Description: This is a plasmoid, which displays the current location of "Eis-Wagner" in Ilmenau, Germany. (Requires KDE 4.2+) It's written in Python plus a tiny bit of JavaScript and uses OpenLayers with OpenStreetMap data to display the map. Constructive critics are always welcome :-)
In case you still wonder how all this works (and that is likely ;-)), the following explanation is for you: In the mobile ice-cream parlor "Eis-Wagner" is a GPS receiver, which uploads its current position to the Internet every 60 seconds. This data is used to display the current location of Eis-Wagner on http://www.wo-ist-der-eismann.de. Therefore this plasmoid won't be of much use for people living outside of the German town Ilmenau.
How to install: plasmapkg -i wo-ist-der-eismann.plasmoid or through the plasma applet browser. (tested using KDE 4.4.4)
Thanks to: OpenStreetMap.org for hosting high quality street maps Falcom for providing the coordinates of the car on http://www.wo-ist-der-eismann.de OpenLayers.org for the creation of a cool slippy map APILast changelog:
0.4.2 - 03 July 2010 Major cleanups and partial rewrite Add comments to the source code Work around a bug that caused the plasmoid to be empty after a restart of plasma 0.4.1 - 23 May 2010 Fix fetching of the coordinates (it was broken due to a rewrite of wo-ist-der-eismann.de) Update to OpenLayers 2.9.1 Cosmetics Fix crash with KDE 4.4 0.4 - 28 May 2009 Show default context menu, if the user right clicks on the plasmoid Show a refresh button on hover More minor stuff/polishing 0.3 - 25 May 2009 Warn about connection problems Changed the unit of the update interval to minutes (warning! update your configuration) The background is translucent now, looks better in my opinion 0.2 - 19 May 2009 Fixed a bug that caused the plasmoid to randomly stop updating the position Convert some strings to german till I have finished proper i18n Changed the unit of the update interval to seconds (warning! update your configuration) 0.1 - 18 May 2009 Initial Release
Great to have that applet back. Just in time for summer in Ilmenau ;)
But there is some issue since the last update:
If the applet is already present on the desktop while you are loging in, no map and no map marker is rendered. Only the reload button is shown, button klicking it doesn't load the map.
Okay, now that is a very weird bug. I tested it with KDE 4.5 and it seems to be fixed there. However till all major distributions switched to 4.5, I uploaded a new version of the plasmoid to work around this issue.
In case anyone is interested what caused this bug see line 22 of "contents/html/main.html" in version 0.4.2 and change the value to 0px.
Thanks for reporting :-)
Release early, release often^^
The new version contains a lot of minor changes like a fixed typo, better design of error messages and others.
As promised, I added a refresh button that appears on hover. However I am not much of an artist and the design is certainly not finalized. If you have some cool idea how to visually improve the plasmoid, please share it :-)
So what about the next version?
In case you provide some feedback and ideas regarding the design, I will try and implement them for 0.5.
Apart from that I plan to display the last refresh time (similar to wo-ist-der-eismann.de) on hover.
As for the refresh button: Stick to the standard refresh icon as you already did. Using those standard actions will give users the benefit of better integration, as it will adjust to their icon theme.
And for other crazy ideas:
KDE 4.3 will come with a geolocation data engine. So an "Eismann approaching your position" should be possible with not to much effort.See this blog entry:
http://andrewcoles.blogspot.com/2009/05/where-am-i.html
I don't have a use for it (because i live in Hanover, ~300 km from Ilmenau), but it's always good to know things like this! :D
Hmmm, maybe you could expand on the fuctionality. How about a plasmoid that tells you where you can get a pizza? ;)
> Hmmm, maybe you could expand on the fuctionality. How about a plasmoid that tells you where you can get a pizza? ;)
Hehe, nice idea :-)
But I think this plasmoid is only useful, if you want to track the (changing) position of something ... If you find some other useful datasource (like other mobile ice-cream parlors or whatever), I will be happy to add support for them here :-)
I think it would be great if it displayed the locations of city busses. ...the nearby city of Seattle at least has a map that tracks them. ...not suggesting you add anything for me, but you might be able to bus data from cities in Germany? Just a thought.
