Bug 166914

Summary:	Display items in taskbar only from current activity
Product:	[Unmaintained] plasma4	Reporter:	Luca Beltrame <lbeltrame>
Component:	widget-taskbar	Assignee:	Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	abdeb, ads-kde-bugs, chanika, finex, friesoft, ivan.cukic, sven.burmeister
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Ubuntu
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Luca Beltrame 2008-07-18 13:12:01 UTC

Version:            (using KDE 4.0.98)
Installed from:    Ubuntu Packages
OS:                Linux

Currently, the taskbar widget can be configured to show only items from the current desktop, or the current screen. If possible it would be great to have a third option to confine showing only windows from the current Activity. 
Use case (from my own experience):

On this work computer I have three activities that deal with different kinds of problems, each with different folder views and launchers. For example, let's assume I have a "literature studying" and "programming" activities. On the literature one I have a running browser and a BibTeX editor, while on the programming one an editor and a console window. In the current state, if I am on the same virtual desktop, I see all the programs launched on that desktop's taskbar, regardless of the activity I am on. 

To better separate activities, I would benefit by having only the programs launched in that activity.

Is this doable? 

Thanks.

Comment 1 Chani 2008-07-18 21:42:06 UTC

well, eventually (4.2?) we're planning to have the option to associate activities with virtual desktops. that might work for you; you could put windows for different activities on different virtual desktops and have the activity switched when you switch to another virtual desktop, and the taskbar would only show the applications you wanted.

Comment 2 Andreas 2010-02-07 00:28:58 UTC

What is the status of this feature request?
This activity behaviour is really annoying.

Comment 3 FiNeX 2010-07-11 10:45:47 UTC

With the new activity management in KDE 4.5 this feature could be very useful. 

I'm doing some tests with 4.5 RC2 where you can set a window to be displayed a window only in a specific activity.

Comment 4 FiNeX 2010-07-11 10:55:01 UTC

*** Bug 241862 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5 FiNeX 2010-07-11 11:47:24 UTC

*** Bug 209223 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6 Chani 2010-07-11 18:16:21 UTC

erg. yes, this was my original plan when I let kwin associate windows with activities. At this point I'm not sure I can justify it for 4.5, though: with rc2 already tagged, there's no more time for testing, so any patches that go in have to be ultra-stable.

Comment 7 FiNeX 2010-07-11 18:40:27 UTC

@Chani: I wonder if without this option the 4.5 release will be "incomplete".

Do you think that it could be added on 4.5.x or 4.6?

If you say 4.6, probably a lot of people will avoid to use activities and will be using "different widget for each desktop" which can cover a lot of usecases managed by activities. What do you think about?

Comment 8 Ivan Čukić 2010-07-11 19:19:30 UTC

As this would introduce a new string, I'm afraid we'll have to wait for 4.6 :( (due to translations)

We may try pinging translation teams (and others) to see whether we could push this for 4.5.1 (IMO, it is a *very* important feature)

Alternative would be to hide the other-activities-windows by default and provide the config option in 4.6. And I think this could go to 4.5.1 as a bug-fix.

Comment 9 Chani 2010-07-11 19:59:21 UTC

TBH, I wouldn't make it an option. :) Activities are for filtering out distractions, the taskbar and pager are the only places that's not respected.

4.5 *is* incomplete, in a sense: the kwin activity-association is just a teaser. The real fun will come when we get the resource association stuff in so that a document tagged with the 'foo' activity will automagically be on the 'foo' activity when it's opened in an activity-aware app.

Comment 10 FiNeX 2010-07-12 00:12:55 UTC

I agree with Ivan: maybe the default could be to automatically display windows from the current activity (it looks more natural) and eventually add the option on 4.6. In this way 4.5.1 will be a bit more usable.

:-)

Comment 11 Luca Beltrame 2010-12-16 13:42:21 UTC

This setting is now possible in the current 4.6 development releases.