Friday, May 14, 2010

Plasma, libferris, and Google Spreadsheets

In my previous post I talked about how libferris now has a Plasma DataEngine which lets you get at the entire virtual filesystem (on demand) from plasmoids.

I've since extended things so that the DataEngine now includes a Service object, allowing plasmoids to write data too. Instead of tracking an XWindow, this time around I'll track a Google Spreadsheet and update it through the plasmoid. Doing this makes a mounted web service like GSpreads into a pastebin with access control applied. So you can share your clipboard with anyone in your "group" or company and stop others getting at it.

The two plasmoids show two spreadsheet cells, the top one is the top coloured cell and the bottom plasmoid is the lower, purple cell. The purple cell in the spreadsheet is the sum of the three cells in the column around the peachy cell above it.

First, updating the spreadsheet through the browser is reflected in the plasmoid. Towards the end I copy and paste a number into the top plasmoid, which updates the peach cell in the spreadsheet, which in turn causes the purple cell to update and so the lower plasmoid shows this updated sum. Of course, these two plasmoids don't have to be on the same machine. For tracking sums or other formulas, the ferris_graph might be more interesting if you are more interested in the trends than the current value.

plasma-google-spread.avi from Ben Martin on Vimeo.

5 comments:

Jos van den Oever said...

I see you uploaded an avi file. Is there a way to download it? I only see the empty place where the flash plugin could render something. Perhaps you can even use a in your blog.

monkeyiq said...

I record in ogv, but vimeo seems to like avi better, and I transcode explicitly to get the best container+codec (that I found so far) for vimeo.

The avi should be able to be downloaded. See the "About this video" section just above the stats. You will have to register yourself with vimeo to get the avi it seems. I might also start shoving the ogv up somewhere else for those who want the original.

Jos van den Oever said...

Linking the ogv in the post seems like the 'freeest' thing to do and would allow we to watch it. I do not care to sign up with vimeo to view a video. And yeah, i'm being pedantic ;-) I usually put the ogv up on ktown.kde.og.

monkeyiq said...

I should really be using the HTML5 video stuff...

But for now, here is the
plasma-google-spread.ogv file.

Jos van den Oever said...

Thanks for the ogv! It's a nice demo of libferris flexibility.