Hi neverendingo

No I dont think I did miss the whole point as it happens.
But perhaps you maybe missed the bit where I spent several hours earlier on trying to link desktops to activities (as I have been trying to do on and off for the last year or so) - only to find again that it is in fact still completely unstable. As a quick search here on the forum will also show.

so yes - maybe it is possible to link them, but as far as I can see it isnt possible to use the feature yet.

Given that this feature has been so long in a very beta phase I (and many others) have wondered why it was considered a good idea to include it at the expense of the 3.5 desktops that worked perfectly well?

Sorry then for missing it.

Actually what happened, the idea was raised to integrate this part of Plasma with KWin (KWin provides desktops, Plasma activities).
So this is ongoing work, as it is not as old as the 2 concepts.

But to let me say, the idea is not bad at all. E.g. like it is now, you actually can have 2 abstraction layers for a workflow. Split your applications on over several desktops, but split your applets over several activities (if desktops and activities are not linked). With some fiddling around they are not as useless as you think they are. Of course, this involves applets that are actually useful for you.

But as i said, this area is still undergoing heavy work. Sorry that it takes so long, but i really think the waiting is worth it.

And lastly, don't forget, the "desktop" concept was fully rewritten for KDE4, so apart from pros or cons, it is new and evolving.

neverengingo thank you for the reply and explanation

maybe FYI... I wrote this back in March and again earlier in this thread...

My needs are probably quite simple. I just want to get a different background on a number of desktops and group my applications within those desktop/activities
Can anyone help me by explaining howto do this?

I have used KDE for n? years and my workflow has been the same - I group my apps in "Activities" within desktops.
The desktop pager is small and I find it very helpful as a visual 'where am I' to be able to use a different wallpaper on those desktops, hell... even a different colour would do!

Since 4.n? (a long time) I cant do that. occasionally it p**ses me off and I get round to seeing if the functionality is back yet. Today is that day. And it still aint back.

So what causes such frustration is actually a very simple need, caused by the loss of something that had been a fixture for a long time.

This frustration is probably understandable, sure.
What i can say, for now the different wallpapers for different desktops are not back, sorry. They are for activities... And both of these are undergoing some marriage right now.
So please don't give up, it will come, and linking them will be a sharm. Which will also increase many other possibilities.

@londoh,

You shouldn't need to zoom out just to configure plasma that way. Or at least I don't have to. It's of course possible that suse has patched
that part of KDE. Can someone confirm?

As for the dashboard, it's by default configured to show up if you hit ctrl-f12. It's basically an overview of what plasmoids you have on the
current activity, although it can be configured to be separate from the rest of the activities. Personally, I like to use it for system-monitoring
plasmoids such as temperature, fan-speeds, network speed and so on.

"ALL the open apps show in ALL the activities."

That's, imo at least, one of the points. Apps are usually more generic than widgets. Try this: consider activities to be a view of information
that you want for a specific worktask (it's a bit of an oversimplification but...). Say you have one activity geared towards social networking.
On that activity you have a plasmoid designed to do everything facebook allows. That's all the widget do, and you don't want it to be
demanding attention when you're say studying, so when you do the latter you change activity to one geared towards studying and the facebook
widget is nowhere to be seen. However, in both cases you probably need a filemanager and an e-mail client. Would you really want to switch
activity just to use dolphin? And if you do want that, you can (if the activity to desktop mapping is in place) - Kwin lets you force apps
to use a specific desktop.

@jsamyth,

"Then click the cashew, select one activity per desktop, and configure the same number of activities as you have desktops."

Not necessary. As long as you have only one (or fewer than the number of desktops really) activity to begin with, selecting that option will add as many activities as necessary to make it a 1:1 relationship with the number of desktops.

Further,

I have now done some more checking. Not as thorough as I would have liked, so I will continue checking. Still, so far I have discovered
six things:

1. I can replicate your issues _sometimes_ but not consistently. That, however, is indeed a big problem that needs to be fixed.
2. The problems with activities are not necessarily related to activities per se, but rather with the zooming interface. As long as I
refrain from zooming in or out, the activities stay the way I want them to. That is, point one is not a problem when I don't zoom in and out.
3. If you want the activity to be mapped to the desktop, you don't need to zoom in or out (but see comment to londoh).
4. If you want to separate the activity from the desktop (as it is by default), you do need the zooming interface as of now (at least as far
as I know).
5. When you add activities (even if it's just checking the "Map activity to desktop" option), the current one disappears along with all its
widgets. It's there but not immediately visibly. Probably due to the bug Anne mentioned.
6. The "Seperate dashboard" option does not play well with "Map activity to desktop". May also be related to the bug Anne mentioned.

