SUMMARY After some days (weeks?) of trying to use it, since I'm wondering if it's just me I wanted to provide some feedback on the sessions UI. Kate is nice but this part I really struggle with. I use kate a lot and it also doesn't seem to separate recent files and recent folders, making it time consuming to manually browse to open up all my project folders separately every time I reopen kate, therefore I would be a heavy user of sessions if I could figure out them at all. But my experience with them has sadly been too confusing to make much use of them. Here are a few problems I ran into: 1. With multiple kate windows, it's completely unclear whether a Session extends to just one window or multiple. I first thought all of them, since it also shows in the title bar, but when I open 4 windows via "File > New Window", then in each of them open a separate project via "File > Open Folder" then save a session via "Sessions > Save Session", then quit kate, then reopen kate, then reload that session, I absolutely don't get the 4 windows and 4 folders back, but just the last folder. Extremely confusing... 2. Sometimes the session just doesn't seem to save the folder I opened but only some random open files in that folder, so when I reopen the session I get littered separate files but not the associated folder. Not even the latest one that I usually got like in point 1.) I don't know what to do with that, especially since I haven't found a way to predict or understand as a user when or why this happens. I hope some of that is useful for improving the sessions feature. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Open new kate window 2. Open multiple other kate window 3. Open a folder in each of them via "File > Open folder" 4. Save session 5. Quit kate 6. Reopen kate and reload session OBSERVED RESULT All windows and all folders are back. EXPECTED RESULT All windows but none or only one of the folders is opened, and/or not in the window it was open in before. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Windows: macOS: Linux/KDE Plasma: openSUSE Slowroll (available in About System) KDE Plasma Version: plasmashell 5.27.10 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.113.0 Qt Version: 5.15.11 (built against 5.15.11) ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
(In reply to Ellie from comment #0) > 1. With multiple kate windows, it's completely unclear whether a Session > extends to just one window or multiple. As per my understanding from what I get from the "Tools -> Configure Kate -> Session -> Session Elements", it would state that session contains docs, files, bookmarks, cursor positions etc. And there's a check mark "Include window configuration", which implies only to a single window. So everything implied, to me it would say Session = 1 window, and it's documents, layout and settings. But based on my testing, it seems to start multiple windows in the session, and in my testing it also starts separate windows with the files they contained during quitting (Ctrl+Q). > 2. Sometimes the session just doesn't seem to save the folder I opened but > only some random open files in that folder, so when I reopen the session I > get littered separate files but not the associated folder. What does this refer to? The Filesystem view on the sidebar? If yes, do you have the "Automatically synchronize with current document" enabled? To me it seems that if you browse somewhere else, then save the session and quit, and come back to the session, it syncs with the document in the view, thus causing you to end up in the document location, and not the location you previously were. Which would of course be correct, since the view sync document -> filebrowser is enabled. But another example why having all the configurability is problematic. -- (On another note, the subject line of this bug ticket does not reflect the summary provided, as it refers to a particular "Sessions UI", but the description more or less is about the session behavior in general.)
Also another thing to note is maybe observe how you exit Kate? With my current settings, I get different results in these cases: 1. Open Kate, create a session 2. Open documents A, B, C in Window #1 3. Create a new window #2 4. Open documents D and E in Window #2 Then what happens with the session, depends on how I exit. Alternative "Quit" 1. Quit Kate (Ctrl+Q) 2. Restart Kate (and select name of the previous session in the session dialog) 3. Observe Window #1 and Window #2 open, with documents ABC and DE respectively. Alternative "Close windows" 1. Close Window #2 2. Close Window #1 (now Kate has quit, as all windows closed) 3. Restart Kate, select previous session name 4. Observe: Session now contains Window #1 with docs ABC This would make sense to me, as Window #1 was the last one in the session at final "quit" time. Compared to when I quit (Ctrl+Q) with both #1 and #2 windows open; then the final saved session consisted of two windows.
(In reply to Ellie from comment #0) > 2. Sometimes the session just doesn't seem to save the folder I opened but > only some random open files in that folder, so when I reopen the session I > get littered separate files but not the associated folder. For what I gathered in my testing: - All the open documets are restored correctly when session is reopened - Folder view gets restored in ALL windows to the last folder the user navigated to (well, actually to some "root"-level parent folder but anyways..) E.g. I created such a session: 1. Start session, name "Bugzilla" 2. Open Folder -> "projects/konsole" - open some files from different subdirs 3. Create a new window 4. Open Folder -> "projects/kate" - open some files from different subfolders Then, 5. go to the window with "konsole" directory (<-- THIS WINDOW SWITCH IS CRUCIAL!) 6. Go to the Filesystem-pane, browse to "konsole/src" directory 7. Quit session 8. Restart session 9. Observe both windows Filesystem-pane being in "konsole/src" (NOK: projects/kate folder view expected to be in "projects/kate" here!) In point #5 above the "crucial window switch" seems to be key for saving the Filesystem-pane location. --> If you DON'T switch the window, but operate the Filesystem-pane on the window that is the *topmost* after session restoration, the Filesystem-pane location is not saved. You need to switch to the other window in the session. --> and even now, the Filesystem pane location is the same across *ALL* windows, even those where you did not change it.
