Bug 265015

Summary: siwtching activity should switch to last used desktop in the new activity
Product: [Unmaintained] plasma4 Reporter: Anders Lund <anderslund>
Component: activitiesAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE    
Severity: wishlist CC: aseigo, aspotashev, chanika, gregor, katonag, makhsm, maninalift, Wolfram.R.Sieber
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Unlisted Binaries   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments: (ActivityManager_p.h) Added support for another KConfigGroup which will be used to save the desktops
(ActivityManagerp.cpp) Modified to save and restore the previously working desktop associated with an activity

Description Anders Lund 2011-01-31 22:41:09 UTC
Version:           unspecified
OS:                Linux

When switching activity I land at the desktop i was on in the activity i *left* instead of the desktop i was on last time i was in the activity i *enter*. This gives a cumbersome workflow: Go to a desktop with a window to work with, switch activity, switch desktop, swithch back to previous activity, and you are at the wrong desktop.

Having used activities since thursday now, I consider this a bug!

Still, activities in 4.6 are about the coolest thing since long!

Reproducible: Always




OS: Linux (i686) release 2.6.37-ARCH
Compiler: gcc
Comment 1 Anders Lund 2011-02-01 20:46:28 UTC
I think it is clearly a bug. Landing in the wrong place all the time is demotivating, it clearly makes using activities less attractive. By changing it to a wish, you indicate that you do not want to fix it, and I find that sad because activities is actually making sense in KDE 4.6.
Comment 2 Aaron J. Seigo 2011-02-01 23:48:46 UTC
"Landing in the wrong place all the time is demotivating, it clearly makes using activities less attractive."

i can list a dozen missing features that are similar. it doesn't make them not a new feature.

"By changing it to a wish, you indicate that you do not want to fix it,"

??? no, it indicates that it is not a defect in the existing code but a non-existent feature that needs entirely new set of code to make it work. virtual desktop tracking is not part of activities at all right now. just network access points aren't, or a hundred other things.

i'm not even sure plasma is the right component for this, even. it probably belongs in kwin. moreover, i don't yet know if "take me to the desktop i was last on with that activity when i switch to it" is really the common expectation amongst our users ("least surprise" principle).
Comment 3 Anders Lund 2011-02-02 09:55:07 UTC
Some people agree: http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php#idea92919_page1 (14 votes)

As for component, I do not know internals, but activities have been presented as a plasma feature all the way, and the acivities component that this report relates to kinda hints that too. But that part really do not matter to me! :)
Comment 4 Casper Clemence 2011-04-29 14:48:12 UTC
For a long time I've been wishing for the reverse feature: the desktop to remember which was the last activity it was in but this makes more sense in terms of what activities are supposed to be.

NB If more applications/plasmoids/dataengines/zergoids start using activities actively I start to worry there is a need to build-in systematic guards against e.g. App A1 becomes active and switches to activity X1, activity X1 remembers it's last desktop D1 and switches to it. You could see how this could become cyclical but even in the case that it does not, the user experience is "I just opened app A1 now it has gone and everything on my desktop has changed".
Comment 5 Wolfram R. Sieber 2011-05-16 22:50:00 UTC
This looks like a duplicate of bug #241864.
Comment 6 makism 2011-08-15 17:23:17 UTC
Created attachment 62846 [details]
(ActivityManager_p.h) Added support for another KConfigGroup which will be used to save the desktops
Comment 7 makism 2011-08-15 17:27:41 UTC
Created attachment 62847 [details]
(ActivityManagerp.cpp) Modified to save and restore the previously working desktop associated with an activity
Comment 8 makism 2011-08-15 17:30:07 UTC
I was interested in such feature for some time so i decided to implement it myself. The diffs are against kde-runtime-4.7.0.tar.bz2.
Seems to work.
Comment 9 Gábor Katona 2011-09-22 06:56:20 UTC
(In reply to comment #8)

Do you have any news on when this will be included in the official release? Or alternatively, which part of kde should be recompiled?
Comment 10 Gregor Tätzner 2011-12-06 14:23:13 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 241864 ***