So, in conclusion:

1. If all you want is to have activities linked to desktops, don't bother with the zooming interface (assuming it is possible to activate it without
zooming out in all distros).
2. The bug Anne mentioned should at least help with problem 5 and 6.
3. The major problem is with the zui (there surely can problems elsewhere as well though), which leads to the conclusion that the zui should be
either be majorly fixed (and maybe the bugfix Anne talked about would fix some of this) or discontinued, but that activities themselves can
remain in place.

Maybe I've missed something or come to the wrong conclusion, but that's what I've managed to find (YMMV as always).

Not necessary. As long as you have only one (or fewer than the number of desktops really) activity to begin with, selecting that option will add as many activities as necessary to make it a 1:1 relationship with the number of desktops.

Well, in this thread, getting to a reliable stable 1:1 relationship was the whole goal.

Sliding desktops around UNDER our working applications is NOT what most of us posting on this thread seek.

Others may want to run it differently. We don't discredit that. But attempts by new KDE programmers to explain how wonderful it is to slide multiple sets of widgets around on a single desktop fall on deaf ears. We are old school, and every Platform from CDE forward has had multiple desktop pages, for one simple reason: It works, and has proven itself over the long haul.

There are basically two camps, those that do everything on one page and want a different set of toys for different tasks, and those that leave long running sessions of applications on different desktops and use backgrounds ONLY as a location reference. There simply are no compelling widgets that we have seen to date.

Those of us who use it this way don't want activities skittering away like cockroaches every time we zoom in zoom out. So Avoiding Zoom all together as a work around sounds like a good idea. However, when anything happens, you have to zoom out to find your activity, and when you do zoom out you invariably find two or three more activities that you don't remember explicitly creating.

I think most posting on this thread tend to want an activity WELDED to a specific desktop.

A "lock this activity to this desktop" option would be a welcome addition, because if more activities get created (for whatever reason or by what ever action) you have to start looking under the furniture to find where the old ones went.

I thank Kryten2X4B and neverendingo for patience and time to read and reply

Kryten2X4B wrote:@londoh,

You shouldn't need to zoom out just to configure plasma that way. Or at least I don't have to. It's of course possible that suse has patched
that part of KDE. Can someone confirm?

However, in both cases you probably need a filemanager and an e-mail client. Would you really want to switch activity just to use dolphin?

I dont see any gui way to config plasma without zooming on Fedora11. I did see a line to add to plasma config somewhere which might do it?

Dolphin: well as an aside - No I wouldnt really want to switch anything at all to use dolphin. I'll understate and just say its not my favourite filemanager. But thats a whole different issue.

I agree that in both cases I prob do need a mail client and a file manager.
But surprisingly enough I've been able to figure that out for years without jsamyths metaphorical cockroaches skittering about under my furniture (LOL!)
I open my email client in Desktop 1 which I call "EMail" and I use that desktop for my EMail ACTIVITIES. Then on a coding desktop I keep a copy of krusader open to relevant dirs, and on other desktops I open and close other copies of krusader at will, as many as I want.

You get the picture. I dont need activities anyway, well I certainly dont need activities that dont work.
especially if it means that desktops no longer work as previously/expected.

and if I actually take a look at the plasma widgets - I mean really! - this stuff is just tinsel
I'm quoting jsamyth again...

There simply are no compelling widgets that we have seen to date

x2... especially if it means that desktops no longer work as previously/expected

for the rest of my opinion, I refer you to jsamyth's post above - because it's just right on the money.

thnx

l.

londoh wrote:I dont see any gui way to config plasma without zooming on Fedora11. I did see a line to add to plasma config somewhere which might do it?

In that case, I can only draw the conclusion that suse has indeed patched plamsa in that regard which may be one reason why it works better for me (assuming my conclusion that the zooming is a major culprit is true). I just have to click on the cashew (when plasma is unlocked), select a menu-entry, and (un)check a checkbox in a newly opened window to switch back and forth from mapped activities to unmapped ones.

Which line to the config-file would that be? To be honest, I very rarely look at those files...

londoh wrote:You get the picture. I dont need activities anyway, well I certainly dont need activities that dont work. especially if it
means that desktops no longer work as previously/expected.

and if I actually take a look at the plasma widgets - I mean really! - this stuff is just tinsel

I do get the picture. You described how I usually work as well. Except that I have a few activities set up as well with the widgets that are not tinsel. I agree that quite a few widgets are just-for-fun (of course, nothing wrong with that if that's what you want), but some can be damn useful. Besides, I'm quite sure you use quite a few of them yourself...the systray, the pager, kickoff, and the taskmanager are widgets too.

