ctor).
  (David)

- KParts: come up with better names for ReadOnlyPart and ReadWritePart, ReadOnly
  is a minimum requirement, but this does not become clear until you dig deeper
  into the class. With QTextEdit and QTextBrowser for instance, the inheritance is
  the other way around. E.g.: ReaderPart? ViewerPart?
  (David)

- Change classes that store bool data using strings ("true"/"false") to use bool 
  calls (readBoolEntry()).  Although not technicaly a binary incompatiblity... 
  just something to bring up for possible change (for the better)

  Use KConfigXT instead! /FransE

- Is it really necessary to bother people using the KCM APIs with withFallback? I have
  never heard of it failing and when would you not like to have that fallback? I think
  a default of 'true' would be fine(and remove the argument in the APIs).
  (Frans)

- Do we need to have factory arguments in the KCM API? (who would use it anyway?)
  (Frans)

- The config options in kdeglobals needs to be cleaned up a little. Perhaps I'm being picky..
	* They should be named properly, for example "enableIcons" instead of "EnableIcons". Or atleast
		settle on one thing.
	* AFAICT it would be the right thing if KWin had its own rc file instead of having its "WM" 
		section in kdeglobals.
	* Shouldn't Sonnet have its own rc file instead of kdeglobals?
	* Should we allow spaces in option names?
	* Some option names are too short for being understandable. fixed->fixedFont; font->systemWideFont
	* Perhaps an own font section?
  (Frans)

- Make functions in KHelpMenu virtual so they can be overridden (ex: to provide
  an alternative help->contents action)
  (George Staikos)

- Make sure all GUI classes adopt well to palette changes.
  (Danimo)

- K3ListView lacked a setDnDMode to choose between "dnd to move items" (e.g. keditbookmarks)
  and "dnd onto items" (e.g. kmail). Check how to do this with QListView/QTreeView...
  (David)

- Add the concept of a session to KIO, in particular for KHTML so that it can
  have all of its jobs associated in some way (a unique key of sorts).  Will
  make SSL much easier to implement and allow removal of many hacks, mostly
  involving metadata.
  (George Staikos)

- Make KLibLoader default to RTLD_GLOBAL and make necessary changes to make KDE namespace clean.
  (Coolo)
  Maybe just make sure we don't emit multiple copies of per-class data (vtable,RTTI), then
  RTLD_LOCAL should do as well, and it should(?) be simpler this way.
  (Lubos)

- Many instances of creating containers on the heap instead of stack, can be replaced? (Caleb Tennis) [where?]

- Add KAssistant - a new KDE standards-compliant wizard, (Jaroslaw Staniek (TODO/KAssistant|Details))
  Qt4 has no QWizard (only Q3Wizard left). Add a new KDE standards-compliant wizard with 
  a bit more powerful API and features like "Steps list" pane on the left hand of the wizard
  (user can click any step if developer allowed such action). Example from OO.org:
  http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/2.0/images/mail_merge.jpg
  We could add more consistency (using themes, guidelines) in this area, 
  as in KDE3 some apps implement wizard's features like left-hand funky pictures 
  or help text again and again
  (see http://www.kolab.org/doc/kde-client-manual-0.9cvs20030801-html/c43.html).
  Other ideas: 
  * use nonintrusive "watermark" effect on the 1st or all pages 
  (http://images.apple.com/macosx/features/setup/images/index_setup20050412.jpg), 
  * allow to disable steps on the left-side list as an answer to calling setAppropriate().
  * QWizard's API is mostly ok for the new class, just avoid requiring to pass a pointer 
  to page widget (as in setAppropriate()) but allow to pass QString names or IDs instead.
  (Jaroslaw Staniek)

- K3IconView/K3ListView equivalents based on Qt4 interview. As discussed on kde-core-devel,
  this probably means a custom QItemDelegate instead, to handle single-click/double-click,
  execute-mode/select-mode (cf K3IconView), number of lines used for wrapping, "held" signal.
  In short, rewriting k3iconview features to be based on interview.
  For K3ListView we need to check if QTreeView supports both modes of drag-n-drop (dropping
  onto items, and dropping between items like in the bookmark editor).
  (David, Till etc.)

- CMake:
   * install /share/apps/ksgmltools2/customization/entities/kde-standard-accels.entities
   * win32: fix path delimiter problem generated *.bat wrapper (using ' ' instead of ';')

- It looks like most of the functions KStringHandler can be removed.  At least, insword, setword, 
  remrange, and remword could be removed [DONE] .  Those four don't seem to be used anywhere inside of KDE.  Other
  functions like capitalize and reverse seem to be sparsely used. 
  (Caleb)

- Customizable KToolTip/KWhatsThis widgets (Jaroslaw Staniek), 
  now KWhatsThis is a part of KDE GSoC "Implement OpenUsability's Context Sensitive 
  Help Redesign" project, by Joshua Keel, mentored by Ellen Reitmayr
  * initial notes: http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=kdelibs4+TODO%2FKToolTip
  * design page: http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KWhatsThis

- Additional (automatic) shortcuts for KMessageBox (Jaroslaw Staniek)
  See http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-usability&m=109688936328920&w=2

- Add KUndoRedoAction which can display a popup with action lists, and use it in
  KUndoStack::createRedoAction() and KUndoStack::createUndoAction(). (Jaroslaw Staniek)