Hi everyone,

Plasma 5.6 will add support for "Jump Lists" (see my blog post).
They are additional actions an application can provide that will be shown in its Task Manager entry as well as its context menu in the Kickoff/Kicker menus. This means we should start a discussion about which actions make sense for what application.

An action can have a text (that will be translated), an optional icon and a command that is executed. it is the application’s responsibility to do the right thing when it's called, such as start directly into a certain task, or call a running instance via DBus if it's already running, etc.

An action can not be:
* Dynamically added or removed, making it unsuitable for showing "Favorites" or similar functionality
* Shown or hidden depending on whether the application is running or not, it must make sense in both contexts (theoretically we could add that but it's not in the spec)

This doesn't mean we shouldn't think of such actions, too, but they cannot be achieved using Jump Lists. Also, I don't think we need a generic "New Window" action because Task Manager already has a "New Instance" entry - I don't how it behaves with unique applications, however.

Examples

LibreOffice: Offers "Text Document", "Spreadsheet", etc to directly create a new document of that type
Steam: Offers direct access to all of its categories (Library, Store, Screenshot Gallery, etc)
Chromium: "Open a New Window", "Open a New Window in incognito mode", "Open a New Window with a temporary profile"

Suggestions

System Settings: Could perhaps offer common settings. The question is what they are. We can only offer options that are available in a vanilla Plasma installation, and also many settings are accessible elsewhere, eg. Power Management through Battery Monitor, Date and Time through the clock, Printers through print manager, etc

Dolphin: I can't think of any. We can't show "Places" there, at least not using the Jump List functionality. Opening a new tab or split view aren't that useful from outside I guess.

Gwenview: I can't think of any. Adding a "Slideshow" entry doesn't make a lot of sense.

Amarok: Not sure whether we should add media controls there, given we have Mpris, its tray icon, and so on. A "Start random playback" and/or "Resume previous playlist" would be nice.

Ark: "Create new archive"

KMail: "Compose new Email"

KAddressbook: "Create new contact"

KCalendar: "Create new appointment", "Create new task"

KOrganizer: Probably an aggregation of the above

I'm not sure if I understand the jump list action. In win7 I like the feature in the start center when you go to word you get the list with the last open files. that's a nice feature say new file doesn't make sense to me.

Gwenview
something like this wouldn't work cause you don't get the information which file is selected or?
- Browse Mode
- Sort by folder
- Sort by date
- group by tags
- Edit Mode
- rotate left
- rotate right
- crop
- filter (if available)
- Presentation Mode
- play
- pause
- preview
- next
- 100 %
- configure Gwenview

andreas_k wrote:In win7 I like the feature in the start center when you go to word you get the list with the last open files.

We already have that. When I pin LibreOffice Writer to my panel I get a list of recently opened documents for it.

I think you misunderstood the concept. The actions you proposed for Gwenview are overly specific and don't work if no file is opened or Gwenview is not already running. Also, they're easily accessible from within the UI.

An action can not be:
* Dynamically added or removed, making it unsuitable for showing "Favorites" or similar functionality

We already have that. When I pin LibreOffice Writer to my panel I get a list of recently opened documents for it.

I think the above is the confusing part (if not all of the confusion, part of it). I myself am confused. I long wanted JumpLists/QuickLists/DesktopActions and to get what Windows and Unity currently do. So, seeing it can not be done (first quote) was frustrating. Then seeing we partly have it (second quote) was exciting. So I'm left without knowing whether this will be useful for me or not.

What's the actual behavior, after all? If it can't be dinamically added/removed, then we can't get a list of recently opened documents. If we do, then by the same way it *is* suitable for showing "Favorites" or similar functionality.

I'm hoping and looking forward to see the latter, far more useful than just static actions.

Sorry for the confusion. It looks like "Jump Lists" describes the entire menu (with actions and recent documents) while this topic is just about the actions.

To clarify: Starting in Plasma 5.6 we'll support "Desktop Actions" in the same way Unity supports them (except we don't support their proprietary Ayatana Desktop Shortcuts). The actions (such as "New Incognito Tab") are hardcoded in the application's .desktop file and cannot change depending on runtime conditions.

What we already have now (since 5.5, or even 5.4, forgot when it was introduced) is "Recent Documents" in the Task Manager. This has nothing to do with the newly introduced Jump List Actions but is handled by the Activities daemon which populates the menu dynamically.

kbroulik wrote:Hi everyone,
KMail: "Compose new Email"

KAddressbook: "Create new contact"

KCalendar: "Create new appointment", "Create new task"

KOrganizer: Probably an aggregation of the above

I think Kontact should also show an aggreation of KMail, KAddressbook and KCalendar.

Here I will list my current custom Action Lists, that aren't the proposed one by me, but just to take inspiration:

Dolphin
- Open Home folder
- Open Download folder
- ... (my favourite folders in general)
- Open PartitionManager

KTorrent
- Open downloading torrents folder
- Open seeding torrents folder
- Open .torrent files folder

Firefox
- New Tab
- New Window
- New Incognito Window (the last ones with proper icons because by default there aren't)
- Home
- Firefox settings
- Add-on settings
- Some favourite websites

Chromium
- Same of Firefox
- Links to open web-apps (in their own windows)

Konsole
- New Tab
- New Window
- Start with bash profile
- Start with zsh profile
- Start as desktop background (this is an hackish thing I have on my Konsole)

SystemSettings
- Links to open my favourite modules (KCMs)
- Open KInfocenter
- Open KMenuEdit (I never understood why it isn't a KCM)

Libreoffice start center
- Links to Writer, Calc etc, like as default but with the proper icons

Spectacle
- As default, various way to take screenshots, but with proper icons added

Telegram
- Open Telegram Web instead

Octopi
- Check for updates
- Upgrade the system
- Clear cache

Kontact
- Open KMail, KOrganizer, Akregator, KAddressbook etc directly
- New e-mail

Telepathy contact lists
- Open accounts settings
- Open logs

Ksysguard
- Open Ksyslog

Could you please also add a couple for Google Chrome as defaults:
- New Window
- New Incognito Window
'cause it's a little bit annoying to manually edit it after every chrome update.