Bug 358418

What's the weather plasmoid you're using in the first shot?

Another approach on this is we make sure plasmoids align to the grid properly.

Weather widget:

http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Weather+Widget?content=169572

The behaviour  in the shot is reproducible with other widgets, e.g.  colloquial clock .

Although a perfect grid alignment would be nice, personally I would prefer an option for pixel perfect placement.

It would be nice to have option to enable or disable grid as it was in KDE 4. Lack of such feature is a bad idea. This is the only reason that prevents me to migrate to Plasma 5 and I know a lot of other people with the same problem.

I am in the "please free icons" group, and consider the option-less ordering a serious bug:

Uniformity hide things, and irregular position offers a clue on where "is my icon" without necessity to scan a matrix; I use the "out of alignment" as a signal for position of icons and it make me operate on the desktop a lot faster. Goes without mentioning that icons too often randomly bouncing by themselves to a grid, destroying my carefully choosed position, is hard to be considered a "feature". and anyway a feature i cannot deactivate is not a feature, is a constriction.     

I looked regularly for an update fixing the bug, and only now I founded where to post my complain (rant). I am happy to learn that if it cannot be fixed, i can go back to kde4.

Ok, let it be the grid but spaces between items are CRAZY! You can place another item between two items. Lots of lost space...

Please please please, make this more flexible. I am forced to leave openSUSE 13.2 due to end of the support cycle, the openSUSE Leap with KDE5 looks horrific in comparison. I need two screens for the same amount of info I used to have on 1 screen . . . HELP!

Version bump. Still relevant. Still unconfirmed.

This bug certainly has my vote. I've been fighting with the desktop layout in Plasma 5 for a while trying to get three plasma widgets to line up and no matter what I do with resizing or manoeuvring them can I get them to look right. It's very frustrating if you have an eye for detail and aesthetics.

In my current everyday KDE 4 system (Kubuntu 14.04) it's no problem at all to get them to line up nicely!  

Anybody get the feeling KDE is going backwards rapidly? On the surface Plasma 5 looks quite good, but then you try and configure it and the wheels quickly fall off.

More than a year later, icons still lock on a grid and keep bouncing randomly in the "ordered" matrix the programmers decided is good for us.
Seems that it's easier to screw up a good system than to fix a nasty bug. 
That's the way "creative" programmers disappear from informatics ecosystem. What a pity, KDE was a good system once ago.

Did you hear that Canonical is going back to Gnome?

Time to migrate to gnome, even the last fans of KDE?

I also have been waiting to have this "fixed" since I first tried Plasma 5.
Having a grid is nice because you're correct that aligning widgets in KDE 4 was a pain, but if there is a grid being able to turn it off is even more important!

There are widgets I really want to be in the top right corner of my screen, flush against the top and right, and then I'd like other widgets flush to the bottom of that one, also flush against the right edge of the screen EVEN if that means the left is ragged!

Rather than a grid I'd prefer to multi-select widgets and right click w/ alignment options (right, left, top, bottom), but as long as there is some way to get them positioned on the screen where I want them, that's what counts.

The same problem here. Grid spacing for icons is much too big. I usually arrange icons at the lower end of my desktop. They either jump back to a position which is too high, or the grid system positions them so low that a scrollbar(!!) appears on the right side of my desktop. No matter what, it's just plain ugly.

The problem here: this not confirmed to be a bug because this behaviour is intentional. -- Broken by design --

my only progress with the desktop dashboard was discover that it definitely dislike svg icons. They kept disappearing randomly so i started substituting them with png images and the desktop is a little more peacefu: sometimes it remain the same even two or three reboots before "reordering" my icons as the Big Programmer decided for me...

frankly at least make the grid-raster smaller or configureable at all

and no, i was not active on the reddit thread, i just found it as well as this bugreport because i can no longer stand all that wasted space

https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/41ri8h/widgets_snap_to_grid_how_to_disable_that/

https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/41ri8h/widgets_snap_to_grid_how_to_disable_that/d14qqku/

Created attachment 111804 [details]
screenshot right border

it's ridiculous to waste *that* much space on the right screen-edge instead just 3-8px and so have more room for windows while still see the monitoring widgets

The workaround from the reddit thread is no longer working:

>Edit /usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.desktopcontainment/contents/ui/main.qml, find function updateGridSize (at line ~100) and change LayoutManager.cellSize.width and height to 1.

Any other workaround or idea how to disable Grid?

BTW: in 2012 there was an option in Kubuntu (Right click on a empty area of the Desktop > Default Desktop Settings > View. Change "Layout" to "Grid Desktop"), but it's no longer available in QML.

The spacing was reduced already and is tracked here: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=379432 , including a workaround from me to further reduce it.

OK finally after years of waiting I finally found a workaround: switched to Mate desktop and you all have no idea how liberating experience it is.

This feature alone makes me not bother at all trying to place widgets where I want them on my desktop, it does nothing more than get in my way. Surely the current grid system is not something that developers think actually works well for users; it's plainly obvious from this thread (and others) that it doesn't.

Gnomification "we know better what users needs" along with iphonesation "you are using wrong widget" still at full swing?

when you are at it: it really sucks when you managed to place some monitoring widgets as far as possible on the right screen edge and randomly due login and/or power on a 32" screen which reports in the first moment not the native resolution after some days the are wandering 2 centimeters to the left

when i place widgets and lock them i expect them to stay there until heel freezes or i unlock them intentionally

*** Bug 373860 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I was surprised to find there was no option to disable grid snapping in plasma5. I definitely support the feature request.

