how to autohide the panel?

[hw]

On Wed, 2022-02-23 at 11:52 -0700, Stephen Dowdy wrote:
> On 2/23/22 11:12, Patrick Nagel wrote:
> > On Wednesday, 23 February 2022 16:47:03 CET hw wrote:
> > > I have set the panel to autohide and it's not hiding except
> > > sometimes:(   Instead the windows go underneath the panel,
> > > which is very annoying.
> 
> hw,
> 
> IME, the most common reason for this is an app doing some update/notification function forcing the panel to pop up to handle the notification event.
> 
> This could be a download in a web browser (you see the browser icon with a progress indicator scanning across the icon), or other app trying to get your attention to show some state changing or warning. (perhaps something in the system tray

It's not notifications that make the panel come up --- which it shouldn't
to begin with for that anyway.  It just doesn't hide.  Besides, I'm set to
do not disturb.

> 
> Yes, this can be frustrating to identify exactly what's "misbehaving"  (the panel is doing what it was designed to do, but it's not what you expect).
> 
> I don't offhand know If/How there are knobs to control the panel behavior's handling of such update/notification events in autohide mode, but that's where you should start digging.

It's the panel not hiding.  If the panel is designed not to hide like 99%
of the time, that option should be removed altogether to make for easier
source code.

> Perhaps try looking at:
> 
>      kcmshell5 notify
> 
> and context-clicking (right-mouse) the notifications system tray icon (Configure Notifications) and fiddle with the "track file transfers and other jobs" and "show application and system notifications" buttons.  (you'll probably lose the usefulness of the notifier.  maybe you can run that with plasmawindowed instead?
> 
> 
> I guess now that i have one or more 4K monitors on my desktops i just don't try to use 'autohide anymore" :-/

There are some windows that are insisting on either full 4k or a much
lower resolution, or full screen.  Since full screen blocks everything
else and is a thing that should have died along with msdos, I tried to
autohide the panel and found that autohiding just doesn't work.

Having the windows above the panel is useless because it would prevent
me from using the panel altogether unless I keep moving the windows around
every time I need to use the panel.

And seriously?  Why should I have to fiddle around with things at all
when there is a totally simple option for automatically hiding the
panel?  Are there some hidden options that I need to find that make
the simple option work eventually after I spent searching hours for a
solution?

It's bugs like this one, plus kwin not even being able to do
focus follows mouse correctly and kmail still not working at all
that make me go away from KDE.  I like KDE and kmail, but there is
no point in using it when the major things which speak for using it
don't work.

At least I'm apparently not the only one who has found that autohiding
the panel doesn't work ...