Bug 485010 - Rename or remove Session settings panel in KWrite
Summary: Rename or remove Session settings panel in KWrite
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Alias: None
Product: kate
Classification: Applications
Component: kwrite (other bugs)
Version First Reported In: 24.02.1
Platform: openSUSE Linux
: NOR wishlist
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: KWrite Developers
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2024-04-04 04:46 UTC by Grósz Dániel
Modified: 2024-08-04 18:09 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:


Attachments
Screenshot of the Session panel (59.60 KB, image/png)
2024-04-04 04:46 UTC, Grósz Dániel
Details

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Description Grósz Dániel 2024-04-04 04:46:43 UTC
Created attachment 168125 [details]
Screenshot of the Session panel

KWrite doesn't have sessions, so it might be confusing that the Configure dialog has a Session panel. This is a suggestion to at least rename it. Also, some options seem to be irrelevant in KWrite, so perhaps remove the Session panel and move the options that are still relevant to Open/Save.

"Close documents with the window they belong to": Note that even in Kate, this is only applied if a file has no modifications. As far as I can tell, KWrite doesn't have a (user-observable) concept of a set of open documents as different from whichever files are opened in a tab in a window, for files that aren't modified, so there is no difference between internally closing a file when the only window in which it is open is closed, and not internally closing it. This option should always be treated as enabled in KWrite, and the checkbox should be removed.
(When a file does have modifications, both Kate and KWrite internally keep it open if there are multiple windows created with File/New Window, and you close the only window the file is opened in. In KWrite, the only signs that the file is kept open are that if you close the remaining windows, it asks you if you want to save it, and that if you open the file anew, the modifications are there. It would be more natural to ask the user whether to save the file as soon as the window the file belongs to is closed if the "Close documents with the window they belong to" option is enabled, in both KWrite and Kate.)

"Maximum number of entries in recent file list": This is definitely relevant in KWrite too.
"Keep meta-information past sessions": relevant in KWrite too  (to remember bookmarks, perhaps some other things as well), but the name is rather cryptic. I'm not sure there is a point in the option to disable it, though.

"Show welcome view for new windows" (disabled by default in KWrite), "Close the application entirely when the last file is closed" (enabled by default): they technically make sense in KWrite too, but I'm not sure there is much need for them in a relatively minimalistic editor.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20240329
KDE Plasma Version: 6.0.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.0.0
Qt Version: 6.6.3
Kernel Version: 6.8.1-1-default (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Comment 1 Waqar Ahmed 2024-04-04 18:53:58 UTC
From past experience, removing any settings is in general not a good idea so I am not sure we should do this at all.

Renaming the text for Kwrite can be considered, but only in limited ways. We don't want to maintain large separate code paths for Kate/Kwrite. It is already a burden as is
Comment 2 Grósz Dániel 2024-04-04 19:50:05 UTC
(In reply to Waqar Ahmed from comment #1)
> From past experience, removing any settings is in general not a good idea so
> I am not sure we should do this at all.

I tend to agree, but a setting that has no (observable) effect at all in KWrite should be removed in KWrite. It seems to me that the "Close documents with the window they belong to" setting is like that.
Comment 3 Christoph Cullmann 2024-04-07 16:39:37 UTC
I don't think 'Sessions' is that bad a name. It is not feasible to move the stuff to 'Open/Save', that part comes from the library.

If that one action has no effect, I would have no issue to just hide it for KWrite, that is a minimal change.
Comment 4 Christoph Cullmann 2024-08-04 18:09:16 UTC
As said, moving is not that easy and I rather like to keep the differences in code for KWrite and Kate minimal, as each difference will lead to more code to maintain.