Task Switcher doc update

Peter Wilding peter.wilding at gmail.com
Wed Dec 23 03:43:59 GMT 2020


Hello, this is my first attempt at contributing to the documentation, so 
please redirect me as needed.  According to the documentation on how to 
contribute documentation, the easiest way to get started is to send a 
plaintext update to this list, so that's what I'm doing!  I would be 
happy to contribute directly via git, but I could use some help finding 
the repo that contains this particular set of documentation.

For the Task Switcher (System Settings -> Task Switcher), I found the 
existing documentation to be a bit sparse.  After a lot of trial and 
error I have a pretty good understanding of how all the Task Switcher 
settings work, and so I wrote up new documentation to reflect this 
information.  The new text is below -- please let me know what next 
steps would be.  Thank you all!

-Pete
---------------------
The Task Switcher allows the user to easily switch between currently 
open windows using the keyboard.  It is highly configurable, and allows 
the user to control its behavior, visual appearance, keyboard shortcuts, 
and window filtering.

The Task Switcher is often invoked using the key combination Alt + Tab, 
but this can be changed. When it is invoked, it shows a list of all the 
currently open windows, optionally filtered and augmented according to 
the configuration settings. For example, the list may be filtered to 
show only windows that meet certain criteria, such as windows that are 
currently visible.  Once the window list is shown, the user can cycle 
through all the listed windows by repeatedly hitting the Task Switcher 
key combination.  Releasing the Task Switcher key combination will 
activate the window that was selected in the list.

Because the Task Switcher offers so many configuration options, two 
distinct collections of configuration settings can be defined. These 
collections are called 'Main' and 'Alternative', and each can have a set 
of unique key combinations assigned to them.

The configuration options for each of the Main and Alternative 
collections are presented in four groupings, as follows:
-Visualization
-Shortcuts
-Content
-Filter Windows By

These four configuration groupings are described below.

Visualization
This group of configuration options controls how the list of windows is 
displayed on the screen. The default visualization is called Breeze, 
which lists all open windows along the left-hand side of the screen.  
Other visualizations include Cover Switch (a 3D carousel), Flip Switch 
(a 3D stack of cards), and Medium Rounded (a Microsoft Windows-style 
list of icons).  Many more visualizations can be downloaded and 
installed by clicking the Get New Task Switchers... button at the bottom 
right of the dialog box.

Once a visualization has been selected from the drop-down list, the 
button to the right of the list can be clicked to see a preview or to 
configure visualization-specific options.

The 'Show Selected Window' checkbox determines how clearly the user will 
see which window will be activated.  If this box is checked, then all 
windows will be dimmed except for the one that is currently highlighted 
in the Task Switcher.

Note: There may be cases where the desired Task Switcher visualization 
cannot be shown.  One of these situations can be when a process called 
'compositing' is turned off or disabled.  If this ever happens, the 
window list will still be shown, but in a very simple format.

Shortcuts
Up to four keyboard shortcuts can be defined to invoke the Task Switcher.
In the All Windows section, the Forward and Reverse shortcuts will cycle 
forward and backward through the full list of windows.
In the Current Application section, the Forward and Reverse shortcuts 
can be set to cycle through the windows of the current application.  For 
example, if you have three Dolphin file browser windows open, then you 
would be able to use these shortcuts to just cycle among the three 
Dolphin windows.
To change a keyboard shortcut, click in the 'Forward' or 'Reverse' box 
and type the desired shortcut combination.  Be sure to use a modifier 
key like Control or Alt as part of the shortcut, otherwise you might not 
be able to cycle through the window list properly.

Note: To invoke the Task Switcher without using the keyboard, you can 
define screen edge actions in the Screen Edges module (go to System 
Settings and then select Screen Edges).

Content
The content of the window list itself is partially controlled by the 
options in this section.

The 'Sort Order' drop-down list specifies whether the windows should be 
listed in 'Stacking Order' or 'Recently Used' order.  Stacking Order is 
the order in which the windows appear on the screen, while Recently Used 
order is the order in which the windows have been used.  Recently Used 
order makes it very easy to switch between the two most frequently used 
windows because they will always appear in the top 2 positions in the list.

The 'Include Show Desktop icon' option will add a Show Desktop option to 
the window list. This allows the user to easily select the Desktop as 
the 'window' to show.

The 'Only one window per application' option reduces clutter by only 
showing one window for each open application.  If an application has 
multiple windows open, then its most recently activated window will be 
shown in the list and the others will not be shown.

Filter Windows By
This section contains options for additional filtering of the list of 
windows that are shown by the Task Switcher.

Virtual Desktops
When checked, this option filters the list of windows according to which 
virtual desktop is currently active.  If you consistently put specific 
windows on specific virtual desktops, then this filtering option can 
make it easy to switch to windows within or across those virtual desktops.

Activities
When checked, this option filters the list of windows according to which 
Activity is currently active.  As with Virtual Desktop filtering, this 
option can make it easier to switch to applications within or across all 
Activities.

Screens
When checked, this option filters the list of windows according to which 
Screen is currently active.  For this option, the active screen is the 
one that the mouse pointer is currently on, not the screen that the 
currently active window is on.  This option can be useful to users who 
want to quickly switch between windows that are on the same monitor in a 
multi-monitor setup.

Minimization
When checked, this option filters the list of windows according to 
whether they are hidden or not.


All of the options described above work together to provide very 
fine-grained control of the Task Switcher's behavior and appearance.  
For example, you could define the 'Main' settings collection to be 
invoked with the Alt+Tab key combination, to show the open windows in a 
carousel, to only show one window per application, and to only list 
windows that are on the current desktop and on the currently active 
screen.  This can provide very fast context-sensitive window switching 
if you have both 'work' and 'home' virtual desktops, and then keep all 
of your spreadsheets for work and home on the same monitor.

The availability of the 'Alternative' Task Switcher configuration gives 
you a second way way to easily filter and browse through the window 
lists. This should make it easier to navigate through large numbers of 
windows spread across multiple virtual desktops, screen, and activities.
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