[PATCH] fade out panel in desktopgrid

[Lubos Lunak]

On Tuesday 10 of February 2009, Lucas Murray wrote:
> I've switched sides. It has just occurred to me that I faced this
> exact same problem when I was designing my own workspace
> software/window manager and I had ultimately decided on hiding the
> panel as well. This is for the reason that was mentioned cross-thread
> somewhere: The panel is a workspace object, not an application object.
>
> The desktop grid effect currently displays a snapshot of each desktop
> side-by-side, hiding the panel in this situation just doesn't make
> sense but having it display correctly on all desktops is a technical
> impossibility.

 Difficulty, not impossibility.

> Although I am now endorsing hiding the panels I am still against this
> patch in it's current implementation. Instead I believe it would be
> better to have the panel stay at the bottom of the screen and fade out
> there while the desktops zoom out. This actually makes it look like
> the panel is completely separate to the application windows. The new
> patch is attached.

 I like this patch better, but I still don't like the approach. I still 
consider it changing one minor inconvenience into another one and not seeing 
that soon that will lead to having both of them, at least I still haven't 
seen anybody saying anything about the problems I raised earlier[*].

 How about if we handle the problem differently, e.g. by having copies off 
on-all-desktops on inactive desktops rendered differently (half opacity, half 
brightness, color overlay or something). That would still keep DesktopGrid to 
be a preview of all desktops, while at the same time it should hint that 
there is something special with those windows. It's similar to e.g. 
transparent moving of windows or other elements, where outline or higlighted 
preview shows where the move will end up, but it also still showns the 
original window.


[*] "So, let's say we do the change and patch over the problem. 
The 'DesktopGrid shows desktops incorrectly' bugreport however stays, only 
now it will say 'the panel is not there'. And, of course, once people finally 
get different-wallpaper-per-desktop, we get the original problem back anyway, 
only for window type Desktop. Which, to use the same solution, we also patch 
away, at which point we may possibly scrap DesktopGrid and start it over, 
since by that time it won't look much like a preview of all desktops. 
Finally, if we get unlucky, we also get a bugreport about an application set 
to be on-all-desktops that exhibits the same."

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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