Virtual Desktop and Activities future: Merging proposal

[David Edmundson]

Was asked to copy and paste my comments from the main thread into a new
thread.

Motiviation

Most people use one or the other, both offer half arsed things you expect
from some kind of logical window grouping system.

 - Users of activities don't get hot edges / effects / whatever
 - Users of VDs don't get relevant activity saving, different wallpapers,
restore, cardinality
 - It's confusing

We've been telling the people who wanted different wallpapers on VDs to use
activities *instead* of VDs for years as though it's some replacement.

The default needs to be that the majority of users get the best-of-both out
the box.

Plan:
 - KAMD provides a list of virtual desktops
 - Adding activities adds virtual desktops
 - Management of virtual desktops is always done through KAMD and relevant
KAMD UI
 - VD KCM dies
 - Managing starting/stopping activites is done in the activity switcher
 - Kwin has no knowledge of activities at a window management level
 - KAMD listens to VD changing and will update the activity as appropriate
 - Grid View/Whatever shows all virtual desktops as it does now, and hence
shows all activities
 - Pager shows all virtual desktops as it does now

Much simpler UI, much simpler code. Bam.

-----

What if someone wants to have multiple VDs but have the same
favourites/tags/session restoration and stuff (Dave's middle-ground mods)

 - Implementation of providing virtual desktops is entirely up to KAMD.

    Every running activity has at least one VD.  But it could be that
adding/removing an activity add/removes N virtual desktops based on some
hidden advanced config value in KAMD. That would mostly match everything
you can do in the current state. Also allows future proofing, hence
deliberately not explicitly defining it.

 - Default effects / default pager will list all VDs with no discretion or
knowledge of activity, might not be the best, but will still at least be
usable even if no ideal with no changes whatsoever. Requiring no changes
there is absolutely crucial.

 - If someone else wants to add new effects/pagers that group/filter VDs
they should be able to.
(like Michails quite cool mockups and stuff) I don't think that requires
any changes in the VD protocol to do so, and we definitely shouldn't block
on it nor make it a default.

David
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