I have uploaded a tarball of a modified tasks widget here and I'd love for you to try it out for at least a full day.
You will need cmake, a C++ compiler and the kdelibs and kde-workspace headers installed. On OpenSuse, the kde-workspace headers are in the kdebase4-workspace-devel package, for instance, so a simple "zypper install cmake kdebase4-workspace-devel" should hopefully get you most of the way there.
Once you have downloaded the tarball, extract it to somewhere on disk and then create a build directory inside of the resulting directory. From in the build directory do something like: "cmake ../ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=`kde4-config --prefix`".
If all goes smoothly you can do a `make && sudo make install && kbuildsycoca4` type thing and you'll now have a new plasmoid called "Tasks Experiment" in the UI and org.kde.tasksexp behind the scenes. It won't trample on your existing tasks plasmoid or anything.
From there, remove the tasks widget from your panel and in its place put a tasksexp widget. You can even do this from a command line with something like this:
> kquitapp plasma-desktopVoila.
> perl -pi -e "s,plugin=tasks,plugin=org.kde.tasksexp,g" `kde4-config --localprefix`/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc
> plasma-desktop
You can also try it with the "stack icons" grouping by opening up the abstracttaskitem.cpp file and removing the two /s on line 71 so that GROUP_INDICATOR is defined. Then go back into the build directory and do the make / make install dance again, kquitapp plasma-desktop and start it up again.
After a day or two of using it, let me know how it works, or does not work as the case may be, for you.
7 comments:
Sorry for diverging the topic, but it related to the task manager usability.
There is one feature which is missing in the task manager plasmoid. It's configuration of urgency hint blinking.
At present, when window gets an urgent hint, it flashes the entry in the task manager a few times, and then it stops flashing, retaining the highlighted border.
But depending on the theme, the later can be barely noticeable. What would be preferable is a setting which could let the duration of the flashing to be extended (or even let it flash forever, until user clicks on it).
See https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=293943
Hello!
I can't really give you a straight answer as to when and what I would need the grouping numbers but I do feel that I prefer that. I often have heaps of windows open and it feels that I benefit from knowing how many windows I have in a group.
The shaded one, without numbers but still showing that it's more than one is alright but not really clear enough in to my tast.
What I really prefer though is no grouping and chronological placement of the opened windows. I usually remember in what order I started on things so that way I save a click and I don't have to read which window to choose - I know that the number two instance was that specific thing I want to go to now so just one click on number two of that window type and I'm there.
I hope I was understandable. Keep up the good work!
Regards,
Peter
For me, the multiple-icons version works better.
Though, IMO it could be a bit more aligned - instead of only offsetting the icon, to make the icons smaller so that the both fit into the same space as one icon normally would.
Cheerio!
A quick and dirty patch to show what I mean - the issue is that the icon scales and is thus not rendered good.
71c71
< #define GROUP_INDICATOR
---
> //#define GROUP_INDICATOR
124,125c124,125
< topMargin = qMax(1, topMargin/2);
< bottomMargin = qMax(1, bottomMargin/2);
---
> topMargin = qMax(1, topMargin/2);
> bottomMargin = qMax(1, bottomMargin/2);
613c613
< if (~option->state & QStyle::State_Sunken &&
---
> if (~option->state & QStyle::State_Sunken &&
680c680
< QRectF iconR = iconRect(bounds);
---
> const QRectF iconR = iconRect(bounds);
695,699c695
< if (abstractItem && abstractItem->itemType() == TaskManager::GroupItemType) {
< result = icon().pixmap(iconR.toRect().size() - QSize(4, 4));
< } else {
< result = icon().pixmap(iconR.toRect().size());
< }
---
> result = icon().pixmap(iconR.toRect().size());
Well, I've been using the task-bar for a couple of days now, and I'm actually surprised at how little it bothered me most of the time, though I did feel a need to keep the information of what's a group and what's a single window in my head. it gets annoying when we get out of sync (the computer always get's it wrong :-).
I also grew the habit of telling a group from a single window by whether it shows the app name or the title (an error prone process). I still prefer to delegate it all to the computer, even if it only costs me an overhead of 5 seconds per day.
I'd also like to point out that humans line 0.5-1 secs in the past, and knowing how stuff will react enables us to queue stuff up to speed up the process.
I've been surprised by the lack of bugs in the taskbar compared to the default taskbar, though I didn't let it have a week of continuous (ab)use.
I've made a record of issues I've encountered which shows how much I've been spoiled by icons only taskbar, as well as a few cases where knowing where showing grouping information would have helped.
I found that I still stand behind my statements in mark-grouped-windows-as-such-or-not
Though I'll miss seeing the titles/app name, I guess it's back to Icons only, at least until the next experiment.
Issues:
encountered in the first 5 min:
*can't tell anything about the name of the window from the thumbnail (only group name shows), can't see the thumbnails from the list with names
*can't close window from thumbnail mode
encountered in the first 10 min:
*can't access right click menu from thumbnail mode
*can't use task-bar to move items between activities
encountered after a short while:
*I'd like a hover on effect in thumbnail mode
*a wine window jumped out of it's group because it was highlighted. the Icon of the original group changed so I thought it was a single window when it was in fact two windows. took me some alt-tabbing to figure out what happened (about 2 minuets).
*Opened 5 documents in Kate from dolphin, they all opened in separate windows. If I weren't expecting it, I would have been confused
*found out I have a duplicate chromium window somehow for a couple of hours now, if I had run FF too, I'd be clueless as to why my memory consumption is too high
I have now been using the "shaded icons" modification since you posted and I like it! Think it works great, possibly the "shading" could be a bit more "obvious".
See no need for the numbered version myself but like having some indication that I have many open windows of whatever it might be (typically konsole or dolphin in my case)
I would love to add some feedback. I would love to help you improve the tablet.
I would LOVE to hand over my hard earned cash to greatly improve your retirement plan. (You know whats coming...) BUT I can't buy one! lol.
I don't want you to compromise your principles, I don't want you to under pay Asians to make them faster, cheaper. But I am LOOKING FORWARD to using one.
CHOP CHOP!!
I hope your having fun with it.
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