Bug 399967

Summary: Application launcher's Computer tab should separate its Places section from Dolphin's sidebar
Product: [Plasma] plasmashell Reporter: Tyson Tan <tysontanx>
Component: Application Launcher (Kickoff) widgetAssignee: David Edmundson <kde>
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: wishlist CC: kde, nate, plasma-bugs-null
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 5.13.5   
Target Milestone: 1.0   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Tyson Tan 2018-10-18 06:27:30 UTC
SUMMARY
Right now Application launcher's Computer tab is using information from Dolphin's sidebar for its Places section. I suggest we change that by making the two independent.

Reasons:

1) Changing Dolphin's sidebar affects something else outside of it. This is not something a normal user would expect.

2) It gives the impression of an unreliable Application Launcher. Because the user never changed anything in Application Launcher and yet it "changes itself".

3) Dolphin has more vertical space in its sidebar. Naturally it can display more, or we can even say it MUST display more, otherwise it looks uncomfortably barren; 

4) Application Launcher's Computer tab has so little vertical space, with 3 slots already occupied by System Applications. We cannot display a lot items on it, otherwise it forces the whole thing to scroll around. It doesn't look very tidy nor reliable like that.

5) By making Dolphin's sidebar and Application Launcher's Computer tab being managed separately, we can fine-tune items being shown for each of them. They are very different beasts and I suggest we treat them differently.

Thank you!
Comment 1 Kai Uwe Broulik 2018-10-18 06:39:30 UTC
KFilePlacesModel allows to mark items as "only show in $application", which currently isn't accessible from the Application Launcher. I don't they should be completely separate, though.
Comment 2 Nate Graham 2018-10-20 14:29:25 UTC
(In reply to Tyson Tan from comment #0)
> 1) Changing Dolphin's sidebar affects something else outside of it. This is
> not something a normal user would expect.
Actually the whole Places panel is global in scope by default. It's not *Dolphin's* Places panel, it's *the* places panel. The data is shared acros Dolphin, the open/save dialogs, Gwenview, Kickoff, and any other app that has a Places panel in it. Changing anything in one affects them all--unless you do what Kai indicated and make entries show up only in one. I don't think this is at all unexpected. In fact, it's the way macOS handles its own places-panel-like-thing.

> 2) It gives the impression of an unreliable Application Launcher. Because
> the user never changed anything in Application Launcher and yet it "changes
> itself".
Almost *everything* in Kickoff changes without explicit user intervention. Installing apps creates new app entries; opening and saving documents changes the contents of the History tab; the Computer tab changes according to the state of the global Places panel, etc. I think it's pretty well understood that Kickoff is an aggregator of information that comes from elsewhere.

> 3) Dolphin has more vertical space in its sidebar. Naturally it can display
> more, or we can even say it MUST display more, otherwise it looks
> uncomfortably barren;
This depends on the Dolphin window's height, which is user-selectable.

> 4) Application Launcher's Computer tab has so little vertical space, with 3
> slots already occupied by System Applications. We cannot display a lot items
> on it, otherwise it forces the whole thing to scroll around. It doesn't look
> very tidy nor reliable like that.
You said that the Places panel in Dolphin's sidebar looks "uncomfortabl[y] barren" when there's a lot of empty space, but that Kicker has "so little vertical space" and "forces the whole thing to scroll around", looking "[not very] very tidy nor reliable like that". It sounds like what you want is a Places Panel view that is always perfectly sized to accommodate the number of entries, which is impossible because the number of entries is user-selectable. Can't have it both ways: there will always be a scorllbar when there's too much content to display, or empty space when there's not much content. This is the nature of user-selectable data and scrollable views.

> 5) By making Dolphin's sidebar and Application Launcher's Computer tab being
> managed separately, we can fine-tune items being shown for each of them.
> They are very different beasts and I suggest we treat them differently.
As Kai pointed out, this is already possible.