Hi fellow KDE users, first post here, I hope I'm at the good place & doing the right thing ^^

Well, I want to create and manage some activities, but before doing that, I have several questions who doesn't find answers in the documentation :

1) Is it possible to make some applications automatically starting when launching an activity ?
for example : When I launch "Medias", I want Kodi to launch in fullscreen

2) Is it possible, in Dolphin, to make shortcuts to several directories, but only in certain activities
for example : Have the shortcut "Theory" in Dolphin only while using the "Teaching" activity ?"

3) Can I export this configuration in a file and import it on another machine running Plasma ?

A big thank you for your answers before tweaking and breaking things

cedrics wrote:1) Is it possible to make some applications automatically starting when launching an activity ?
for example : When I launch "Medias", I want Kodi to launch in fullscreen

Yes, any program running in an Activity should open when you switch to it. However, not all programs obey this, especially non-KDE stuff. No idea if Kodi will, or not, or if it will go full-screen automatically if it does. There are Windows Rules that can be created that might work around this. I would imagine that if you switch activities using keyboard shortcuts, that it would stay full-screen, assuming that desktop shortcuts work while Kodi is full-screen.

2) Is it possible, in Dolphin, to make shortcuts to several directories, but only in certain activities
for example : Have the shortcut "Theory" in Dolphin only while using the "Teaching" activity ?"

If you have each Activity use a different directory, yes. The default for the standard Folder View layout is to use your ~/Desktop directory, but that can be changed in the Desktop Settings accessed by the right-click menu on your desktop. You can also use Folder View widgets to have mini windows of these folders, if that would be useful.

Also, if you use the 'Desktop' layout for an activity, you don't have to specify a folder location for each one, as there isn't one. Each one is unique, with its own set of widgets, but you won't be able to have individual files and folders on your Activity as this layout only displays widgets (like the Folder view one mentioned previously).

3) Can I export this configuration in a file and import it on another machine running Plasma ?

Yes, I believe that the particular files that stores this are ~.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc and ~./config/kactivitymanagerdrc, though there are probaly others in your ~/.config dir that may be necessary. You would have to create any extra directories used for the activities on the second machine as well.

claydoh wrote:

cedrics wrote:1) Is it possible to make some applications automatically starting when launching an activity ?
for example : When I launch "Medias", I want Kodi to launch in fullscreen

Yes, any program running in an Activity should open when you switch to it. However, not all programs obey this, especially non-KDE stuff. No idea if Kodi will, or not, or if it will go full-screen automatically if it does. There are Windows Rules that can be created that might work around this. I would imagine that if you switch activities using keyboard shortcuts, that it would stay full-screen, assuming that desktop shortcuts work while Kodi is full-screen.

2) Is it possible, in Dolphin, to make shortcuts to several directories, but only in certain activities
for example : Have the shortcut "Theory" in Dolphin only while using the "Teaching" activity ?"

If you have each Activity use a different directory, yes. The default for the standard Folder View layout is to use your ~/Desktop directory, but that can be changed in the Desktop Settings accessed by the right-click menu on your desktop. You can also use Folder View widgets to have mini windows of these folders, if that would be useful.

Also, if you use the 'Desktop' layout for an activity, you don't have to specify a folder location for each one, as there isn't one. Each one is unique, with its own set of widgets, but you won't be able to have individual files and folders on your Activity as this layout only displays widgets (like the Folder view one mentioned previously).

3) Can I export this configuration in a file and import it on another machine running Plasma ?

Yes, I believe that the particular files that stores this are ~.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc and ~./config/kactivitymanagerdrc, though there are probaly others in your ~/.config dir that may be necessary. You would have to create any extra directories used for the activities on the second machine as well.

Thank you for your answer,

I will test this during the week end and will make an other post for confirming if that's working

In addition to Claydoh's suggestion for Question 2, Dolphin also allows you to more directly associate files and folders with different Activities. To do that you right-click on a file and use the Activities submenu to assign it to one or more Activities. Then you can access the files associated with different activities either by using the "activities:/" KIO path in Dolphin and other KDE-based file selectors or by configuring Folder View widgets on the desktop or panel to Show files linked to the current activity.

Hi guys,

Thank you for your answers, everything you answered is right, I tested it last week and everything is ok. It take time but it's amazing how Plasma could be powerful.

Hope your post will help someone else !