[kde-linux] Re: Panel widgets alwais to the left

[Duncan]

Klaus Vink Slott posted on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:07:22 +0200 as excerpted:

> Hi all
> 
> Somehow my panel in the bottom of my right monitor have decided to
> left adjust all widgets. Where do I change this setting?
> 
> If I unlock the panel I can move the widget, but it immediately jumps
> to the leftmost possible placement. This way only allowing me the
> change the order of the active widgets.
> 
> I am on OpenSUSE 11.3 with dual monitor and KDE 4.4.4

kde 4.4...  FWIW, 4.5 continued to bring MAJOR improvements to plasma, 
thus both the desktop and panels.  4.6 is current but IMO not as huge an 
improvement as earlier 4.x steps were.  In fact, 4.4 was still what I 
called "release-candidate" quality, not really ready for prime-time yet.  
IMO, it was only the later 4.5 releases (4.5.4 and 4.5.5, there were 
graphics bugs that affected many users in the early 4.5 series, tho where 
they weren't a problem it was great) that *FINALLY* qualified as what 
*SHOULD* have been released as the real kde 4.0.

Thus, I'd really recommend upgrading to the last of the 4.5 releases, 
4.5.5, as I do hate to see people still struggling with versions that had 
the serious bugs that earlier releases, including 4.4, had.  (Tho 4.4 was 
at least semi-usable, as I said, "release-candidate" level instead of the 
beta level of 4.3, or the alpha level of 4.0 thru 4.2.)  4.5.5 is the 
solidest and most mature version of kde4 yet.

But to directly address your question...

Plasmoid (plasma widget) size and placement behavior in the panel has 
always been limited by the panel form-factor and the fact that plasma 
tries to auto-adjust plasmoids to fit.  As such, a lot of it is automated, 
without the degree of control one might always wish, and that one normally 
has with, for example, desktop/activity placement and sizing of the same 
plasmoids.

This has always been somewhat frustrating for me.  4.5 did seem to help 
with some of that, tho to be fair, I'm sure a lot of that was that I've 
simply gotten used to it, and simply gave up on trying to get it to work 
my way, and learned to work its way.

That said, there *IS* a (partial) solution that MAY help you get what you 
want.  I had decidedly mixed results with it here, but it's worth a try, 
and can help in some instances.

That solution is the "spacer" plasmoid.  The way this is inserted as 
changed a bit over the versions, and I'm not sure I recall where kde 4.4 
fell in the process.  For early kde4, there wasn't a spacer built-in, but 
there's a "spacer" plasmoid available for download from kde-look.org.  
Then it was built-in, appearing at first, IIRC, still as a plasmoid, 
listed with the others (tho I might be wrong on this).  With 4.5+ and 
possibly 4.4, I'm not sure, it's available, but as a separate option, NOT 
shown in the normal plasmoid browser that appears when "add widgets" is 
shown, but instead, from the panel settings popup itself.

So in either the panel settings popup, or if it's not there, in the 
plasmoid browser, you should see a spacer option.  If you don't, the 
plasmoid should still be available from kde-look, but I /think/ it was 
already in 4.4, so downloading it /shouldn't/ be necessary.

However you do it with that version, try adding a spacer, and see if that 
helps.

As I said, however, I had mixed results here.  One spacer seems to work 
well, forcing everything one way or the other.  But what I wanted was some 
stuff to the left, some to the right, and some in the center, and putting 
a spacer on either side of the stuff I wanted centered didn't seem to 
allow me to configure what I wanted, partly because what I really needed 
was a spacer that would let me place hard limits on how "spacey" it was, 
letting the one on the other end be flexible to take up the remaining 
space, and at least back when I experimented with it, that wasn't an 
option.

So try it.  It'll probably help some.  But don't be surprised if you can't 
get exactly the results you want.  As I said, mixed results...

Meanwhile, I eventually worked around the problem in other ways.  One 
thing that helped was that I found a rather power-user-focused system-
monitor type plasmoid, yasp-scripted (available on kde-look.org), that in 
addition to letting me monitor more system state than I could do 
otherwise, indirectly allowed me to control the plasmoid size, by 
controlling the text and graph output.  Since I could now quite precisely 
control the size of that plasmoid, it allowed me to control where 
everything else was placed in relation to it. =:^)

As I said, yasp-scripted is rather power-user focused, really coming into 
its own only for those who are relatively functional at the command line 
since that's where it gets much of its flexibility, and needing a lot of 
tweaking to work "as intended", that many users might not have the 
patience for, but there are likely other plasmoids options that allow 
relatively precise control of the size, as well, for those who don't find 
yasp-scripted appropriate to their needs or skill level.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman