Bug 256889

Summary: accessibility: a lot of application tooltips are not readable with the magnifier kwin effect
Product: [Plasma] kwin Reporter: Janet <bugzilla>
Component: effects-variousAssignee: KWin default assignee <kwin-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: wishlist CC: cfeck, chrys87, kde, mail
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Debian unstable   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Janet 2010-11-14 13:20:36 UTC 
Version:           unspecified (using KDE 4.5.2) 
OS:                Linux

The kwin magnifier effect which shows part of the screen in a magnifying rectangle allows a maximum rectangle size of width 500 and height 300. 

Alas some tooltips are not readable anymore when you use the magnifier because they are too wide (e.g. konqueror's close current tab tooltip), too high or too far away (e.g. panel and dolphin file tooltips). They are shown only partially and when you move the magnifying rectangle to view them you leave the trigger point and the tooltip vanishes. 

For me this is a usability bug concerning accessibility but you might consider this to be just an enhancement wish. So my wish is that the tooltips should be readable with the magnifier. But I don't really know how to achieve this best, what I shall propose. Maybe the tooltips could be limited to a maximum width of 250 pixel when the magnifier is used, which is half of the maximum size of the magnifier (and as the trigger for the tooltip is in the middle of the rectangle this should work). But that would only work for a special kind of tooltip, e.g. the already mentioned konqueror button. Or the magnifier size should not be limited. But bigger mangnifier causes more system load I guess. And still would not cover all tooltips without permanent size adjustment by the user.

I'd prefer some way to make the tooltips (panel, applications etc.) sticky as long as they are not fully shown in the magnifier.

Or maybe the magnifier rectangle could autoresize as soon as a tooltip appears so that the tooltip is fully covered. After leaving the tooltip trigger point the magnifier rectangle should revert to the adjusted size.

Reproducible: Always
Comment 1 Martin Flöser 2010-11-14 13:57:20 UTC 
I fear there is not much we can do about it. Tooltips are not managed by a 
window manager, but by the tooltip. So it is not in our control to restrict 
the size and the toolkit does not know about the fact that the magnifier is 
enabled. This would require a new specification.

Reading from your wish I'm not sure if the magnifier is the right effect to 
use for you. Maybe the zoom effect is a better choice or using the KMag 
application.
Comment 2 Christoph Feck 2010-11-15 03:21:58 UTC 
I guess this is something to be integrated with Qt accessibility, which is still at its infancy. Sebastian probably knows more.
Comment 3 Thomas Lübking 2012-03-14 10:50:13 UTC 
@Martin
The magnifier dimensions are not capped as of at least KDE 4.8, so i'd say from KWin's side there's everything fixed that could be fixed?!

(There are other issues about this request, such as the size demand to the magnifier grows with the zoom factor, therefore one probably wants to use kmag, where one can stop updating by pressing F5 and zoom the frozen picture afterwards)
Comment 4 Christian H 2021-12-14 23:05:58 UTC 
Is this still valid?
I cannot reproduce this anymore.

using Kwins Zoom plugin (by default Meta+= and Meta+-) does magnifie the whole workspace. this should fix the issue for you.