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Currently panels unhide when you put your mouse over the edge of the screen covered by the panel. However, there are situations where this is not the optimal way of doing things. So I think that there should be a couple of different triggers (probably set by having an arrow you can click next to the "hide" option to set the trigger). Here are the additional methods I came up with. If you doubt their usefulness, I describe use-cases later:

1. Whole screen edge. This would show the panel when your mouse touches any part of the edge of the screen the panel is on. So if you panel takes up the right 1/8th of the bottom edge of the screen, putting your mouse anywhere on that edge will show it.

2. Whole screen edge for all screens. Same as 1, but you can touch the edge of any screen, not just the screen the panel is on. So if the panel is on the bottom edge of one screen, touching the bottom edge of any screen will show it.

3. Other screen edges (you would be able to select which of the four edges you want). This allows you to show the panel if you touch screen edges other than the one the panel is actually on.

4. Screen corner (you would be able to select the corners you want). This allow you to show the panel if you touch a particular screen corner.


Option 1 (whole screen edge) is useful if you have several panels on the same screen edge, and you want them all to show or hide at the same time when you select anywhere on the screen edge.

It is also useful if you have a main panel you want to show easily, and a bunch of smaller panels that you only look at occasionally. For instance you could make a panel with a clock, system monitor, and other generally read-only applets that shows no matter where you touch on the screen. Since you generally only look at it and not click it, it doesn't have to be close to your mouse when it appears. The panels that you interact with, for instance ones containing the system tray and/or ones containing the taskbar, would only show when the mouse is right near them.

Option 2 (whole screen edge for all screens) is useful, of course, for a multi-monitor setups. So, for example, if you had two screens, one next to the other, you could set up two panels of the same height. When you touch the bottom edge of the screen, both panels show and hide simultaneously as if they were a single panel. Being able to stretch panels across two screens will never be implemented according to the plasma devs, but this could at least get you something close.

The second use case for option one, where you have a panel with a clock that shows no matter where you touch on the bottom edge, would also be applicably here.

Option 3 (other screen edges) it not necessarily as useful as the others. It can be used similarly to the above cases, to show a read-only plasmoid. It is probably most useful, however, when combined with this idea: Merge maximized horizontal and vertical panels. In that idea panels that touch at a screen corner fuse their borders. This would idea would allow such fused panels to show and hide as though they were a single panel.

Option 4 (screen corner) is useful for two cases. One, it allows to or even three panels to share the same space and still be easily reachable with your mouse. Two, it allows you to keep panels you don't use very often out of the way but still easily accessible. Three, since on multi-screen setups some screen corners are shared between multiple screens, it allows you to have panels on both screens that show up simultaneously and thus act similar to a single panel.

I really miss the "hide / un-hide" buttons from kde 3.5.x. I think option 4 can be modified as a "4 bis" in the sense that when you put the cursor on the corner and the panel is hidden, you see a button to open the panel (an up arrow, for example), but the panel remains visible when you move the pointer to any other place. Then, if you move the pointer again to the corner, another button (a down arrow) appears allowing to hide the panel.
It is not necessary to think about this "hide on demand" idea as a different proposal from your option 4: just put an option allowing the user to choose between "autohide" and "hide on demand" and you will bring happiness to many, many people