Bug 503691

I've managed to clone the Compact Task Switcher into ~/.local/share/kwin/tabbox and remove the styling for minimised windows, and it works great for me. I could just upload it to store.kde.org (presumably, I've never tried), but I was wondering if there was still scope for getting this changed upstream?

I guess my question is: would anyone object to changing Compact upstream so that it doesn't visually distinguish between minimised and non-minimised windows? And if so, do they mind that Cover Switch, Flip Switch, Large Icons, Sidebar and Thumbnail Grid *don't* distinguish between minimised and non-minimised windows?

If there's a lot of dissent, could the Task Switcher KCM in System Settings allow configuration options for switchers, to enable an option to visually distinguish between minimised and non-minimised windows? Rather than people like me having to install a "Compact without distinguishing minimised windows" variant.

Feel free to submit a patch to change it!

I do use this information a fair bit - I have the option enabled that sorts minimized windows after non-minimized ones, so that I can put away windows that I don't need at that moment and not have them take up space toward the top. Seeing which one is minimized helps distinguish minimized windows from ones that naturally bubbled toward the bottom.

I agree that the inconsistency is not optimal. (And to answer the question, I don't mind it that much because I don't use them regularly, I use Compact).

We could perhaps go in the other direction and add this conditional text formatting to the other task switcher visualizations.

(In reply to cwo from comment #3)
> I do use this information a fair bit - I have the option enabled that sorts
> minimized windows after non-minimized ones, so that I can put away windows
> that I don't need at that moment and not have them take up space toward the
> top. Seeing which one is minimized helps distinguish minimized windows from
> ones that naturally bubbled toward the bottom.

Yes, I can see that if you use "Order minimized windows after non-minimized windows" option, it's useful to see the cutoff. I wonder if that cutoff could be better shown as a dividing line, rather than the dim/brackets thing?

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #4)
> We could perhaps go in the other direction and add this conditional text
> formatting to the other task switcher visualizations.

It could be worth a try. If nothing else, we might see if more people complain about it afterwards!

Out of interest, does anyone know what Windows, macOS, Gnome do in this regard?

(In reply to John Veness from comment #5)
> Yes, I can see that if you use "Order minimized windows after non-minimized
> windows" option, it's useful to see the cutoff. I wonder if that cutoff
> could be better shown as a dividing line, rather than the dim/brackets thing?

Maybe, or some form of header line, though I find the current presentation relatively clear.
(I can definitely see it being visually awkward when not sorting them at the bottom though)

> Out of interest, does anyone know what Windows, macOS, Gnome do in this
> regard?

I think I remember Gnome 2 having them with brackets around the name in the task bar, and I think also in the alt-tab switcher (though it's been like 15 years, so I wouldn't trust my memory on either). Gnome 3 does its best to make minimize not a thing, so I doubt they do anything special there.

The "textual list" click effect in Icons-only Task Manager and the Icons-and-Text Task Manager both use a different background shade to indicate that a window is minimized (but don't change text color or add brackets). Window List doesn't do anything special for minimized windows in either form (desktop or panel, which have different code paths)