All in all, this seems more of a bug in the Filesystem-pane?
You're right, most likely I closed the windows shortly after each other. This wouldn't be a potential pitfall however if sessions by default were per window. I don't think making them global is very intuitive, given most other actions are per window. Whatever you observed with the filesystem might also be related, because I remember getting multiple windows back once but not at all with the same locations I had previously open. Using multiple windows without sessions sadly seems to be also made worse by "File" > "Open Recent" not separating folders and files into separate lists, which means if any non-trivial folder is opened and used for a while, the recent list will only include files and not folders. It doesn't seem to be possible to quickly get back to your last folder in a non-annoying way, without sessions. The welcome tab's "Recent Documents and Projects" seems to suffer from the same problem. If that worked better, sessions would be less required for the average user.
(In reply to Ellie from comment #5) > You're right, most likely I closed the windows shortly after each other. > This wouldn't be a potential pitfall however if sessions by default were per > window. I don't think making them global is very intuitive, given most other > actions are per window. > I guess it's a bit philosophical what a user considers a session. As you mentioned earlier, you open 4 windows with different "project" in each window, but I understand they are seeminly related, hence each project and window can be considered belonging to your session. > "File" > "Open Recent" not separating folders and files into separate lists, > which means if any non-trivial folder is opened and used for a while, the > recent list will only include files and not folders. I have to say I haven't ever tried using Recents list of any application too extensively, but for such uses as getting back to - yes to a recent document. So as such recent documents here work as they are meant to: they contain the recent locations you worked in. > It doesn't seem to be possible to quickly get back to your last folder in a non-annoying way, > without sessions. The welcome tab's "Recent Documents and Projects" seems to > suffer from the same problem. If that worked better, sessions would be less > required for the average user. I can't quite grasp your workflow here, and how you are using Recents in general. Like, you would lke to get back to some folder you worked in some minutes ago, after browsing through other files and folders ("non-trivial folders"), or when you get back to your session the next day to set up the session again? Or what is your primary goal of using Recents? If it's just a matter of getting back to a certain folder after a while, the Documents pane shows your currently open folders and and documents in a particular window, and the documents are hilighted based on "recency".
Created attachment 171152 [details] Concept of separate recent folders in "Open Recent" > So as such recent documents here work as they are meant to: they contain the recent locations you worked in. I don't quite understand why the folders can't just be separate. I attached an image to show how to do that for the "Open Recent" menu. As for the "Welcome" screen, I think best would be two tabs for "Documents" vs "Folders" added above the top files list. The problem is that the files flood the history list to the point that it's not possible to get back to old folders using it.
Sorry, I forgot to actually answer: the use case of having recent folders separate is for people who want to avoid the sessions UI. For example, I always open the same 2-3 folders on most days. If I just had a quick access to them, I wouldn't ever need to use sessions. This would make any confusion or complexity with the sessions less impactful, since while it wouldn't fix anything about the sessions, it would allow users to get by better without them.
> I guess it's a bit philosophical what a user considers a session. As you mentioned earlier, you open 4 windows with different "project" in each window, but I understand they are seeminly related, hence each project and window can be considered belonging to your session. For what it's worth, it's not that I protest to either concept of a session. I have no strong personal opinion on what's more counter-intuitive. However, when closing all kate windows this doesn't seem to work well with the sessions as they work now. So there seems to be a strong practical reason to have them per window. However, you would probably best ask heavier user of the sessions to figure out what they think about that. I realize I'm not the right person for trustworthy sessions advice, since I eventually decided not to use them.
Created attachment 171153 [details] Filesystem pane bookmarks (In reply to Ellie from comment #7) > I don't quite understand why the folders can't just be separate. I attached > an image to show how to do that for the "Open Recent" menu. I think that can be quite feasible. I don't know the general Kate design principles, and how would this impact general usability. Or whehter this having folders listed separately is generally useful. (In reply to Ellie from comment #8) > For example, I always open the same 2-3 folders on most days. If I just had a quick access > to them, I wouldn't ever need to use sessions. Ok, so sounds like you would be using Recent folders mostly just to get back to this fixed set of folders daily. Something like "bookmarks" in a web browser. In fact, the Filesystem browser in Kate has bookmarks, and those are global across windows, so you could just bookmark the most used folders, open separate windows, open a bookmark in each window. And you also can get back to the "good known location" bookmar, after wandering in the non-trivial folders.