I'm a bit curious though...when you say that desktops no longer work as previously/expected, does that refer only to the feature of setting separate
wallpapers on different desktops? Or something else as well?

jsamyth wrote:
Well, in this thread, getting to a reliable stable 1:1 relationship was the
whole goal.

...

However, when anything happens, you have to zoom out to find your activity, and when you do zoom out you invariably find two or three more
activities that you don't remember explicitly creating.

I realize that's the goal. I've done my best, as insufficient as it may have been, to help out. However, it turns out that two assumptions of
mine as far as this thread goes were faulty (well, the second assumption really but since it's building on the first one...) and for that I apologize.

The first one was that most of those who don't get along with activities just wants them to be able to set different wallpapers on different
desktops and the same persons couldn't care less about widgets on the desktop. Maybe not 100 % accurate but at least, I hope, true to some degree.

The second is that you don't need to use the zui to accomplish that. According to londoh, that's not necessarily true. I thought it was a part
of upstream-KDE but it may be specific to suse (and other distros using the same patch). Thus, some or many users may need to use the zui to
configure things that way and consequently, it's not always feasible to stay clear of the zoom.

That being said, I don't need to use zoom and the activities stays the way I want them to. Maybe I've just been lucky though. Still, even if I've
just been lucky I maintain that calling for the abolishment of the activity concept just because it hasn't been perfected yet is IMO to go too
far.

Does it need to be worked on? Definately. Yours and others testiments proves that. And I definately understand that you get frustrated when
something doesn't work as you expect it to. I'm the same way, except that my frustration is with nepomuk. I have it disabled for now since it
tends to hog my CPU (both cores), but I'd LOVE for it to work.

I've finally gotten a few hours to begin tracking down the "Why are there differences between kde3 and kde4?"

I must say I agree with jsamyth . I have 20 desktops in the pager with names like Mail, Weather, Air Quality, ... where I have all material relating to the named activity. Under kde3 I could have different wallpaper for logical groupings which would show in the background of the pager. If I'm asked a question about air quality or weather or a project I'm working on, "ONE CLICK" and I can be there--no zooming and less carpal tunnel.

So the wallpaper must be stored in a config file somewhere--where is it?

Also the contrast for the pager is so bad that I can just barely make out the desktop names--where can I modify the font (I could in kde3) to improve the readability.

Hi,
I think that many of the problems can be solved with the following

A) Incorporate activities in systemsettings
We need an entry for the activities in the same way we have the entry for the desktops under Look and Feel.

It would also be be nice if we could say
kcmshell4 activities
and get a result similar to
kcmshell4 desktop
i.e. the names of the activities and either a section with the properties of the activities or a button to open the configuration dialog we get when we right click on the desktop and select to configure the theme the wallpaper.
In this context we can have lists of the applets related to each activity, to transfer(?) applets from activity to activity, to edit the attributes and the geometry of each applet etc, etc.

B) In 'kcmshell4 desktop' I would like to be able to select
a) Whether activities are mapped to desktops and if so
b) to select the name of the associated activity beside the name of the desktop, from a combo box filled with the names of the existing activities.

In the zoom ui, if activities are mapped to desktops, we can change the activity associated to a desktop by zooming-out and selecting another activity, while at this desktop.

C) In both cases it would be nice if we were able to specify the sequence for the desktops and the activities.

George Famelis

First, a quick note to the desktop-activity-skeptics: I have been playing around with activities per desktop since it was a "hidden" feature in 4.2, and I can assure you that it is becoming easier to use and more stable. That's not to say that it doesn't have a long way to go, but it is improving, and already, I would hate to go back to the limitations of KDE3.

Like many of you, I haven't found many widgets that useful, but I do like having different folderviews on each desktop. That way, I can do exactly as jsamyth and others were describing - group my working functions by desktop. For example, I have my "Internet" desktop with easy access to 5 different browsers, Akregator, Aria, Filezilla; "Workhorse" with Openoffice, Bazaar, Quanta, PDFEdit and Kcalk; and so forth.

Here are three screenshots that I hope demonstrate the added functionality of using different folderviews for each desktop:

http://thailandian.sqweebs.com/images_for_forums/desktop_workhorse.jpeg
http://thailandian.sqweebs.com/images_for_forums/desktop_multimedia.jpeg
http://thailandian.sqweebs.com/images_for_forums/desktop_internet.jpeg

Anyway, I'm not really posting to promote desktop activities, but to offer a couple of work-arounds for those in despair, while we wait for the KDE boffins to get this feature up to a "Mum & Dad" level of usability

Work-around 1 (GUI): Even if you don't have the option of setting "Different activity for each desktop" without zooming out, once you have done that, you really should not need to zoom out ever again.

