Behaviour of "Show Desktop"

[Thomas Lübking]

NOTICE THAT YOU HAVE SPLIT THIS THREAD!
The original mail went to kwin and plasmashell in copies.
I've also added the usability list:

PLEASE EVERYONE ENSURE TO CC THE OTHER RECIPIENTS!

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On Freitag, 8. Mai 2015 06:07:09 CEST, Sebastian Kügler wrote:

A Wall of Text ;-)

tl;dr (afaiu):
"I want show desktop" to behave like "minimize all".



Just some technical remarks:
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> and shortcuts. The effect is now more dashboard like, applications are 
> visually not hidden anymore but stashed aside, and the panel is invisible.
To please clarify terminology: s/hidden/minimized/ (actually "iconified")
They're neither "stashed" aside, that's the visual gimmick of a KWin effect


> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67406
> The "fix" was to introduce a config option to keep windows in the minimized
> state when the showing desktop mode was exited by opening a new app.
Please notice that this was a *hidden* option (Lubos apparently wasn't too happy with it) - it was virtually not available for the majority of users over all the time.

> * when I enter showing desktop mode, then right-click on the wallpaper | 
> Desktop Settings, the window isn't shown and I'm not exiting 
> showing desktop mode

Techinically possible solutions:
* mark windows that shall interact with the desktop (config dialogs) as transient for the desktop
* unconditionally keep all windows with the same exposed PID as the desktop on top of it
* unconditionally allow all windows with the same exposed PID as the desktop to raise above it (ie. they're, if present, initially below but can still be brought above)

> * when I enter showing desktop mode on an empty desktop, then 
> hit alt-tab, the 
> panel becomes quickly visible, then hides again, but in this case, alt-tab 
> does not exit showing desktop mode

Not reproducible. Bug in the effect?
Please use "xprop -root _NET_SHOWING_DESKTOP" to determine the state (you can eg. "sleep 20;" before to setup the condition in the next 20 seconds)

> * when I enter showing desktop mode, say on desktop 1, then 
> switch to virtual
Bug in the visual effect only
https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/123636/

> Then, we have the problems that have to do with modality:
> * when I enter showing desktop, I can't open a new application from the app 
> launcher as the panel is not shown, this was possible before, 
> and also I think 
> quite a common thing to do (again, has to do with the modality)

The "problem" is that this common behavior (show desktop and start a new application) is the source of https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67406

> * in showing desktop mode, my primary means of switching applications is 
> removed, this was working before, implementing as simply 
> restored all windows 
> and activated the app that was clicked on in the taskbar, with 
> a config option to keep the other windows in their minimized state

Again: that config option was a secret.
There's a publically available "minimize all" kwin script available for exactly /that/ behavior.
It minimizes all windows on first and unminimizes exactly that list on second invocation and does not react on anything but its direct invocation (no implicit break of state)

> Users need access to their desktops in order to interact with the next
> application, open a file from the desktop.

"Tidy up" was (and is) earlier provided via virtual desktops and is now officially available by minimizing all windows (a feature taken from windows which has this featuer because it traditionally has no virtual desktops)

> But, when making it more modal, we have to find all these 
> places to exit the mode and cancel it from there
"No" - we can actually simply break the state whenever the user activates any window.
However see again https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67406 and friends.

Cheers,
Thomas