Hi,

I'm addicted to (mostly) tiled windows and would love to find some rest in using the Alt+Tab shortcut to visually switch from one to another. Whatever setting I pick up leaves me unhappy. I'm not interested in any fancy effects, no animations, icons, lists (*). No nothing. Just the window I want to move the focus to.

On my Kde 4.11.x, "System Settings -> Workspace Appearance ... -> Window Behaviour -> Task Switcher" has a promising option "Show Selected Window", which I select (the nearby special effects option is instead disabled, nothing interesting for me there).

What I expect to happen:
1) Alt-Tab cycling shows the next window and updates the decorations as if such window received the focus. If I release Alt-Tab the job is just already all done.

What instead happanes:
2) Alt-Tab cycling shows the next window but leaves the decorations where they were, on the originally focused window. The focused decorations are moved only when I release Alt-Tab.

So in my typical usage, I've not clue of what windows will be focused when I'll release Alt-Tab and so I _cannot_ know when I have to release it.

I don't think I'm completely brain damaged in this request and I'm quite sure it was right in Kde olders that 4.

Any hint?

thanks,
dom

(*) I use a lot of terminals, so title bars, icons _and_ thumbnails do not help me to choose the window I want. The order does not help either, I just wildly jump form one to the other.

1) is not possible, the window gets activated after one releases Alt+Tab. Sorry that's technically just not doable

There used to be an outline, but that got removed. Apart from that there was never a real support for your usecase. It's designed for switching in a stacking environment and not really for tiling.

I would suggest to try again with the various layouts we provide and as a note it's also easy to do an own layout.

would the "window list" plasmoid docked in the panel work for you? http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Wi ... ent=156455

Well I also use normally stacked windows, which I select with the mouse. I'm not an Alt-Tab keyboard-only freak. It's just that on some desktops I've these almost tiled terminals and switching with the mouse or with a lists is just annoying (something I lived with for some time already, I just use the f$@#ing mouse).

But if I really could something to improve... are the layouts those combo-ed just below the "Show selected window" checkbox?

What can they do to alter the current window candidate? Any other kind of effect? Even paiting the whole window with some fancy color would be enough for me.

thanks

google01103 wrote:would the "window list" plasmoid docked in the panel work for you? http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Wi ... ent=156455

Failed to install. Do you know where I can find logs for this?

you ran "plasmapkg -i" to install it ?

there should be a non-QML version of this shipped with KDE (maybe even the QML version), just do: add widgets widgets and search for: window list

google01103 wrote:you ran "plasmapkg -i" to install it ?

there should be a non-QML version of this shipped with KDE (maybe even the QML version), just do: add widgets widgets and search for: window list

No cmdline, I downloaded it from the link you provided and then "Add widtget... -> Get new widgets -> Install Widget From Local File...".
Anyway managed to install the other way directly from the "Add widget... -> Get new widgets -> Download New Plasma Widgets".

Don't think it fits, thank you anyway.

Enable xrender or opengl compositing (given that I'd bet your driver has no more backing store support, it's sth. you want to do anyway for repaint performance - if you also use stacking... or popups... or tooltips...) and the "highlight window" effect.

-> All but the next (ie "selected") windows will fade (jump, if you desire and set animation speed to instant) to translucent.
w/o compositing, the next client is just brought to front - obviously not helpful in a tiling layout.

luebking wrote:Enable xrender or opengl compositing (given that I'd bet your driver has no more backing store support, it's sth. you want to do anyway for repaint performance - if you also use stacking... or popups... or tooltips...) and the "highlight window" effect.

-> All but the next (ie "selected") windows will fade (jump, if you desire and set animation speed to instant) to translucent.
w/o compositing, the next client is just brought to front - obviously not helpful in a tiling layout.

Are you saying that enabling compositing improves performances? I'm keeping it disabled because my feeling is the opposite, not to say that it's less robust to any glitch I get from the 3D acceleration drivers (I run -rc kernels, so I definitively see them and I've not always the time or will to investigate them throught the whole stack. I'm definitively a user lazy here).

Of course I can go and disable all the unwanted effects, minimize or remove the animation timings, etc. but I would not call this a solution, only a coloured patchworked workaround. Thank you anyway for the support

I'm more keen to write a new task switcher layout (or try to resurrect the outline one, which probably is the one I sterted to use in the kde4 era). Any hint here?

cavokz wrote:

luebking wrote:Enable xrender or opengl compositing (given that I'd bet your driver has no more backing store support, it's sth. you want to do anyway for repaint performance - if you also use stacking... or popups... or tooltips...) and the "highlight window" effect.

