SUMMARY The "touch mode" with necessary behavioral changes (like paste touch icon) also on some level seems to disfigure the plasma themes. It does so by messing up e.g. the ratio of the icons only task manager and many other size changes, which should really be separate. Just because I want the touch BEHAVIOR of e.g. showing the touch paste icon that is usable with a finger, doesn't mean I want the touch THEME CHANGES that I can do manually better myself. It's not necessarily a bad idea to offer these as an easy additional toggle, but tying them to the behavioral stuff just seems conceptually like a problematic idea. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Enable touch mode 2. Watch the icons of icons only task manager suddenly turn from square into ugly wide rectangles 3. There's apparently no way to undo that, other than disabling touch mode agai OBSERVED RESULT Touch mode comes with possibly undesired visual changes that are unrelated to the behavioral changes (like the touch paste popup) EXPECTED RESULT Touch mode can be used for just the behavioral changes. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Windows: macOS: (available in the Info Center app, or by running `kinfo` in a terminal window) Linux/KDE Plasma: postmarketOS Edge KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.5 KDE Frameworks Version: 6.13.0 Qt Version: 6.8.2 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 447603 ***
My apologies, but has there been a mix up? The other bug seems to describe gradual and long term changes of the icon only task manager's icons as a result of a bug. This ticket was meant to describe the reproducible and likely intended changes of the icon only task manager's icons as a result of enabling touch mode, and that seeming like a bad idea to force onto users when they simply want e.g. the paste popup and other UI features for touch without resizing everything. It seems to me like those two are largely unrelated issues.
It's the same issue. The basic problem here is that the Task Manager widget compresses in response to the panel being low on space, and it can compress down to the point of uselessness if you keep filling the panel up. Activating Touch Mode is one source of "filling the panel up" because the System Tray takes up more space in Touch Mode. But ultimately it's just triggering the same known issue affecting the Task Manager.
Created attachment 181838 [details] A screenshot showing the Touch Mode (top) vs the normal mode (bottom) in regards to icon placement I might be misunderstanding, but I don't think that is what I'm seeing. I attached a screenshot. I seem to be seeing the icons getting wider in some misguided overly accessible attempt of trying to make them easier to target with a finger, not because there's any lack of space or any compressing going on. I don't think such spacing changes should be tied together with behavioral changes, hence the ticket. Sorry if I simply misunderstood.
Hmm, maybe it is different. Are you saying that in Touch Mode, the System Tray doesn't change at all, but the Task Manager buttons become wider? That's unusual. If I've got that right, can you see if this happens with the default Breeze Plasma theme too? A screen recording that shows you reproducing the issue would be helpful here.
Created attachment 182002 [details] Video of how enabling and disabling touch mode has theme changes that the user may not have asked for I managed to record a video today. As you can see, touch mode changes the width of the icons. I think any such size change should be a separate option to the behavioral stuff, since for example for the theme shown in the video, it turns the icons from square into something strangely wide that looks weird and not how the theme is meant to look like. Also, the task bar icons are already so giant to start with that the change seems questionable to force onto users.
Aha. Ok, so my initial assessment was wrong; this is not Bug 447603. Instead, it's intentional. :) There are no theme changes happening; rather, the default width of tasks is increasing in touch mode to give you a larger touch target. The inline help text in System Settings explains that this will happen for some things.
Right, I was aware this is intentional. My suggestion as per the initial ticket text was to decouple this. Provide one setting for the behavioral stuff, provide another setting for the spacing. Especially with the task icons, this change seems more destructive than anything anyway, since they're usually already quite large and this can really mess with themes. It would be nice to have some control here. "I want touch compatible popups" doesn't necessarily equate "please change the size of everything since I have giant fingers".
"Make things bigger for my crude human sausage fingers" is basically what touch mode is for. It doesn't actually change the behavior of almost anything. So if you don't like these sizing changes, you might want to set touch mode to "Never".
I would agree with you if it only changed the size, but I found one very important behavioral change, which is it adds a hovering paste icon for the text cursor. I'm not sure if there are any other ones, but this one is pretty substantial: On the Steam Deck, which should be pre-destined for touch use, for example the additional spacing is a problem for me since I already use a 300% DPI scale, so the padding just means that things don't fit into the task bar anymore due to the somewhat small screen. At the same time, the paste icon next to the text cursor would be a life saver sometimes, since Maliit doesn't even provide a convoluted way to CTRL+V let alone an easy one. Having the hovering paste icon therefore can be a huge deal in such situations. Therefore, it would be nice if the behavioral changes could be toggled independently of the padding changes, as long as there are any.
Correction: oops, seems like I'm using "just" 150% and misremembered. In any case, the screen really is relatively tiny.
Then I'm afraid you're going to have to live with the Task Manager icons becoming a little bit bigger in touch mode. :)
It can be a major problem though, in my opinion. On the Steam Deck, the pinned icons just won't fit anymore that way. It can lead to like 20% ish reduction in icons that fit into the task bar, which at a large DPI scale can be a ton of space lost for nothing.
In your screen recording, they still fit just fine. They take up more space if there's any available empty space, but if you open some more, they'll start to compress to make room. There isn't an actual problem there.
The screen recording isn't on the Steam Deck. The deck is basically a phablet, and somewhere between a normal tablet and a phone, where you kind of want a desktop interface but you want it at a big scale (larger than e.g. SteamOS defaults to, for proper touch use) but where every bit of padding becomes a potential problem. I'm not even arguing this padding should be removed. I'm merely saying if you're looking at some form factors, like phablets, and some designs with an already large task bar, merging touch behavior & extra touch padding into one take-it-or-leave-it option can be an issue. This generally applies to any sort of too broad separation, like the Plasma mobile & Plasma desktop separation, completely separate UIs for the phone, etc., as more devices are more mainstream for Linux use that fall into this in the middle form factor.
Created attachment 182048 [details] Steam Deck without touch mode: theme looks like Windows 10 Aero like intended, and task bar has some space left over
Created attachment 182049 [details] Steam Deck with touch mode: icons look awkwardly oversized which theme doesn't intend, and task bar looks cramped
My apologies for not attaching actual Steam Deck photos earlier. I hope that helps to understand why I'm suggesting the padding might better be as a separate option.
Created attachment 182050 [details] Steam Deck without touch mode: theme looks like Windows 7 Aero like intended, and task bar has some space left over
How wide Task Manager Tasks are isn't a theme decision; it's a code decision in the widget itself. Themes are expected to be able to adapt visually to any (sane) Task width, because that width isn't up to them. So, again, there is no bug here. Everything is working as intended. :) If you don't like the visual result because you were hoping to perfectly replicate a Windows 7 Aero appearance — including the width of Task Manager Tasks — then I'm afraid that expectations may need to be adjusted. There are lots of other things that don't perfectly replicate the look and feel of Windows 7, either.
My apologies, but I still think no matter if it's a theme decision or not, it would better to have this configurable independently. In any case, I'm repeating myself, so I'll bow out here.