ideas to improve activities/desktop automation

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 07.07.2016 10:50, Pierangelo Terzulli wrote:
> hi everyone!
Hi Pierangelo,
> argument like a path for a file manager or a url for a browser).
>
> At the moment (please correct me if wrong) such ability is provided by
> the kwinrules kcm module, but the criteria it provides are related to
> X window properties only, no application name can be specified, nor a
> command argument.
I have to correct you, actually ;) The KWin rules can match to an application
name (in fact that's the only way I use them).
You just enter the application name in the "Window class (application)" field and
you have a rule for an application.
Actually the clearer way to define application rules is to click the menu icon 
in the
application's window (the one with the application's icon) or right-click the 
title bar
and in the menu choose "More Actions -> Special Application settings". This creates
a KWin rule for the application.
That means that we do not need a new feature, KWin does what you need perfectly
fine.
The fact that you were not aware of this possibility (and apparently nobody in
#plasma was able to help you, either) points to a usability problem, however.
I know that Martin considers the KWin rules an advanced feature targeting users
which can figure it out themselves, but now we know there is at least one person
who is advanced enough to want such a feature, but not advanced enough to
understand its UI. Maybe we should work on its usability, after all...

If you have any ideas for how to make it more clear how to set up rules for
applications, they're welcome!

Cheers,
Thomas

>
> How would you solve such a problem? Is it possible at all with the
> current technology (X11, wayland, TaskManager)? What changes are
> required to provide such functionality?
>
> Here are some links that have dealt with some aspect of this scenario:
>
> http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/46621/what-process-created-this-window-with-no-pid-associated
>
> http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/5478/what-process-created-this-x11-window
>
> https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/resourceproto/resproto.txt
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