multi-screen management

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Wednesday, August 18, 2010, Chani wrote:
> On August 18, 2010 13:24:43 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > On Wednesday, August 18, 2010, Chani wrote:
> > > On August 18, 2010 10:05:22 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > > > On Tuesday, August 17, 2010, Chani wrote:

> > in the Activity Manager panel, if there is more than one containment in
> > the current activity, it is shown expanded with a snapshot of each
> > containment. so, in a two screen system, the current activity would be
> > represented by two screenshots next to each other instead of the one
> > icon. click on one or the other would switch the current screen to be
> > using that containment.
> 
> for screens, and assuming you make snapshots work, 

for running containments, it turns out that its not a big deal.

> that might be
> feasible... but, what if the user has PVD and 6 VDs? :/ (at least VDs can
> always be re- added after they're removed)

have i mentioned recently how much i regret PVD? :)

i don't have a good answer for this one right now; maybe we just show the 
screens currently visible, so when you switch desktop the snapshots show that 
desktop's contents?

> and where would you put the delete button? how would you keep it clearly
> separate from the "stop/delete this activity" button?

don't need to; it would only be for the current activity and that has no 
buttons on it :)

> > should turning off PDV just automatically remove all those other
> > containments, or offer the option to do so when it is turned off?
> > "Per-desktop views have been turned off and there are now several unused
> > widget layouts. Would you like them to be removed automatically for you?
> > This can result in a significant performance improvements. <Remove Unused
> > Layouts> <Keep The Unused Layouts>"
> 
> hmm... yes, assuming the annoying-popup factor is minimized this is a good
> idea :)

it should only happen when the setting is turned off; which should be a rare 
occurance.

> hopefully users will be smart enough to realise that the 'unused' ones are
> all except the one from deskop #1.

we can explain it in the text, perhaps even include a little helpful picture.

> > > me, I plug in an external monitor (actually a tv) a couple of times a
> > > week to watch movies. I don't want the containment for it running for
> > > the rest of the week, and I don't really want to manually delete or
> > > close it every time. and the multiscreen tool would then need a feature
> > > to manually close things instead of deleting them, too.
> > 
> > how much weight (start up time, memory usage) does this use case incur
> > right now? wallpapers on loaded on first-paint only, if there are no
> > widgets then none are loaded or set up ... it might be very negligable
> > and not work worrying about.
> 
> I ought to check again. I know that in january, loading 8 activities took
> something like.. 20-30 seconds..? for every plasma-desktop restart. it was
> a very noticeable loading time.


in the use case you noted, it's one extra containment, and it shouldn't even 
be loading its wallpaper. i also assume there aren't any widgets on it since 
it's a temporary thing in the described work flow.

> > > > > * I don't like how I ended up with two authorities on where a
> > > > > containment belongs: there's both the lastScreen/lastDesktop
> > > > > settings in the containment, and the place that running
> > > > > containment has in plasma-desktop's Activity class. that ought to
> > > > > be rethought.
> > > > 
> > > > they are two different kinds of issues, though, and are orthoganal to
> > > > each ther. it may be possible to nicely merge the two, but they would
> > > > still be two different sets of data and decisions.
> > > 
> > > ?
> > > what two kinds of issues?
> > 
> > 0) physical screen availability
> > 1) which is the current Activity.
> 
> uhm... I was never talking about the current activity. o.0
> I was talking about the activity keeping track of which of its containments
> belong on which screen/desktop.

right; but that doesn't really have anything to do with the activity, per se.

an activity has containments.
a containment has a screen (and possible a virtual desktop) affinity.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks
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