The workaround (I set the LayoutManager.defaultAppletSize.width and height to 10) works for me in plasma5. Ideally the grid pitch would be exposed as a slider user control, and enabling/disabling grid snapping as a checkbox in a configuration panel GUI.

As an idea: Maybe when a grid is used, the grid could be shown as semi-transparent line overlay (maybe only in the region near the widget that is currently dragged.

I am not sure if this would really look good, but it may be an idea to consider.

(In reply to kdeuser from comment #21)
> I was surprised to find there was no option to disable grid snapping in
> plasma5. I definitely support the feature request.
> 
> The workaround (I set the LayoutManager.defaultAppletSize.width and height
> to 10) works for me in plasma5. Ideally the grid pitch would be exposed as a
> slider user control, and enabling/disabling grid snapping as a checkbox in a
> configuration panel GUI.

After 4 years i too started making bad hacks somewhere, to have icons placed in a more reasonable way. It seems that Plasma programmers don't care at all  about user's feedback. But this is Linux no ? My first option is : install all KDE but NOT Plasma. I use XFCE as a lightweight, highly configurable, desktop and use all the KDE package in it.
So... puffff! Plasma disappears, as it deserves, being one of the worst "upgrades" ever saw in KDE. 

And the other way, sometimes, when nostalgia grows up, is to write obscure magical formulas in a very well buried configuration file. I think this is intentionally kept deep buried, so user have to be humiliated by "brilliant" programmers or write down where they wrote their magical formula. Maybe in 4 years more i can find time to learn a script i can run, just put a number as a parameter, and forgive this "feature" someone thought in a night when eating too much bad pizza produced this ridiculous nightmare.

"Maybe when a grid is used, the grid could be shown as semi-transparent line overlay" is nonsense and don't help me to place my damned widgets for system monitoring in a way that on the right edge of the screen less space is wasted for no sane reason

that's space i can't use for otehr tings because the whole intention on my 32" screen is to have the widgets for cpu, disk-io and networking permanently visible

BTW: if someone could just fix the networking widget and simply sort by interface names - "wan, wlan0, vpn, wlan1" is an idiotic orderiung and it changes vereytime you login

I don't know how to delete my previous post so i want to state that i regret i have written it. It is not the mood we need, to talk about anything, and i am sorry i didn't respected the code of conduct. 
But i wasn't just making a rant, the problem exist and there are workarounds. There are two points i think deserve to be saved in my previous post:

1 - install all KDE but NOT Plasma. I use XFCE as a lightweight, highly configurable desktop and use all the KDE package in it. 

2 - write obscure magical formulas in a very well buried configuration file.
as recommended here 
https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=289&t=156646

And maybe in 4 years more i can learn how to write a script i can run: just put a number as a parameter and run it...
meanwhile, excuse me

Honestly I think this proposal is reasonable enough. The real question is where the option should live. I can't see an immediately obvious location.

Hi,

Maybe in 

Settings -> Desktop Behaviour -> Workspace

I am using Plasma LTS, so I am not sure if this settings panel still exists
in this form.

Best regards,
Christian

On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 04:51:27PM +0000, Nate Graham wrote:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=358418
> 
> --- Comment #26 from Nate Graham <nate@kde.org> ---
> Honestly I think this proposal is reasonable enough. The real question is where
> the option should live. I can't see an immediately obvious location.
>

Yeah, could be.

Have had this problem as well. Also possibly related to not being able to force overlap of widgets. Would love to develop for this. Can any experienced KDE devs point me in the right direction ? Cheers.

I found this bug while searching for a "disable snap to grid" option that I presumed must be there somewhere.

My use case is that I am trying to align widgets with an underlying wallpaper image - in this case getting my analog clock to line up with a circular pattern on the wallpaper. It's driving me a little batty having the slight misalignment that the grid is causing.

*** Bug 465839 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

we NEED this checkbox. seven years, and it never showed up 🙁

It's really a shame that people have been complaining about this for so long and the developers don't seem to care.
In my mind, this spills over into politics - the fact that the developers are unwilling to fix this is a political statement on their part.
It takes me 10 minutes to organize my widgets trying to work around the grid-snapping. It never looks just the way I want it to look, but I get as close as I can. 
And every time I reboot the widgets are moved; their new positions vary, and one of them in particular is placed in a seemingly random position on the screen. Two widgets that shouldn't overlap are now overlapping, and two other widgets that should overlap no longer overlap. Then it takes me 10 minutes to organize everything again. Every time I reboot.
So the question is: am I supposed to WANT to organize my desktop the way I see fit? Apparently not...

> It's really a shame that people have been complaining about this for so long
> and the developers don't seem to care.
> In my mind, this spills over into politics - the fact that the developers
> are unwilling to fix this is a political statement on their part.
> It takes me 10 minutes to organize my widgets trying to work around the
> grid-snapping. It never looks just the way I want it to look, but I get as
> close as I can. 
> And every time I reboot the widgets are moved; their new positions vary, and
> one of them in particular is placed in a seemingly random position on the
> screen. Two widgets that shouldn't overlap are now overlapping, and two
> other widgets that should overlap no longer overlap. Then it takes me 10
> minutes to organize everything again. Every time I reboot.
> So the question is: am I supposed to WANT to organize my desktop the way I
> see fit? Apparently not...

I absolutely agree with you. This function is needed like air. Especially when you arrange the widgets according to the wallpaper. The placement on the grid interferes very much.