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Problem
Closing Plasmoid instance (intentionally or accidentally), will remove both configuration & data (especially the one with self contained data), no ways to restore/reuse it later.

For example we'll loose Notes data, Analog Clock settings, etc.

Some prior idea from other user has been submited to solve this problem, such as providing confirmation dialog when closing plasmoid, or to provide undo mechanism (brainstorm.php#idea83820_page1 or https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=256316)


Idea
1. Let's keep current No Connfirmation and No Undo behavior on closing/removing plasmoids

2. Save state of every plasmoid instance ever created, along with its data and configurations, closing plasmoid just flag its state as inactive

Maybe with some vars stored in plasma-desktop-appletsrc, something like:

Code: Select all

[Containments][100][Applets][200]
geometry=1045,143,256,256
immutability=1
plugin=plasma_applet_supercool
zvalue=0
instance_title=My Cool Applets
active=0

[Containments][100][Applets][200][Configuration]
my_data=self_contains_data_goes_here_OR_external_resources_ID
other_config_var=other_value

[Containments][100][Applets][201]
geometry=352,59,256,256
immutability=1
plugin=plasma_applet_supercool
zvalue=0
instance_title=Untitled Supercool Applet 1
active=1

[Containments][100][Applets][201][Configuration]
my_data=self_contains_data_goes_here_OR_external_resources_ID
other_config_var=other_value


3. When adding new plasmoid (via Add widgets):
- if no saved instances, or has nothing be preserved (no config, no data), just run the new, fresh instance

- if it's already has previously saved instances, present user with a dialog to choose which instance to use (maybe, something like kate's dialog for choosing which session to run)

- this dialog also use to manage (delete/rename/export/import) instance

4. instance chooser mockup


==
Edited: some formating clean up

It would just be cool if Plasmoids did not keep their contents inside the huge plasma-appletsrc … Don’t know how often I lost all my important sticky notes because of Plasma crashed or Plasma messing up my activity or or or … I don’t know what happened to that “Akonadi-Notes” plasmoid though

It may be nice to have something like "Last closed plasmoids" like we have for tabs in browsers.

In my opinion, this should be part of a larger functionality.
As I see, hopefully right, the desktop settings are organized as a plasmoid, their settings being saved in the same configuration file with others.
Switching between desktop types and setting different organization of virtual desktops made me lose the current desktop configuration, apparently. In facts, there seem to be profiles for each kind of desktop setup, when I come back to a specific kind of desktop, they are restored. But this is confusing.
I would like to have the option to keep all the plasmoids and their configuration when I change the desktop kind.
Sometimes it is feasible, for instance when I switch from a simple desktop to a grid desktop (I must say that I would see this grid as a functionality of the desktop rather than a desktop kind).

Additionally, when I have upgraded from a version of KDE to another, for example from 4.7.3 to 4.7.4, I've lost all settings because they were incompatible and no import mechanism was done. This is highly annoying. I know that it works in most of cases, but mine never (or with one exception). In all these cases, plasma crashes forcing me to rename or remove the previous .kde4 directory and merge the profiles as I could.

Please have these in mind in the near future.

Thank you.