Problems with plasma desktop organising functionalities

piedro · 2016-01-11 01:54:00

Hi!

When I press "Alt + Tab" on an empty desktop the panel bar disappears...
Is this intended ? Anybody knows how to disable it?

Also alt-tabbing between applications creates half transparent windows while pressing "alt" and tabbing through. Though I deliberately switched off the transparency effect for windows in systemsettings. How can I disable this transparency?

There is a privacy setting for activities: "Only record recent documents for the chosen applications"...
But this doesn't seem to work. No application nor any opened document is recorded. How to fix that?

Some full screen applications seem to ignore the activity they are started on: When I start Hearthstone for example it is present on every activity though the launcher is restricted to one activity only. This also applies for the music player lollypop and some other non-KDE applications... Does anyone know how to fix this? (I'd love to have a second activity open to play a quick game but switch to my work on another activity again afterwards...)

thanks for your help, piedro!

Last edited by piedro (2016-01-11 01:54:57)

Elizine · 2016-01-12 04:36:09

Try pressing Ctrl+Alt+Tab to disable it.

V1del · 2016-01-12 08:37:18

I'd assume Alt+Tab behaviour is dependent on the switcher you use, and e.g. The 3D-Coverflow one hides the panel (the same for the transparency during the switch, which has nothing to do with the transparency effect for normal windows), I suppose it is expected since there's no explicit check if there is no window. Check the Window Switcher options for KWin if you find some way to adjust these.

The activities are a KDE thing, and applications that don't use KDE libraries will not know about them so if your recorded document applications/windows are application not from KDE, these features won't really help there (there isn't really a viable fix for this unless you want to patch every software in existence)

Last edited by V1del (2016-01-12 08:38:33)

piedro · 2016-01-12 11:50:58

CTRL + ALt +Tab doesn't do anything obvious... please clarify...

@V1del: Thx for your comments!

The switcher behaviour changed somehow, the described behaviour is new to me...
I found the switcher settings but it does not matter which switcher I choose, the non-active windows (while tabbing through) always turns transparent... though I turned off the kwin effect for "transparent windows under certain conditions". How can I turn off this transparency?

For the activities: This is a real bummer... there are more non KDE applications to use than there are useful KDE applications.
So does this mean activities will ever be a sometimes-working/sometimes-not experience?

And I do not get the logic here: It works with evolution but doesn't with gnome-software (no I do not want to use Muon!) and so forth...
Evolution doesn't use KDE libraries as far as I know.

Also I remember this worked with KDE4 - all kinds of problems there but never, as I remember, did I have applications ignoring the activity system alltogether...

Is there a way to force applications to be decorated by the KDE windows manager?

thx, p.

V1del · 2016-01-13 08:56:17

If you disable the "Show current window" (transcribed from german, the first checkbox) and use a compatible switcher (e.g. breeze) this will fix both of your issues. No transparency and the taskbar won't disappear (it diappears with this checkbox because the desktop is counted as a window, which is kind of a Xorg thing)

For the activities, window state is handled by KWin and to that degree every application should work. That's likely the reason heartstone appears on all your activiities because wine doesn't let the WM decorate the window by default. I don't know if there's a global way to force it, but in wine specifically you can activate window decoration in winecfg. For other things like recent documents its implementation dependent. For certain popular apps KDE has included specific support itself (e.g. Firefox bookmarks should work since KDE has an implementation to integrate them into their infrastructure, maybe something similar happens with Evolution (don't use it, but it's possible that it simply uses standard mail folders which are parsed by Baloo and hence supported in the activity context)

Note to take this with a grain of salt, I haven't really used them much lately and I don't know in what ways behaviour might have changed over the years

piedro · 2016-01-13 11:33:55

Hello V1del!

Thank you very much for your insightful clarifications. Your hint on the transparency issue works perfectly - it is a workaround (as "transparency deactivated for application windows" should mean that transparency is deactivated for application windows under all circumstances...) but it is a simple and functioning workaround. I am happy.

Actually I do not care too much about wine applications within the activity system. I already used the winecfg to force windows decorations and most of the times this works (but it is not reliable - Hearthstone for example seems to force a full screen somehow - but as I said: a bit irritating but not really a serious problem...).

The missing activity integration is a serious problem though with all "modern" gnome applications it seems: gnome-software, nautilus (which I don't need in KDE), lollypop (full screen music player), simple scan (which is a window I like to always stay open...) and so forth... Since this is a whole set of first class applications there should be a solution - all these applications also look non-integrated as they do not use the windows decorations as set in the KDE systemsettings. Their windows controls still use the gnome layout and also the whole application has an ugly border...

I tried to write a bug report but it's not clear to me at all which application or library to refer to (the bug report system needs some user friendly overhauling as well imho...)...

Anyway, thanks again very much for your help - I guess the activity system is not yet ready for me yet...
(I loved and heavily used it in KDE4)

Cheers, p.

Last edited by piedro (2016-01-13 11:36:18)

V1del · 2016-01-13 12:13:07

Now that you specified this a bit, I'm fairly certain this is one of the GTK breakages with client side decorations and similar jazz. IIRC if you check the KWin scripts there should be one to force GTK applications using CSD to let themselves be handled by KWin again (for clarification, this is a GTK break that KDE had to hack around with said script not really KDE's fault... It broke many window managers which aren't GNOME's own mutter https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=729721 )

Last edited by V1del (2016-01-13 13:27:40)

Arch Linux

#1 2016-01-11 01:54:00

Problems with plasma desktop organising functionalities

#2 2016-01-12 04:36:09

Re: Problems with plasma desktop organising functionalities

#3 2016-01-12 08:37:18

Re: Problems with plasma desktop organising functionalities

#4 2016-01-12 11:50:58

Re: Problems with plasma desktop organising functionalities

#5 2016-01-13 08:56:17

Re: Problems with plasma desktop organising functionalities

#6 2016-01-13 11:33:55

Re: Problems with plasma desktop organising functionalities

#7 2016-01-13 12:13:07

Re: Problems with plasma desktop organising functionalities

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