Hi everyone,
I just released a new version of the plasmoid, which will now displays error messages, if it is unable to download the position data (sadly www.wo-ist-der-eismann.de is down at the moment, which is why I thought some visible error message would be cool).
I also decided not to rewrite the complete configuration dialog just to remove a single button. The wasted space is tolerable.
As for i18n, I found out how to include translations in plasmoid packages, however this will require KDE 4.3. That's why I am going to include a german translation (as soon as I got PyKDE and kde trunk working together), so 4.3 users get the translation just by installing the plasmoid and 4.2 users will likely have to copy some files around.
The next version will likely contain a nice visible-on-hover button to refresh the position data.
Have fun,
Flyser :-)
oops, www.wo-ist-der-eismann.de is online again, so don't worry :-)
Also don't forget to correct the update interval in your configuration, as 0.3 will treat the seconds you configured as minutes.
this plasmoid really rocks!
just two minor issues:
- the config dialog has to much wasted space due to the apply button. note that plasmoid config dialogs usually don't have an apply button.
- i18n is incomplete,the config dialog shows german and english strings (my default language is german)
oh and another point:
the field for the update interval lacks a unit. also it may be a good idea to use something like minutes. i don't know what it's set to currently, but a value like 300000 is hopefully not minutes ;)
Hi,
thanks for the feedback :-)
Version 0.2 should fix at least some of the issues you mentioned. To fix all of them I am going to write my own configuraiton dialog instead of using KConfig XTs. (Except if someone can tell me how to fix them with kconfig ...)
I am also looking for the right widget for the "Update Interval" setting, as I want to allow a interval ranging from hours to seconds ...
-- Flyser
For the input of a numerical value you should use a QSpinBox. See http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/HIG/Spin_Box
Of course this doesn't switch units between seconds and minutes. But is that really important? Just Minutes should be fine. All the examples from other KDE examples that come to my mind are using only a single unit.
Regarding the config dialog: You should have a look at some other python plasmoids, as all other plasmoids use the same config dialog, you must have done something differently ;)
Yeah, I was thinking about a SpinBox to enter a value and a DropDownBox to select if the unit of this value is seconds, minutes or hours. But minutes might actually be sufficent ... (except for testing purposes; I often use 10secs then, but that's not an usecase)
> Regarding the config dialog: You should have a look at some other python plasmoids,
> as all other plasmoids use the same config dialog, you must have done something differently ;)
I noticed that, too^^
/me is investigating :D
>Yeah, I was thinking about a SpinBox >to enter a value and a DropDownBox to >select if the unit of this value is >seconds, minutes or hours. But minutes >might actually be sufficent ... >(except for testing purposes; I often >use 10secs then, but that's not an >usecase)
Maybe you can add a possibility to manually refresh, like in context menu or a button in the lower right corner that only appears when you hover over the plasmoid (the comic plasmoid is doing something like this).
Ratings & Comments
17 Comments
Great to have that applet back. Just in time for summer in Ilmenau ;) But there is some issue since the last update: If the applet is already present on the desktop while you are loging in, no map and no map marker is rendered. Only the reload button is shown, button klicking it doesn't load the map.
thanks for the report. investigating ...
Okay, now that is a very weird bug. I tested it with KDE 4.5 and it seems to be fixed there. However till all major distributions switched to 4.5, I uploaded a new version of the plasmoid to work around this issue. In case anyone is interested what caused this bug see line 22 of "contents/html/main.html" in version 0.4.2 and change the value to 0px. Thanks for reporting :-)
Release early, release often^^ The new version contains a lot of minor changes like a fixed typo, better design of error messages and others. As promised, I added a refresh button that appears on hover. However I am not much of an artist and the design is certainly not finalized. If you have some cool idea how to visually improve the plasmoid, please share it :-) So what about the next version? In case you provide some feedback and ideas regarding the design, I will try and implement them for 0.5. Apart from that I plan to display the last refresh time (similar to wo-ist-der-eismann.de) on hover.