-> All but the next (ie "selected") windows will fade (jump, if you desire and set animation speed to instant) to translucent.
w/o compositing, the next client is just brought to front - obviously not helpful in a tiling layout.

Are you saying that enabling compositing improves performances?

Yes! Modern X stack expects compositing to be enabled. If you are concerned about 3D performance use XRender, but think about it. You have hardware which is designed to do graphics - especially 3D graphics and someone has to compose the image. The X-Server is not really the best application to do it

mgraesslin wrote:

cavokz wrote:

luebking wrote:Enable xrender or opengl compositing (given that I'd bet your driver has no more backing store support, it's sth. you want to do anyway for repaint performance - if you also use stacking... or popups... or tooltips...) and the "highlight window" effect.

-> All but the next (ie "selected") windows will fade (jump, if you desire and set animation speed to instant) to translucent.
w/o compositing, the next client is just brought to front - obviously not helpful in a tiling layout.

Are you saying that enabling compositing improves performances?

Yes! Modern X stack expects compositing to be enabled. If you are concerned about 3D performance use XRender, but think about it. You have hardware which is designed to do graphics - especially 3D graphics and someone has to compose the image. The X-Server is not really the best application to do it

I've re-enabled the composing, I promise to post here the moment I'll disable it again and say why.

Now, disabled all the effects, they are nice but after 3 secs I'm already upset. I find nice only the translucent panel. I hate this glowin window border but if I disable it I don't get any hint from the decorations of the focused window (Oxygen with dark colors). Plain window border as without composing no eh..? (+1 to disable composing again)

I still have to accept that in order to select a new window I need to almost hide all the others, and cycling among them is slow-ish as if some other fade in/out effect was still enabled somewhere. I prefer a dry and instantaneous transition.

Sorry to say, I'm quite disappointed (to not say really p**sed off) by the "It's designed for switching in a stacking environment and not really for tiling". Kde was the only environment (after many others I tried) that pulled me out of Fvwm2 without regrets after years of use. I've been very patient during the initial 4.x times and now I get this "not supported by-design", for which I have to pay a compromise I've _never_ had to pay for something as vital as windows switching.

I won't have the same patience for Kde 5, please don't screw it up.

KRs

cavokz wrote:I hate this glowin window border but if I disable it I don't get any hint from the decorations of the focused window (Oxygen with dark colors). Plain window border as without composing no eh..?

give a try to "Fine Tuning" -> "Outline active window title"

cavokz wrote:Sorry to say, I'm quite disappointed (to not say really p**sed off) by the "It's designed for switching in a stacking environment and not really for tiling".

KDE has never been a tiling window manager environment. We almost always recommended to use a tiling window manager to our users if they wanted to use tiling. As you can see with your request here it is not useful to try to make the same UI work for tiling and stacking and trust me: I had not known that the UI doesn't work in a tiling setup. That's just very, very rarily used in that way.

mgraesslin wrote:

cavokz wrote:I hate this glowin window border but if I disable it I don't get any hint from the decorations of the focused window (Oxygen with dark colors). Plain window border as without composing no eh..?

give a try to "Fine Tuning" -> "Outline active window title"

cavokz wrote:Sorry to say, I'm quite disappointed (to not say really p**sed off) by the "It's designed for switching in a stacking environment and not really for tiling".

KDE has never been a tiling window manager environment. We almost always recommended to use a tiling window manager to our users if they wanted to use tiling. As you can see with your request here it is not useful to try to make the same UI work for tiling and stacking and trust me: I had not known that the UI doesn't work in a tiling setup. That's just very, very rarily used in that way.

ok, just replace "tiling" with "not overlapping" windows. I've three displays and I cannot guarantee that all the windows overlap. Many do, many others don't. Should then I really abandon Kde? C'mon, it's insulting and I've already told it. Please

mgraesslin wrote:

cavokz wrote:I hate this glowin window border but if I disable it I don't get any hint from the decorations of the focused window (Oxygen with dark colors). Plain window border as without composing no eh..?

give a try to "Fine Tuning" -> "Outline active window title"

Just the border, not the titlebar. I use a damned bright color for the focused window, it's the only bright color I've in the scheme

What I don't like of the glowing border with the compositor is not the bright color, it's just this shadow (which BTW crosses the dispalys if the window is on the border of one of them) which blurs the thing. So you need a thick shadow to do the same thing a tiny sharp border did so nicely.

But yeah, thank you again for supporting. I'm sure you are trying the best (and don't know how you remember all those options, I take ages to find them again...)

I want to point out that kwin has very handy “switch to lower“ and friends shortcuts that can be defined. I prefer this over ctrl+tab actually.