Bug 458834

Summary:	In WindowHeap-based effects, middle click closing windows can cause accidental window closings when combined with three finger tap = middle click and the three fingers swipe gesture
Product:	[Plasma] kwin	Reporter:	Gauthier <g.guerin>
Component:	effects-various	Assignee:	KWin default assignee <kwin-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED DOWNSTREAM
Severity:	major	CC:	nate
Priority:	NOR	Keywords:	usability
Version First Reported In:	5.25.5
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Other
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Gauthier 2022-09-07 10:49:06 UTC

Hello,

Behaviour of the overview effects and other window management effect can get problematic with the default setting: middle click = close if:

1. you have three finger tap = middle click and 
2. you use the three finger swipe gesture to activate the effect (like for the overview effect). 

It means that when you activate the effect, if your cursor happen to be on a window displayed by the effect the window closes automatically!

This drove me insane as my windows were disappearing randomly when activating Overview with three finger swipe. I thought it was a bug in Overview effect until: 
1. I realised the three finger swipe also triggered the three finger tap which then caused the window to close.
2. This made me learn about middle click = close in KDE (I  knew it was a behaviour for tabs in browser but never realised it extended beyond that)
3. It also made me realised I had three fingers tap = middle in touchpad settings

Comment 1 Gauthier 2022-09-07 10:49:41 UTC

Operating System: KDE neon 5.25
KDE Plasma Version: 5.25.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.97.0
Qt Version: 5.15.5
Kernel Version: 5.15.0-46-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11

Comment 2 Gauthier 2022-09-07 10:50:35 UTC

Somewhat related to: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=455701

Comment 3 Gauthier 2022-09-09 09:54:11 UTC

On second thought I realised this might be a rather niche issue since I think default gesture for Overview on Wayland is a 4 finger swipe or pinch and not a three fingers. I use gestures on X11 with touchegg kde which is why it is a three finger swipe for Overview.

Comment 4 Nate Graham 2022-09-09 14:07:28 UTC

Oh that makes perfect sense. Touchegg emulates mouse clicks so it is sure to trigger this issue.

That's an unsupported setup and I would recommend using a four-finger gesture as a workaround.

Comment 5 Gauthier 2022-09-09 18:36:44 UTC

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #4)
> Oh that makes perfect sense. Touchegg emulates mouse clicks so it is sure to
> trigger this issue.
> 
> That's an unsupported setup and I would recommend using a four-finger
> gesture as a workaround.

Sadly I still experience issues on wayland so I'm stuck with X11 and cannot use the native gestures with the lovely 1 to 1 effect :(

But yes as a workaround I can reassign gestures in touchegg is it uses 4 fingers for WindowHeap-based effects. 

However, there is still a slight usability issue with any 3 fingers gestures as they still triggers a middle click (i.e. "paste" in most cases and so not as annoying as "close windows" with WindowHeap-based effects). Are you sure this issue is not present on Wayland with the native KDE gestures? I cannot test myself but thought I would flag it up to you anyway for consistency of the newly (and awesome) KDE gesture feature :)

To be clear: not an issue for me as I can happily disable three fingers tap = middle click, I don't use it that often.

Comment 6 Nate Graham 2022-09-09 18:44:06 UTC

(In reply to Gauthier from comment #5)
> However, there is still a slight usability issue with any 3 fingers gestures
> as they still triggers a middle click (i.e. "paste" in most cases and so not
> as annoying as "close windows" with WindowHeap-based effects). Are you sure
> this issue is not present on Wayland with the native KDE gestures? I cannot
> test myself but thought I would flag it up to you anyway for consistency of
> the newly (and awesome) KDE gesture feature :)
I'm sure. :)