Improving Sticky notes widget

Development
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I noticed that kde sticky notes does not offer much customisation apart from changing the background color. I wanted to know if I could work on this, I am new to KDE community and I tried reading through documentation, but it was overwhelming, so idk if this is the correct place for this or not, but :

What is the correct procedure to contribute to Sticky notes widget? I want to contribute.

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So nice you want to contribute! We would be glad to have you as an active contributing member in KDE.

To get started, take a look at this: Get Involved - KDE Community Wiki

And do not hesitate to ask.

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Hii…. Thanks for replying, I did try that, but it was kindof confusing, it said
KDE Bugtracker - To report a bug or request a new feature.
but when i tried to open a feature request, i saw a “New” button and I navigated to Plasma > plasmashell > component : notes widget
but the description had

***
If you’re not sure this is actually a bug, instead post about it at discuss.kde.or g

If you’re reporting a crash, attach a backtrace with debug symbols; see <link - its not allowing me to send links>

Please remove this comment after reading and before submitting - thanks!
***

so i am confused if i should go ahead and report this feature request as bug or should i ask somewhere else first…

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You can post the feature request as a bug report there.

If you want to brainstorm the feature first, you can make a post about it here for discussion first - maybe it’s already possible, or the request is already filed elsewhere as it relates to some other component that the Sticky Notes widget uses, or maybe there’s very good reasons not to do that, or the idea just needs a bit more cooking. This is optional, but it sometimes helps.

And if you want to work on something yourself, you can just work on it and once you get it to work, submit a merge request on invent.kde.org (the sticky notes widget is part of kdeplasma-addons). There’s no requirement to have a feature request or discussion first. (But either way you have to be prepared that the reviewers might not think it’s a good idea, or that they want you to implement it differently).

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unless you have a specific ask for a “wishlist” report, it is better to come here and discuss it to help formulate the request.

what else would you need this widget to do?

what features would you want to add?

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For starters, Here are a few things that I thiught might be a good additions :

  1. A button to toggle visibility :
    When I try to admire my wallpaper my widget sticks out, so a toggle to hide it, by hide i mean opacity = 0, and when u click on it, it will appear again.
  2. Option to change the background to change opacity while widget is active :
    I use transparent background for widget and rotating wallpapers, so when there is text and the wallpaper is too noisy or something, that text is not always visible, so if there was a option to control how the background would look when i click on the widget, that would be very helpful to read the text.
  3. [For future] a option to change text colors
    Currently that is not available, would be nice to have.

Are these changes good ones or not? Should I start working on them? or do u guys have other ideas?

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My personal opinions:

I can’t see us doing the first one. If you don’t want to see it on the desktop, why not put it on a panel? Or make it small enough to become an icon? Invisible widgets is just asking for trouble.

Text legibility with transparent background is a legitimate issue, but I’m not sure about the solution - having to click the note before being able to read it seems also bad.

Text colors seems reasonable - the widget already supports it if you copy colorful text from elsewhere.

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Thank you for replying.

  1. Can u elaborate on asking for trouble part… I did not understand.

Also, I want to put this using a better phrasing… I want it on my desktop, it’s a sticky note after all… but I wanted to say if we had a little eye icon which could hide it for taking a screen shot or just admiring the wallpaper, this is more of a temporary hide feature/peek at wallpaper kindof thing (we can make it visible after a set amount of time if we worry about ppl losing track of where they put the widget)

This would just be a additional customisation option, ppl could disable it if they dont like it.

  1. I agree…. I am open to suggestions

  2. Damn, i did not know that, I will definitely try it out, thatnks!!!

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Invisible UI elements are just a very questionable idea in the first place. People are going to lose their stuff.

You can resize it to become an icon, then restore the size after your screenshot. Or move it to a panel then back. Or create a different activity (with a separate desktop layout) and switch to that.

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I understand. I think I will just add the color options for now.

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