Can't move Icons in top panel, KDE 4.3.1

[Duncan]

Jay Mistry posted on Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:59:28 +0530 as excerpted:

> And sometimes they hop off the end of the panel and onto the desktop.
> This happens on KDE 4.3.1 as well.

I've not seen that, unless the desktop and panels are unlocked and I 
accidentally drag something elsewhere.  (That doesn't happen as much with 
the trackball I use now as it used to with a mouse, either.  Evidently 
when I tried clicking the mouse it would often move enough to trigger a 
drag.  The trackball seems a bit better in that regard tho of course 
trackballs in general behave enough differently that many people won't 
like them.)

What I /have/ noticed is two things.  One, when I'm deliberately moving 
plasmoids around, plasma has its own ideas about where they can move 
without simply stopping the drag and dropping them right there.  In 
particular, I have two monitors, with separate "desktop activities" on 
each (I wouldn't mind a single activity covering them combined, and I've 
heard rumors that 4.4 is supposed to be more multi-monitor friendly, but 
for now, AFAIK, an activity is limited to a single monitor/XRandR space), 
similarly, panels are separate on each, and in both cases, dragging stops 
as soon as I cross to the other monitor.  Usually, the plasmoid I'm 
dragging drops just at the edge of the other activity, where I can see it 
(tho it sometimes takes a bit of searching), pick it up again, and finish 
dragging it to the intended location.  However, in at least one case, 
somehow, I'm still not exactly sure how, the plasmoid ended up on *NO* 
activity at all.  It wasn't on the desktop, but add-widgets still showed 
it was running!  As I had customized it somewhat, I did want to save it 
rather than just delete it and start over, so that was a bit 
frustrating!  I finally found it when I zoomed out the activities, and 
saw this plasmoid running by itself, not on an activity at all, just on 
the "bare desktop" between activities!  I was able to drag it back onto 
an activity, drop it, zoom back in, pick it up again and continue 
dragging it to its intended location.

(BTW, it's worth noting here that widgets on the desktop/activities can 
be simply dragged around, but to move those on the panels, one has to 
click the cashew or select panel settings from the right-click, at which 
point hovering over a panel widget gives one the 4-way move arrow, and 
one can /then/ drag the panel widget back to the desktop or wherever.  
>From various discussions, it seems some haven't discovered that yet, as I 
see remarks that the drag is only one way, desktop/activity to panel, and 
that it can't be done the other way.  I've been using the panel resizer 
to get panel widget drag for awhile, since 4.2.4 at least, but only 
recently realized that must be why people continue to say it can't be 
done.)

The other thing that's irritating is that particularly when panels are 
set to other-than always-visible (that is, with windows can cover or 
autohide), left-clicking the cashew produces the resizer widget, but one 
must be very careful particularly when mousing to something on the other 
end of the resizer widget, or it disappears as the mouse goes off it and 
onto something else.  However, right clicking and selecting panel 
settings produces the same resizer widget, but without the extreme 
sensitivity to straying off it trying to get to a button at the other 
end.  So that's what I often use now, as my panels tend to be only a 
fraction of the width of the screen, and with a 1920 px wide screen, 
reaching the "other settings" button at the far end, for instance, can 
be /very/ frustrating, when the whole resizer widget repeatedly 
disappears in the process!

And of course I've noticed that some plasmoids are "greedy", while others 
are not, and getting them to stay put, even with a spacer, can be a 
frustrating exercise that's often futile, thus the note in the previous 
post that I'm hoping for absolute positioning at some point, tho for the 
moment I've come to a somewhat reasonable solution, until I get something 
decent to replace the kde3 ksysguard kicker applet, at least.  I'm 
working on that, either with the yasp-scriptable plasmoid from kde-look, 
or using superkaramba based applets.  But those need some configuring, 
naturally.  Meanwhile I'm using a ksysguard window, but that presents its 
own difficulties.

-- 
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

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