Plasma Issues [Was: KDE's Plasma: How not to do lists...]

[Aaron J. Seigo]

hi Reinhold ..

thanks for the feedback. at the same time .... we could poll 100 users and get 
list of 10 "things i like the least" and a list of 10 "things i hate the 
most". such lists are nearly useless because, while a nice efficient way for 
the maker of the list to get their issues out in one place, it is completely 
unmanageable for us as developers.

bugs.kde.org is there for a reason.

On May 23, 2010, Reinhold Kainhofer wrote:
> 1) Whenever a new notification appears, the whole panel is unhidden and
> hides the bottom of the current window (which makes working impossible if
> you are typing e.g. in a konsole window).
> 
> 2) When you display the calendar (by clicking on the clock), the whole
> panel is unhidden and does not hide until you hide the calendar, too. You
> can work in other applications just fine, but the panel will always hide
> the bottom part of the window.

can't make everyone happy. and when the panel is being interacted with, most 
people in most situations expect the panel to remain visible. this behaviour 
won't be changing as it makes zero sense to do so. i'd suggest altering your 
layout to accomodate the way you wish to work.
 
> 3) Notifications also appear when you are in full screen mode and doing a
> presentation (with acroread as well as with okular, so KDE applications are
> also affected). This can be very embarassing when you are doing a
> presentation

this is a combination of the window manager (which can really only do so much, 
though) and needing a proper presentation mode manager.

it's just like the system tray issue: i've been on about it for years, nobody 
except users who get screwed by it really cares, and eventually one day one of 
us, most likely in the plasma team given the track record, will get around to 
fixing this as well.

it does, however, have almost nothing to do with plasma.

> 5) With an external beamer attached (laptop screen is 1280x800, external
> screen is a bit smaller), the auto-hidden panel cannot be reached at all
> any more!

which implies that plasma-desktop is not getting the screenResized or 
screenMoved signals, or is getting them at the wrong time.

however .. "with an external beamer attached" doesn't really give enough 
information to know what the configuration is, how the connection is made, 
managed, etc. it would be helpful to know.

when the external display is connected, plasma-desktop -should- be spitting 
out debug output that says something like: "New panel geometry is " and then 
some coordinates. there should also be a line that says "thinks its panel is 
at", and possibly one that says something about pinching the containment.

start plasma-desktop from a konsole window, then attach the external screen, 
capture the output, send it on to us and we might be able to figure out what's 
up.

> The notifications appear on the external display though (which is again
> embarassing, they should appear on the main laptop display, not on the
> beamer)

fixing x.org's interesting ideas of how to arrange displays is not in our 
mandate. sorry. we just follow the screen #ing, which is actually what most 
people who connect their laptop to an external display tend to want.

again, can't please everyone.

> 7) Every now and then typing e.g. "gg:something" into the runner does not
> give any suggestions and does not do anything when you press enter. if you
> close the runner and call it again, things work again. Unfortunately, I'm
> unable to reproduce it (it just happens every now and then)

thread starvation. usually due to an unruly runner.

> 8) I have unison and unison-gtk (the GUI) installed. Typing in unison
> sometimes calls the GUI (which has a .desktop file and and title "Unison
> 2.x.x (GTK)"), while sometimes it seems to call the command line
> application "unison"

it's asynchronous. so it depends on which replies get there first. the 
alternative is to wait until every single plugin is completely finished. 
that's obviously not what you want.

> 9) The Device manager plasmoid does not contain my NDAS drives. "blkid"
> shows them as detected block devices, but the list simply ignores them.
> How can I configure which devices are shown in the plasmoid' s list?

this is not a user support channel. ask in your distro's forum or 
forum.kde.org or another user support area.
 
> 10) The configuration of the Panel is just so different from everything
> else...

yes, and different is "bad'. thankfully there are people who aren't afraid of 
different. it's how we make progress as a species.
 
> 11) when I have the panel configuration panel open and accidentally move
> the cursor just one pixel out of the panel, the config panel is
> immediately hidden and I have to open it again manually -- very annoying

"focus follows mouse" is a broken concept imho, but it is working exactly as 
it is supposed to in your case. if you wish to use focus follows mouse, you 
need to also accept the misfeatures it brings. things work as they do because 
it's what works best and as expected for the explicity focus case.
 
> 12) Every now and then the vertical offset of the devices in the device
> manager panel is messed up and the device list seems to start at a large
> negative offset, so only the last few pixel of the whole list is visible
> any more. I can't exactly reproduce it, but it seems to happen when the
> actions for a device are shown in the list and then something happens that
> hides the panel without calling that action....

bugs.kde.org, will require screenshots.

> 13) The weather applet shows no current status for Vienna, just an icon
> that does not give any indicatino what it is for...
> Also, the weather applet's panel uses a Button to select the type of
> display. For Vienna, there is only a 4 day preview available, so one " 4
> days"  button is displayed. However, when you click on that button,
> nothing happens, so I thought that applet was totally broken, while it
> simply makes the mistake to show a list of available styles via buttons
> (and shows the currently selected item as a button, when though that is
> the only item that cannot be clicked!)

to complex to parse. provide screenshots, file on bugs.kde.org, please be very 
sure that there aren't duplicates for this. the status icon, for instance, 
should be fixed iirc in 4.5 (it just doesn't paint anything in that case)

> 14) About the horizontal lists for adding applets I already wrote a while
> ago, so I won't repeat it here, but I still think the horizontal list is
> much worse than the former vertical list.

repeating yourself when a conclusion has been reached with no new input to 
offer only gets you closer to being ignored by me. here's why: we won't see 
eye to eye on everything. that's life. but if i repeat every conversation that 
consisted of a disagreement of opinion even though a conclusion was arrived at 
(even if not what everyone wanted) on a weekly or even monthly basis, after 35 
years on this planet i'd have no time for anything else. which is why i end up 
ignoring people who try to play that game.

-- 
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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