As for the refresh button: Stick to the standard refresh icon as you already did. Using those standard actions will give users the benefit of better integration, as it will adjust to their icon theme. And for other crazy ideas: KDE 4.3 will come with a geolocation data engine. So an "Eismann approaching your position" should be possible with not to much effort.See this blog entry: http://andrewcoles.blogspot.com/2009/05/where-am-i.html
I don't have a use for it (because i live in Hanover, ~300 km from Ilmenau), but it's always good to know things like this! :D Hmmm, maybe you could expand on the fuctionality. How about a plasmoid that tells you where you can get a pizza? ;)
> Hmmm, maybe you could expand on the fuctionality. How about a plasmoid that tells you where you can get a pizza? ;) Hehe, nice idea :-) But I think this plasmoid is only useful, if you want to track the (changing) position of something ... If you find some other useful datasource (like other mobile ice-cream parlors or whatever), I will be happy to add support for them here :-)
I think it would be great if it displayed the locations of city busses. ...the nearby city of Seattle at least has a map that tracks them. ...not suggesting you add anything for me, but you might be able to bus data from cities in Germany? Just a thought.
Hi everyone, I just released a new version of the plasmoid, which will now displays error messages, if it is unable to download the position data (sadly www.wo-ist-der-eismann.de is down at the moment, which is why I thought some visible error message would be cool). I also decided not to rewrite the complete configuration dialog just to remove a single button. The wasted space is tolerable. As for i18n, I found out how to include translations in plasmoid packages, however this will require KDE 4.3. That's why I am going to include a german translation (as soon as I got PyKDE and kde trunk working together), so 4.3 users get the translation just by installing the plasmoid and 4.2 users will likely have to copy some files around. The next version will likely contain a nice visible-on-hover button to refresh the position data. Have fun, Flyser :-)
oops, www.wo-ist-der-eismann.de is online again, so don't worry :-) Also don't forget to correct the update interval in your configuration, as 0.3 will treat the seconds you configured as minutes.
this plasmoid really rocks! just two minor issues: - the config dialog has to much wasted space due to the apply button. note that plasmoid config dialogs usually don't have an apply button. - i18n is incomplete,the config dialog shows german and english strings (my default language is german)
oh and another point: the field for the update interval lacks a unit. also it may be a good idea to use something like minutes. i don't know what it's set to currently, but a value like 300000 is hopefully not minutes ;)
Hi, thanks for the feedback :-) Version 0.2 should fix at least some of the issues you mentioned. To fix all of them I am going to write my own configuraiton dialog instead of using KConfig XTs. (Except if someone can tell me how to fix them with kconfig ...) I am also looking for the right widget for the "Update Interval" setting, as I want to allow a interval ranging from hours to seconds ... -- Flyser
For the input of a numerical value you should use a QSpinBox. See http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/HIG/Spin_Box Of course this doesn't switch units between seconds and minutes. But is that really important? Just Minutes should be fine. All the examples from other KDE examples that come to my mind are using only a single unit. Regarding the config dialog: You should have a look at some other python plasmoids, as all other plasmoids use the same config dialog, you must have done something differently ;)
Yeah, I was thinking about a SpinBox to enter a value and a DropDownBox to select if the unit of this value is seconds, minutes or hours. But minutes might actually be sufficent ... (except for testing purposes; I often use 10secs then, but that's not an usecase) > Regarding the config dialog: You should have a look at some other python plasmoids, > as all other plasmoids use the same config dialog, you must have done something differently ;) I noticed that, too^^ /me is investigating :D
>Yeah, I was thinking about a SpinBox >to enter a value and a DropDownBox to >select if the unit of this value is >seconds, minutes or hours. But minutes >might actually be sufficent ... >(except for testing purposes; I often >use 10secs then, but that's not an >usecase) Maybe you can add a possibility to manually refresh, like in context menu or a button in the lower right corner that only appears when you hover over the plasmoid (the comic plasmoid is doing something like this).
That was on my (mental) to-do list ;-)