Bug 363413

Summary: Per-activity settings
Product: [Applications] systemsettings Reporter: Herr Schmidt <wettererscheinung>
Component: generalAssignee: David Edmundson <kde>
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: wishlist CC: bshah, nate, notuxius, plasma-bugs-null, Zac.Wasula
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Debian testing   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Herr Schmidt 2016-05-22 21:14:32 UTC 
I want to have two activities A and B. A has with several Desktops / virtual workspaces (Arbeitsflächen), each one using a certain keyboard layout.
Activity B should only have one workspace/Desktop containing a certain set of Plasma widgets+Software and should have a certain fixed keyboard layout.

First Problem:
Workspaces and activities seem both to be global: Whenever I change the amount and settings of Workspaces while in A, after switching to B I will find the changed number and settings as well. Result is, that I will always keep the last keyboard layout from the workspace I used last in A.

Second problem:
This is confusing especially as it is possible to make the workspaces in B look different than those in A (like wallpaper) without changing something in A. This provokes the assumption, that the activities are autonomous regarding  the workspaces as well. But in truth it seems to be a mixup of B-workspaces-settings and global/A-workspaces settings. This is not intuitive. Especially as there are different ways of changing something about the workspaces which is not selfexplaining.
I don't understand, wether the workspaces in A are the same instances like those in B or not. 

Reproducible: Always



Expected Results:  
I would expect the activities to be autonomous regarding workspaces and keyboard layouts as well (unless I choose the option: global).

Regarding the system settings I would expect the setting to be visually devided by activity. E.g. in KSystemsettings>Workspaces a switch on top where you can switch to which activity the settings should apply.

And I would expect to keep the last used keyboard layout inside a specific workspace in B when I switch from A to B.

Thanks for your great work!
Comment 1 Alexander Mentyu 2017-11-27 17:06:46 UTC 
'Per-Activity Power Management' could be renamed into 'Per-Activity Settings Management' and there can be additional checkboxes for keyboard layout and other separate settings in activities tabs
Comment 2 Zac.Wasula 2024-09-25 01:21:02 UTC 
Echoing the sentiment for this in Plasma 6. If it could be as granular as described in previous comments then functionality and utility could be incredible. 

In the bug history it is noted that "setting "switching control"=Desktop, remembers layout through different activities"

Where would this be set, and is this viable in Plasma 6?

Love the work, thanks everyone!
Comment 3 David Edmundson 2025-01-22 16:00:12 UTC 
We're not going this at a KDE UI level. It was removed from Power management for a reason. It's too confusing to present to the user and too messy to support the various cases.

We will leave the scripting hook on activity changes and I'm trying to make it easier to make setting changes and have them apply more instantly, and continue to make having an unsupporte  way easier.