Support resources providing their configuration dialogs as some sort of KCModule, instead of showing them in resource process . Making configuration dialogs a libraries that can be shown locally in the applications has several advantages:
1) works even when resource is busy/stuck, shows immediately
2) application has full control over the window placement (allows for embedding)
3) works on Wayland (there's no concept of global WId on Wayland, there is no way to position other application's window on top of our window)
4) can be shown even for resources that are not running (on-demand resource startup)
5) we want this for AkonadiNext anyway
Question is whether to use KCM framework or whether we can do with some home-grown simplistic system. The old way would still be supported, but this would obviously be the preferred way.
Having resources completely expose their settings on DBus (via KConfigXT or something) is probably closely related to this. it would eventually allow applications providing their own UI for resources (think embedded).