One of the reasons I've stuck to KDE3.5 is the lack of the "New shell at bookmark" functionality of the KDE4 versions of konsole. That was an extremely useful feature, and made konsole a very good gui ssh client.

1) Why was this functionality removed?
2) Is there any way to replicate this functionality?

I've read the suggestion to use profiles, but that is a very poor substitute for this use case and doesn't do the job nearly as well.

I'm not familiar with the Shell at Bookmark feature i'm afraid - can you please describe it?

In terms of why the functionality was removed - Konsole was extensively rebuilt for the KDE 4.x series, and the change to the profile system likely made it seem that the bookmarks system was no longer needed.

It's a menu option that allows you to create a new tab with the specified bookmark opened. It also automatically labels the tab with the bookmark name. Very, very useful if you frequently run a large number of ssh sessions.

This is as opposed to creating a new tab first, and then opening the bookmark in a separate step, and labeling the tab as (username) IP_ADDRESS. That extra step makes it very cumbersome when opening a large number of ssh sessions, and the tab label is much less useful.

You could emulate this behaviour by creating a profile for each shell account you have - and setting the "command" to be the ssh command.

In terms of the tab title format, you can also customise this for each profile. Just make sure you set both the "local" and "remote" items, as Konsole will very likely detect the presence of SSH and use the remote label instead.

Does this help, or are there other aspects of the profiles feature which make it inadequate?

No, using a profile does not help at all. You cannot create a new tab with a selected profile either, so it's still a two-step instead of a one-step process to open up a tab with a specified ssh session. Profiles also include other unnecessary settings, as it's meant for a different purpose than a bookmark. A bookmark is still the more appropriate logical concept.

The remote label is also not necessarily what's wanted. Being able to specify a label, as per the bookmark name, is much more useful as a remote hostname is not guaranteed to be unique and may have a description different than from the perspective of a ssh session.

At least using Konsole from KDE 4.10 and later, you should be able to directly create a new tab with a given profile. This can be done from File > New Tab > (Select Profile).

If your profiles are not showing up there, then make sure the "Show in Menu" option is checked in the profile manager. You can also use the Profile Manager to set a shortcut key for particularly often used ones if that helps.

Considering your need to have a fixed label, I would simply suggest setting fixed texts, without any placeholders, for both the local and remote labels - which will achieve the effect you are after.

I'm afraid the Konsole developers are extremely unlikely to restore the bookmarks feature you are familiar with.

bcooksley wrote:I'm afraid the Konsole developers are extremely unlikely to restore the bookmarks feature you are familiar with.

That's unfortunate, as it's the critical difference between konsole being a great ssh client for power users, and just another console application. Do you happen to know if it's a matter of conflict with current design goals, or just priorities? There is some chance that I'll find the time to write a patch set and contribute it, but zero chance that I'll have time to maintain it separately if the code isn't accepted.

I suggest you speak to the Konsole developers via the appropriate development mailing list concerning their development plans.
While I am not sure if they will restore the bookmarks functionality to their former state, it is possible that they would be open to adjustments which would make the Profiles system usable for your purposes (although I have yet to understand how it doesn't, functionality wise at least).

The Konsole developers can be reached via konsole-devel@kde.org.