[kde-linux] KDE-4.10.1 - Pager sort of a mess

[Mark Knecht]

On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 1:59 PM, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan at cox.net> wrote:
> Mark Knecht posted on Tue, 09 Apr 2013 08:08:47 -0700 as excerpted:
<SNIP>
>
>> Yeah, I left gentoo-user after almost a decade of membership so I'm not
>> visibly around as much as I used to be. Still here using Gentoo though.
>> I doubt that will ever change. Good to see you also.
>
> Interesting.  I've been thinking about resubscribing to user.  Back in
> 2004 when I switched to gentoo, user was very busy (/too/ busy) but
> mostly 32-bit x86 users, while I was 64-bit amd64.  The amd64 list was
> busy but not like user, so that's where I remained subscribed.  Now days
> most folks use amd64 I think but mostly post to user and the amd64 list
> is a ghost town; a thread a month if that.  So I've been thinking about
> resubscribing to user, or at least looking at it to see how busy it is
> these days.  But I haven't yet.
>
<SNIP>

Well, it's hugely more traffic than this list, but this list has you! :-)

<SNIP>

>> Your comments about themes & wallpaper are almost certainly involved.
>> I hadn't looked at this issue on my laptop so I just fired it up. On the
>> laptop the whole Task Manager along the bottom has switch to nearly
>> transparent. I can hardly see it either. There's really just a faint
>> line along the top of it. On the laptop the pager blocks representing
>> each desktop are just faint outlines where the one that's selected has a
>> 1 pixel outline.
>
> Perhaps a rather more immediately practical reply than my first one...

<hehe> Yeah, I think so too. ;-)

>
<SNIP>
>
> But as long as there's apps open on the desktops, the pager rectangle
> representing the active app on the active desktop should be either much
> darker or much lighter (depending on the theme, here, it's darker/near-
> black for air and air for netbooks, lighter/near-white for oxygen, and
> also for professional, which I have installed from kdelook) than other app
> rectangles, which will be more of a neutral color.
>

OK, so your thoughts focused a bit more for me what's probably making
this more difficult for me.

My setup is three monitors side-by-side with 6 virtual desktops. The
thing is that I work in Windows VMs all day long (I trade in the
markets all day long using Windows software on my Gentoo box) and two
of these VMs are maximized to their respective monitors. Just that by
itself makes  this issue even worse because 2/3 of each pager block is
fairly dark gray and those portions don't change color much as I
rotate through the desktops.

I don't remember exactly what the old versions did but they were much
more white on the active desktop. I get none of that white now.

> But the effect is MUCH harder to see if you have the display icons option
> checked in pager settings, and with some themes may be more difficult to
> see if you have the desktop names or numbers shown as well, so try the no
> text option.
>

Yeah, I have all that turned off here.

> And without any apps shown on the current desktop to hilight, it's all
> but impossible to see which desktop you're on.
>

Precisely what I see here also.

> One other thing I noticed: With the oxygen (and professional) desktop
> theme(s), there's a small (1 px?) blue outline around the active desktop
> in the pager.

Exactly what I see but what's blue for you it's a 1 pixel white border
for me, and this border is really only visible around the corners of
the active pager box.

<SNIP>

> IOW, as we've seen with earlier changes, oxygen seems to be the most
> tested, so if you see problems, as a test try switching to oxygen for the
> related bit (desktop theme in this case, widget style, color scheme,
> window decoration... depending on the area that has the problem), and see
> if that at least alleviates the issue.  If it does, you know where the
> problem is and can experiment further or just stay with oxygen if you
> don't care and just want it to work with the least trouble, since it
> /does/ seem to be the best tested.
>

I was already using Oxygen. I tried most of the others provided by a
standard Gentoo install but really Oxygen seems the best.

I'll see if I can find some other themes to try but so far it seems I
have the best one and it's more or less about the same as what you are
seeing.

Thanks very much for trying that out.

I'll keep poking around but so far this looks like the KDE devs likely
changed the design and for me at least it's not as user friendly as
the previous versions, at least for my configurations.

I'll test more on the laptop when it finishes building.

Cheers,
Mark