SUMMARY Currently the applet follows the layout that is defined by the number of rows in the settings menu of the virtual desktops, and this will not always bring the proper visualization of the desktops inside the applet. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Create a panel that is less tall than the standard plasma, like one about 34 pixels high 2. In the virtual workspace settings, create four of them and set the divider to two lines OBSERVED RESULT The applet will follow the specified layout and will be extremely small inside the panel. EXPECTED RESULT The applet could have its own layout configuration and allow you to choose a more suitable view depending on where it is. In this reported case, the visualization of a single line would be ideal. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS KDE Plasma Version: 5.21.4 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.81.0 Qt Version: 5.15.2 Kernel Version: 5.11.14-arch1-1 Graphics Platform: X11 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION This type of layout (2x2) is the best fit for wide screens like mine (24" monitor, 16:9), because it takes up all the available space and keeps them all organized. But the problem will get worse as more lines are used to divide the display, making this useful applet almost unusable in this scenario. https://i.imgur.com/LE48F57.png Using only one line, it will not be efficient when the number of work areas starts to go from two. https://i.imgur.com/TgnzT7S.png
I'm not sure we can do this, sorry. The pager has to be an accurate representation of the virtual desktop arrangement rather than an abstraction of it, because we allow the desktops to be a user-customizable two-dimensional grid. It would be super confusing if you had uses a one-dimensional list that got represented in the pager as a two-dimensional grid, or a grid that got represented as a list, or a grid that got re-arranged in the pager into a different kind of grid, etc. We'd get tons and tons of bug reports. :)
You can do it! Please see it https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=439698