Bug 169867

Summary:	Tooltip needed for "Exclude from session" option.
Product:	[Unmaintained] kcontrol	Reporter:	A.J. Venter <aj>
Component:	kcmsmserver	Assignee:	Unassigned bugs <unassigned-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	aj, kde, spectrumdt
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Ubuntu
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description A.J. Venter 2008-08-26 17:59:10 UTC

Version:            (using KDE 4.1.0)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Ubuntu Packages

In the systemsettings dialog for the session manager the option is given to exclude certain commands from the session restore.
However no indication is given of how to sepperate the commands and a normal user would assume spaces. One has to read the help page to see that in fact it should be colon separated. 
A tooltip to give this information would be incredibly helpful.

Comment 1 Pino Toscano 2008-08-27 14:07:52 UTC

(In reply to comment #0)
> However no indication is given of how to sepperate the commands and a normal
> user would assume spaces. One has to read the help page to see that in fact it
> should be colon separated. 
> A tooltip to give this information would be incredibly helpful.

Like the existing "what's this" help?

Comment 2 A.J. Venter 2008-08-27 19:16:38 UTC

I checked the what's this help - it doesn't actually specify the exclusion separator, in fact it doesn't mention the exclusion list at all. This could be a good place to put it, but I still think an autopopup tooltip on the text-entry would be better in this case, especially since : is not a common separator.

Comment 3 Martin Droessler 2009-03-01 21:37:03 UTC

In kdebase/workspace/ksmserver/kcm/smserverconfigdlg.ui there is indeed a "what's this"-tip defined:
<item>
           <widget class="KLineEdit" name="excludeLineedit" >
            <property name="whatsThis" >
             <string>Here you can enter a colon or comma separated list of applications that should not be saved in sessions, and therefore will not be started when restoring a session. For example 'xterm:konsole' or 'xterm,konsole'.</string>
            </property>
           </widget>
          </item>

But it is not shown! I don't know the implementation, but maybe the surrounding widget ignores the whatIsThis-hint of the embedded KLineEdit. If thats the case, pushing the whatIsThis-hint of the exclusion-list one layer up (to the same as the "on login"-stuff) may help.

Also the above comment implies, that only ':' is a valid separator, but the comment in the ui-file states, that ',' is also a valid separator - but I doubt it. Can someone clarify that?

Nevertheless you should also add a tooltip - something like this:
<widget class="KLineEdit" name="excludeLineedit" >
<property name="toolTip" >
             <string>You can use colon or comma as separator. For example 'xterm:konsole' or 'xterm,konsole'.</string>
            </property>
...

It should be shorter than the full help-text in "what is this" to only show what the possible separators are.

just my 2 cent

Comment 4 Claus Appel 2009-04-12 19:19:36 UTC

I second this request. Up until today I was under the impression that "exclude from sessions" was thoroughly bugged and did not work at all, due to this exact problem. 

The tooltip should be more than a "What's this", IMO. It should be prominently displayed above or below the text field. A colon-separated list is highly counterintuitive and needs to be explicitly described as such. 

In response to Martin Droessler: I tried separating mine with commas. That did not seem to work.

Comment 5 Andrew Crouthamel 2018-09-04 18:07:47 UTC

Hello! Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this project has been unmaintained for many years so I am closing this bug. Kcontrol has been replaced by System Settings in Plasma. Please give the latest version of that a try, and open a new bug in "systemsettings" if you continue to have an issue. Thank you!