klipper gone from panel - how can I re-add it?

Duncan 1i5t5.duncan at cox.net
Tue Apr 6 14:13:43 BST 2010


Anne Wilson posted on Tue, 06 Apr 2010 12:58:30 +0100 as excerpted:

> On Tuesday 06 April 2010 12:41:06 Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:
>> Am 06.04.2010 13:29, Anne Wilson wrote:
>> > On Tuesday 06 April 2010 11:53:35 Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:
>> >> I somehow removed klipper from panel.
>> >> 
>> >> How can I re-add it?
>> >> 
>> >> In control list settings I have "klipper" set to "Always Visible",
>> >> but klipper is just not there.
>> > 
>> > It's a widget, so you need to Add Widgets.  If you can't see that on
>> > the context menu you may need to Unlock Widgets first.
>> 
>> I don't see Klipper available as a widget.
>> 
> Apologies - you are correct, it seems.  I could have sworn that it used
> to be listed as a widget, but that just shows how unreliable memory can
> be.

I believe I saw klipper as a plasmoid myself, not too long ago.  I 
remember as it sort of surprised me, but as I had it in the tray anyway, I 
didn't worry about it at the time.  It also surprised me because it had 
been a separate kicker applet in kde3, but wasn't in kde4, and I thought 
that's how they wanted it, so seeing it as a separate plasmoid surprised 
me as I presumed it wasn't there due to kde4 policy.  But regardless of 
why it was there, I definitely remember being surprised by it, and as a 
result of that, I doubt you were seeing things unless I was too.

The thing is, it's quite possible where I saw it was on a kde-planet blog, 
for 4.5 or something.  It could well be there and not in 4.4.  Or maybe it 
was in 4.4.0 but removed due to bugs for 4.4.1 or 4.4.2.  I don't know, 
but if you're really wondering about it, I'd certainly recommend asking 
the appropriate kde dev, as I'm quite sure both you and I must have seen 
it somewhere.

>> Also, is it really a widget?
>> 
>> Normally, I have it displayed in the area which displays kmix icon,
>> keyboard change flag etc. - so I don't think Klipper is a widget
>> inserted into yet another widget?
> 
> That's not impossible - you can have the device notifier, the battery
> status widgets and one or two others inside the system tray.
> 
> Have you tried just launching klipper from krunner?

++

What I suspect may have happened is that (like me) the OP has the restore 
last session option on in the kde session manager.  Having started klipper 
once and since it normally simply sits in the system tray until needed, it 
was probably still running and thus saved as a running app in the session 
when he logged out.  He continues to login and logout, perhaps for months, 
with it always restoring at new kde session start, and still running at 
kde session quit, so it's again started the next time.

Then, for whatever reason, either due to a klipper crash or due to 
shutting it down temporarily, it came to be that it wasn't running at kde 
session quit at some point, but by this time, he'd long since forgotten 
how he originally started it, and just considered it a part of a normal 
kde session, since it was always there.  Only now that he quit without it 
once, it /wasn't/ there anymore! =:^(  Because it had always seemed like 
such a natural part of the session and had always been there without 
actually having to start it, he was now at a loss as to how to get it back!

If this sounds entirely plausible, it's because it is, as it actually 
happened -- well, sortof -- to me.  I do normally have it running and 
somehow didn't when I quit kde at some point.  Actually, in my case, I 
think it was due to the kde 4.4.2 update; the currently running klipper 
crashed in the middle, when some of the libraries had been upgraded, but 
kicker itself hadn't been.  It was thus not running when I quit kde 4.4.1 
for the last time, and thus didn't restart, when I started 4.4.2 for the 
first time.

I didn't notice at first, and then all of a sudden, kicker wasn't there 
when I tried to use it!

But I happen to know about the session restoring feature as I deliberately 
use it to startup another app, a non-kde-app (pan) that takes rather 
longer than I like to startup on its own, due to scanning a few (tens of) 
thousand data files (several years of text newsgroup messages, including 
the gmane.org list2news messages that are how I follow this group).  After 
the messages are all in cache, quitting and restarting pan isn't an issue; 
it's just that first cold-cache start, or if I quit it, do something else 
big enough to flush my normally several gigs of cache (I'm running 6 gigs 
RAM), then restart pan, that the message rescan becomes an issue.  So, I 
like to have it start with kde, and have kwin configured to keep it on a 
dedicated news desktop.

And while I normally use the session restore feature to restore pan, every 
once in awhile, if I'm doing a bunch of system maintenance or something, 
I'll quit pan, then quit kde, and pan won't start with the kde session the 
next time.  But unlike klipper, pan's a normal windowed app, which I run 
almost maximized (well, to one monitor of my dual monitor setup, anyway).  
And besides, I've been running it since kde2, when pan was gnome-1 based, 
so I *KNOW* pan's a separate app!  So when it isn't running, it's easy 
enough to remember, "Oh, yeah, I was doing something and pan wasn't 
running when I last quit kde, so I gotta restart it manually now!"

Of course klipper is far more kde integrated, and being windowless, it's 
quite easy to forget it's a separate app.  So when it didn't show up, I 
thought for sure something was wrong with my new kde 4.4.2 installation, 
and it took me a bit to remember that hey, it's a separate app, and I do 
seem to remember it crashing during the upgrade, so it wouldn't have been 
running when I shut kde 4.4.1 down for the last time, so naturally it's 
not going to restore with the session when I start kde 4.4.2 for the first 
time!

But running it from krunner was all it needed, and I was soon back in 
klipper business! =:^)

And I'm guessing that as you suggested, that's all that the OP needs to do 
as well.

I guess that's one negative to the session restore feature tho...  
especially with such well integrated kde applets as klipper... it's easy 
to forget they're separate apps, and be at a loss as to how to start them 
again, once they for whatever reason aren't in the session restore list at 
some point! =:^\  If someone as familiar with the session restore feature 
as I am, can become momentarily disoriented by it and the loss of an 
applet like klipper, someone without that technological understanding 
could be lost indeed, and could indeed become rather convinced that 
klipper was removed as a feature! =:^(

Meanwhile, it occurs to me that just as the session manager kcm (kcontrol 
incorrectly generically aka systemsettings, advanced, session manager) has 
an "Applications to be excluded from session" list, it should as well have 
an "Applications to always start with session" list.  Of course, one can 
setup a session, save it, and then use the restore specific session 
option, but that does away with the dynamic of having the last session and 
whatever it was you were running in it (sans anything on the exclusion 
list) automatically restored.  Having a list of "always restores" as well 
as the list of "never restores" would be the best of both worlds, allowing 
the automatically saved list to be restored, but also allowing users to 
start certain things with the session even if they're not in the current 
session restore list.

... Which, it occurs to me, is more or less what the autostart feature 
already does.  So I guess what I'm suggesting is that the two features be 
combined into the same kcontrol module.

Talking about autostart... I think I'll go put klipper in mine! =:^)  
(Note: Items in autostart may need to be added to the session exclude 
list, so they're not started twice!  I ran into that with something else I 
put in autostart, awhile back.)

-- 
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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