Well, why not? I've been ranting to myself about stuff for about 20 minutes now and it seems relevant to stuff. So, part whatever of why, after about five years now, activities are still one big non sequitur to me.

First, I know the whole "linking applications to activities" thing is a strange and alien concept to the Plasma developers for reasons that are still a mystery to science, but can we make an exception for applications that live in the system tray? Please? Or is the system tray deprecated already? I'm sure I heard something about killing the system tray a while back, which was a weird thing to see. You can kill the system tray, but the system tray has functions, and those functions have to go somewhere, and where the hell would that be? I'm going off-topic now.

Anyway, after booting up, I click on Choqok, which is my Twitter client of choice to see what those 74 new tweets are about. At which point, Plasma takes me from the activity I'm in to a completely arbitrary activity, since Choqok gets linked to whatever activity it was in when Plasma started, and that could be literally any activity. Now why does this have to happen? I asked to see Choqok, not be taken to a completely different activity that has no bearing on what I'm doing right now. I want Plasma to bring Choqok to me, not the other way around!

On the flipside, there's Clementine, my music player of choice. This also starts with Plasma, and is linked to the activity it started in. But when I click on Clementine's icon in the system tray... nothing happens. No, it's not broken, the window appeared right on cue. In the activity it started it. Which is not where I am now, and it doesn't appear in the system tray, or give any sort of notification. I have to hunt the damn thing down to find it. Dear God, why?

I'm under the impression that activities are supposed to be linked to specific tasks, but what tasks do I place Choqok and Clementine into? I keep up-to-date on Twitter and listen to music at pretty much all times I'm doing stuff, so they're related to all tasks, and thus all activities. So why the hell can't I just tell Plasma that and make them appear on all activities by default? This doesn't seem unreasonable or even to violate the intent of activities in any way, yet the developers seem convinced that it is an unreasonable suggestion and violates the intent of activities somehow. Do I not understand what activities are for then?

On the subject of linking applications and activities, I was once told on #plasma that a user would not be happy if they wanted an application on one activity but Plasma made it only appear on a different activity, which seemed to be the most bizarre objection possible. Allow me to explain.

Any such suggestion would not take effect by default. Why would it? By default, an application would appear where it was started, but it could be made so that an application would only appear on a specific activity or activities. So if a user got upset that an Plasma restricts a certain application to specific activities, then I have to ask: What the hell is wrong with you? You told Plasma to do that! It wouldn't do that otherwise! Plasma is just doing exactly what you told it to! Maybe you shouldn't tell Plasma to do stuff you don't like in the future.

Also, I was told activities aren't meant to manage applications. I must ask then, what the hell is this (yes, I am doing activities wrong, I am not like you, I never will be)? I can move applications from activity to activity. I can make applications appear on one activity, multiple activities, or "All Activities". If it's not for managing applications, why is it managing applications? It is managing my applications right now, and would be better at it if the developers would cure its anterograde amnesia so I don't need to keep telling it the same stuff day in day out.

Seriously, is the menu just a tease? As in "Haha, you thought you could manage applications with this because it allows for placement of applications, but no! We gave it the memory of a retarded goldfish and hid proper application management somewhere else!" or something like that? I seriously don't even know what I supposed to be using to manage applications. Virtual desktops? They seem pretty hobbled now that each desktop all look the same so my spatial orientation is completely screwed up (it's like a house where every room looks exactly the same, you'd get lost a lot). I've actually been told that's fixable and to try fixing it myself, though I firstly see that as a drastic measure (I get the impression fixing it wouldn't be a simple task) given how activities are 90% of what I want, and secondly I still fail to see why application management is incompatible with activities. It frankly seems like a evolutionary step, though, once again, the developers disagree.

Also, since I forgot about it up until now, binding activities to key combinations? Again, does not seem incompatible with the intent of activities. How the hell could it be? Do you not want us to switch between activities? How are we supposed to use them then? I did see a sort of solution to this, but it seemed like an almighty kludge to cobble together a feature that it seems logically should've been implemented back in 4.1 or 4.2. Seriously, do none of you use keyboards? Do none of you hate switching between keyboard and mouse and back again for trivial tasks? I'd seriously think software coders would see controlling activities via the keyboard as a very high priority given the way editors like vim and Emacs work, yet the underpowered Meta+Tab cycling (without even Meta+Shift+Tab for reverse cycling!) is all we have even now. Maybe Plasma 4.7 did something about this though, I'm still on 4.6 here. My hopes are not high though.

So yeah. That was quite a long and meandering rant. I feel better for having done it though. I'll be subscribing to this topic to see the responses from those freaked out by the wall of text above.

Congratulations if you actually made it down here without resorting to tl;dr.

Serenity wrote:
First, I know the whole "linking applications to activities" thing is a strange and alien concept to the Plasma developers for reasons that are still a mystery to science, but can we make an exception for applications that live in the system tray? Please? Or is the system tray deprecated already? I'm sure I heard something about killing the system tray a while back, which was a weird thing to see. You can kill the system tray, but the system tray has functions, and those functions have to go somewhere, and where the hell would that be? I'm going off-topic now.
... (example usages of system tray applications)

That sounds like the makings of a great idea: system tray apps are automatically global by default (appear on whichever activity you are currently using when you click the system tray icon). Considering that the system tray is a freedesktop.org standard, I doubt it will be going away any time soon.

Serenity wrote:...
Also, I was told activities aren't meant to manage applications.
...

I wonder when it was that you were told that, because obviously activities manage applications (or on a more technical level kwin associates applications with activities, and there are functions for moving applications between activities etc. which functions are accessible through the activity manager)

Hmm.. Kubunu goes with latest "stable" version of KDE and the only sign of Activities was a plasmoid with three small orbs.. which I deleted. I'm quite happy with the old panel - windowlist tandem and nobody forces me to use activities. Or am I wrong, and next update will bring me flames straight from hell? :>

Totally agree with every point. Personally I need these features too, but they are still unavalable in KDE 4.8

That is a quality rant, Serenity (and thanks to wrD3 for bumping it ... to my attention .. today).

I think I get the idea of activities. But the whole implementation seems to be missing so many usability features when compared to "good old" virtual desktops (like the keyboard shortcuts you mention, and like not being able to move an application to another activity from Plasma's own Task Manager widget) - and full of oddities like the others you mention - that I doubt whether I really do understand it. Either way, I can't escape the impression that it's far from finished, despite 8 releases.