If a desktop ends up with the wrong activity, just right-click, choose, "Desktop Settings" and change the wallpaper back to what you want. In my case, I also have to change the FolderView URL as well, but really, it's a lot easier than messing with the zui, takes less than a minute, and saves a lot of frustration.

True, there may be a squillion unused desktop activities in my config file, but unless I zoom out, they seem to bother neither my computer nor me.

Work-around 2 (config file): If you're game, it really isn't so difficult to clean up the "mess" by editing your "plasma-desktop-appletsrc" config file.

Step 1: zoom out (yes I know I said you shouldn't need to do this, but I am assuming you're desperate now )
Step 2: right click on a desktop activity that you don't want, choose Desktop settings, and change its name to "delete this" or something similar.
Step 3: repeat until you have renamed all of your unwanted desktop activities. Zoom back in.
Step 4: using your favourite file manager, locate the file /.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc (you will need to show hidden files). Copy that file somewhere, and work on the copy - not the original!
Step 5: Open that working copy in your favourite text editor.
Step 6: Search for "delete this" or whatever you renamed your unwanted desktop activities. You should see a desktop activity "containment" that looks something like this:

[Containments][14]
activity=delete this
desktop=-1
formfactor=0
geometry=1286,0,1280,1024
immutability=1
location=0
plugin=desktop
screen=-1
wallpaperplugin=image
wallpaperpluginmode=SingleImage
zvalue=0

Step 7: delete each unwanted desktop activity containment. Start with the line that begins [Containments] and end with the line zvalue=0. There should be a blank line before and after each containment anyway, so they are quite easy to deal with.
Step 8: now search for "plugin=desktop". You should be able to find the remaining desktop activity containments that you want to keep.
Step 9: (this part is a little tricky) with each of these remaining desktop activity containments, set it to your preferred desktop. BUT, the number that you set is 1 less than the apparent number of the desktop - desktops start at zero! For example, I have my Internet activity on my first desktop, and my Workhorse activity on my second desktop, so I set Internet to desktop=0 and Workhorse to desktop=1. Here is the code:

[Containments][27]
activity=Internet
desktop=0
formfactor=0
geometry=1286,0,1280,1024
immutability=1
location=0
plugin=desktop
screen=0
wallpaperplugin=image
wallpaperpluginmode=SingleImage
zvalue=0

[Containments][35]
activity=Workhorse
desktop=1
formfactor=0
geometry=0,2360,1280,1024
immutability=1
location=0
plugin=desktop
screen=0
wallpaperplugin=image
wallpaperpluginmode=SingleImage
zvalue=0

Don't change anything else! There may well be a whole lot of useless **** in there, but it's very difficult to tell what is **** and what is useful, and it really doesn't seem to hurt just leaving everything else in place.

Step 10: save your working copy of plasma-desktop-appletsrc.
Step 11: stop the plasma desktop. (Be warned - this part is a bit spooky at first, but it's really not so dangerous. To be totally safe, you might want to back up your whole .kde4 folder first.) Open up a terminal and type: "kquitapp plasma-desktop". Your desktops should go black, and you won't have a taskbar, but any open windows will still be there, and you can switch between them with Alt-Tab.
Step 12: go back to your favourite file manager, rename your original plasma-desktop-appletsrc file to something like: "plasma-desktop-appletsrc-old".
Step 13: copy your working copy of "plasma-desktop-appletsrc" back into the /.kde4/share/config/ folder.
Step 14: go back to your terminal window and type "plasma-desktop". Your desktops should return, hopefully with the right activity on the right desktop.
Step 15: if you're game, zoom out and you should see only the desktop activities that you left.

Well, that looks a lot more difficult than it really is. I hope I haven't put anyone off by giving too much detail.

One final hint: I sometimes find after restarting my computer, that one or more desktops have gone awry. If that happens, it's worth logging out and logging back in again. For some reason, they will often sort themselves out the second time around.

Hope this helps someone.

Cheers,
Ian

This might help other with similar problems:
viewtopic.php?f=67&t=83146

As a follow up to my previous post, it has now been 2 weeks since I cleaned up my plasma-desktop-appletsrc config file, while I was writing the how-to. My desktops and activities have been completely stable since then.

It may seem a daunting task, but well worthwhile to get this feature working properly.

Thanks a lot Thailandian!
Why can't we find this in the help files?
I haven't done it yet but will tonight.
I just upgraded to 4.3.4.
Gerard.

You can't find it in the help files because it is a ridiculous solution.

Furthermore, it only fixes part of the problem. Other parts, namely that activities are not locked to specific desktops, remain.

Zooming out will reveal there are more activities than you requested. There are no RED X icons to delete these extra desktops.

Upon any reboot you are likely to find one of those other
activities will take over one of your desktops.

The above is a bandaid that has to be applied repeatedly, such as after every unplanned reboot.