Bug 249964 - Text on taskbar disappears when there's still lots of room for it (wasn't as bad pre-4.5)
Summary: Text on taskbar disappears when there's still lots of room for it (wasn't as ...
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Alias: None
Product: plasma4
Classification: Plasma
Component: widget-taskbar (show other bugs)
Version: 4.10.4
Platform: Compiled Sources Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2010-09-03 04:50 UTC by Jonathan M Davis
Modified: 2013-06-15 21:05 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Description Jonathan M Davis 2010-09-03 04:50:14 UTC
Version:           unspecified (using KDE 4.5.0) 
OS:                Linux

For whatever reason, the taskbar does not have text for each entry once you get very many windows open. That would make sense if the text didn't fit anymore, but the threshold for when text "didn't fit" as far as the taskbar widget is concerned has always been rather low. However, with 4.5.0, it's now _way_ low. The icon takes up a little less than 1/3 of the window entry on the taskbar, and yet there is no text. You just get a centered icon which isn't very useful since there are going to be lots of window entries with exactly the same icon.

Ideally, there would _always_ be text unless it literally cannot fit. However, barring that, the changes to 4.5.0 make it _way_ too eager to use only an icon. At minimum, it needs to be less eager to get rid of the text. This change in 4.5.0 is a major downgrade in useability to me. I either can't have as many windows open as I'd like, or I have to search through them to find the one that I'm looking for. I had to remove at least one plasmoid from the taskbar and reduce how icons show up in the system tray in order to make it so that I even had a chance of having the text in the taskbar entries, but I still keep ending up with icon-only taskbar entries if open another window. This is a huge useability problem. The taskbar needs to be way less eager to decide that its entries can't have text anymore because there are too many.

Is it only taking the number of entries into account and not the screen size? I have a 1920 x 1200 screen, so maybe part of the problem is that it's counting the number of entries rather than how much space there actually is (though I wouldn't have thought that it would be that dumb). Maybe that's not the problem, but it's a thought.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Keep opening new windows until the taskbar entries no longer show text on them.



For my taskbar settings, I have grouping turned off. The maximum rows is 2. Row settings are not forced. They're sorted alphabetically. It only shows task from the current screen and desktop. More than just minimized task are shown. The panel is the normal place on the bottom of the screen. The widgets on my panel are:

1. application launcher (classic style, not that horrible one from suse that's the default now)
2. show desktop
3. konsole
4. konqueror - file browser
5. konqueror - web browser
6. pager (with 6 desktops in two rows)
7. taskbar
8. system tray
9. device notifier
10. clock

It looks like the most windows can be open and still have text is 30 (with 2 x 15). If I open one more, I lose text on the taskbar entries.
Comment 1 Zane Tu 2011-06-14 01:49:43 UTC
I hope there will an option that specifies the threshold of taskbar entry width that triggers "icon-only" display mode. For my part, I don't like icon-only task bar and would like to see labels with text on taskbar all the time. (Dock is more suitable for icon-only display mode.) Therefore an option that disables "icon-only" mode is even better for me.
Comment 2 Myriam Schweingruber 2012-05-17 18:06:31 UTC
Closing for lack of feedback. Please feel free to reopen this report if you can still reproduce this with KDE 4.8.3 or later.
Comment 3 Vedran Ljubovic 2013-06-10 18:50:33 UTC
Reason for this bug is the following code:
https://projects.kde.org/projects/kde/kde-workspace/repository/entry/plasma/desktop/applets/tasks/abstracttaskitem.cpp?rev=KDE%2F4.10
lines 568-570:

    QFontMetrics fm(font());
    const int minimumWidth = left + 8 + IconTextSpacing + right;	
    m_showText = (size().width() >= fm.width("M") * 6 + minimumWidth);

Text is not shown if task item width is below certain constant, which is basically width of 6 characters "M" in current font + some margins. I disagree with such view, personally I don't need more than one letter & icon to recognize the window I want. 

So I kindly ask that this bug is reopened and maintainer changes this magic constant 6 to something smaller.

(Above link is for KDE 4.10 branch. Task manager plasmoid was recently rewritten in QML but I'm not sure that code will be used until KDE 5.0)
Comment 4 Jonathan M Davis 2013-06-10 19:56:02 UTC
This is definitely still happening (KDE 4.10.4), and it's highly annoying. As long as you can have even _one_ character next to the icon, I want it. I typically have 15+ windows open per screen, per desktop, and many of them are the same programe (e.g. konsole or Konqueror), and at least some of the time, that one letter would help to differentiate between Windows without having to click on them in the taskar.
Comment 5 Aaron J. Seigo 2013-06-15 21:05:06 UTC
sorry, 1 letter is not going to happen. it is not useful for the vast majority of people, it produces a lot of visual noise (that many more than the people commenting on this report have given negative feedback about) for little signal. a configuration option is not an option here either. sorry.

if you really, really, really must have this, i suggest maintaining an alternative version.