Are there any good plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc editor?
When I read the file, it's kinda unreadable to me.
I would like to configure the kde5 panel properly, but the current panel configure (right click on the panel) does not really work as what I expect.

For example, I can not configure another screens (screen1, screen2) panel setting when there is only one screen with one panel.
I also feel the current file is really messy. "lastScreen=0", "lastScreen=1", "lastScreen=2" etc.. Are they the way to configure different panels on different monitors? How to remove them if I don't want extra panels? why are there three panels? I only used two panels so far in this system etc..

When I check the directory `~/.local/share/plasma_icons`, it has many unused .desktop files. I have no ideas how are they created.
They might be created when I update some icons for apps and delete apps from the panel.
The only way I found so far to clean the unused .desktop files is to `rm` them manually. I don't want any garbage files.

In a word, I feel the kde5 panel configuration is really messy to me. I would like to find a better GUI tool or command line configure tool.

Thanks a lot.

Hi!

I do not know a GUI tool (besides systemsettings) for this, but you can edit this file using `kwriteconfig5`. Editing with a text editor is potentially risky and can lead to unwanted behaviour, doubled entries, etc. Plasma uses containments which are containers for other containers or applets. Numbers change and are not reliable, so you have to carefully edit this entries.

The default panel is just one panel for all activities/screens and you can just define the position. If you want to have different panels in different situations, you can switch to latte-dock which supports multiple configurations for different screen setups/activities.

Normally the configuration adjusts if you plug in new outputs, e.g. another monitor. New panels aren't created automatically afaik.
Depending on your graphics driver/card I can imagine another problem which is independend of plasma. If you're using XServer you can check the output of `xrandr -q` and compare it to the ouput you have if the layout is «messed up».
As an example I have two monitors connected as one wide screen using an amd graphics card. Sometimes the older monitor has some «startup issues» and switches through its modes (hdmi, dp, dvi) two or three times, searching the signal. This leads to different addresses, e.g. it counts up from DP-1 to DP-3. Plasma switches configuration then, thinking there was a change in monitor setup. (on sway-wm it just leaves me with an empty default screen as the main screen is on DP-1 which does not exist anymore)

Another approach would be the NVidia-driver. Before the amd card I had an nvidia card with propriertary drivers which did not work as expected until I wrote a fixed xorg.conf to force my setup.

On which operating system do you have plasma installed? What graphics card do you use?

The Icons:
No desktop environment is allowed to delete stuff in your homefolder if it is not 100% secure to do so (e.g. by asking the user to delete it or by manual deleteion). So yes, you have to manually clean it up. There are some pros and cons but I'm quite happy that no «old stuff» is removed from my homefolder and I do clean it up from time to time. The systemwide configuration is automatically purgeable.

koffeinfriedhof wrote:Hi!

I do not know a GUI tool (besides systemsettings) for this, but you can edit this file using `kwriteconfig5`. Editing with a text editor is potentially risky and can lead to unwanted behaviour, doubled entries, etc. Plasma uses containments which are containers for other containers or applets. Numbers change and are not reliable, so you have to carefully edit this entries.

The default panel is just one panel for all activities/screens and you can just define the position. If you want to have different panels in different situations, you can switch to latte-dock which supports multiple configurations for different screen setups/activities.

Normally the configuration adjusts if you plug in new outputs, e.g. another monitor. New panels aren't created automatically afaik.
Depending on your graphics driver/card I can imagine another problem which is independend of plasma. If you're using XServer you can check the output of `xrandr -q` and compare it to the ouput you have if the layout is «messed up».
As an example I have two monitors connected as one wide screen using an amd graphics card. Sometimes the older monitor has some «startup issues» and switches through its modes (hdmi, dp, dvi) two or three times, searching the signal. This leads to different addresses, e.g. it counts up from DP-1 to DP-3. Plasma switches configuration then, thinking there was a change in monitor setup. (on sway-wm it just leaves me with an empty default screen as the main screen is on DP-1 which does not exist anymore)

Another approach would be the NVidia-driver. Before the amd card I had an nvidia card with propriertary drivers which did not work as expected until I wrote a fixed xorg.conf to force my setup.

On which operating system do you have plasma installed? What graphics card do you use?

The Icons:
No desktop environment is allowed to delete stuff in your homefolder if it is not 100% secure to do so (e.g. by asking the user to delete it or by manual deleteion). So yes, you have to manually clean it up. There are some pros and cons but I'm quite happy that no «old stuff» is removed from my homefolder and I do clean it up from time to time. The systemwide configuration is automatically purgeable.

Thank you very much for your time and detail reply.

I am running MX KDE 19.3 (MX Linux based on Debian 10). I am using integrated GPU cards, both "intel" and "amd" cards on different devices.

I don't think `kwriteconfig5` is the tool I am looking for. It's not really a plasma panel editor. It can set keys and values, but I have no idea what keys and values I should use. Even if there is a detail documentation, I wouldn't want to study the documentation on this purpose. I am looking for a panel editor maybe it does not exist yet.

Thanks for introudcing "latte-dock", but I prefer the kde5 plasma panel more. So I think I will stick with the default panel.

Regarding the .desktop files, I think the panel should delete the unused files which are created by the panel. Actually, I have no ideas why the panel creates many redundant .desktop files in the first place. I just changed the icon of an app in the panel, it should change the existing .desktop file instead of creating a new .desktop file.

Thanks a lot.