After a bad plasma5to6 transition i got my configs broken in a funny way, the "zoom in" shortcut was still working but "zoom out" and "reset zoom" were not. So i was zoomed in, unable to zoom out, didn't find zoom settings (because they are now in accessibility), so i tried to reboot and after logging back in i was still zoomed in, which locked me in an unusable system until i fix .config/kwin manually from tty. I know its a beyond edge case but i think that the bug is still valid and persistent zoom level is not something a user might expect

Sorry, but I don't think this is something we can change without regressing things for users that require the zoom effect to use their computer.

(In reply to Zamundaaa from comment #2)
i mean, i am a user that require zoom effect to use my computer more than i'm not, and that is a behavior i would totally not expect from my desktop.

But i'm not medically disabled in terms of vision (yet), and i can not argue on this behavior being useless for that kind of people particularly in terms of accessibility, but i clearly do not understand how it could really be useful and helpful for them either, so if possible, i'd really love a bit of clarification on why is this really an intended behavior. 

Also there could be a checkbox like "remember zoom level on log out", which i'd say should probably be off for most users, but again, i probably do not understand something

As a blind user and as someone who works on the zoom effect, I don't think having it forget the zoom level is a solution to this problem. If it didn't remember my zoom level and the zoom in shortcut was broken for some reason, my computer would be an expensive paperweight and I'd probably need to phone a friend to debug KWin. :(

I'd say the shortcuts breaking is its own bug entirely. That shouldn't happen. I think the problem here is that we don't have any way of changing the zoom level graphically, it must be done by shortcut. There's no particular reason that needs to be the case, other than it being a missing feature. Perhaps a slider in the Accessibility settings is in order?

I don't think a "remember zoom level" setting is feasible to add. The zoom effect saves the zoom level to disk so you can switch to the Magnifier effect and have the same zoom level (they share the setting). It would be difficult for it to know whether to save the zoom level because of a transition between effects or because we're about to log you out.

Before reading this ticket's comments, I honestly didn't realize the PC was usable at all while zoomed in.  I use the zoom feature semi-regularly to inspect or read something small but I have always zoomed all the way back out before proceeding to do anything, assuming the zoom just renders everything unusable.  I never even once tried to use the PC while zoomed in except to look around by moving the cursor.

One time, I booted my computer and my desktop was slightly zoomed in.  At the same time, the kernel had had a USB hub error and my mouse cursor couldn't move and I couldn't type (because my peripherals were plugged into that USB hub), so everything looked frozen.  I hard-rebooted thinking the GPU was having an issue, considering the zoom which just looked like the wrong resolution was being sent to the display and the display was not handling the resolution correctly so the edges were cut off.  I eventually re-plugged my peripherals and as soon as I moved my mouse, I saw that it was just the zoom desktop effect, which caught me by surprise.  I zoomed out and proceeded to use my PC, still not realizing that the PC had been usable while zoomed in.

It's possible other users have felt the same way and/or seen a similar issue.  It would be nice if there was a disabled-by-default checkbox and slider with text box that let the user reset the zoom level to a particular level after a delay and if enabled, also on startup.  It sounds like Ritchie here could benefit from that by having it set the zoom level to his preferred level in case it accidentally got reset or changed, and other users could benefit from it by having the zoom level reset to 100%.

(In reply to Ritchie Frodomar from comment #4)
i'm sorry to hear that but i'm glad you at least have a friend who can help.

> I'd say the shortcuts breaking is its own bug entirely. 

yeah, sure, it's barely related to this bug, and is simply my own issues specific to my setup. what matters though is that each zoom in and out is a disk operation apparently, and its also not a behavior that user would not expect, and it was not there in plasma 5. also it's an additional moving part which may cause kwinrc file to be partially overwritten on power loss (i had that issue a lot of times with plasmashell config bcz for it's own reasons it literally updates every time i start and stop music player).

also saving zoom level between restarts as a backup in case your zoom shortcuts stops working is not ideal. 

> It would be difficult for it to know whether to save the zoom level because of a transition between effects or because we're about to log you out.

we wouln't have to know that, we save zoom level and state to disk on each zoom in/out if "save to disk" is checked (like it is right now), and we do not save anything to disk otherwise (like it was in plasma 5). 

but i mean, if you need that, and especially you are working on this effect yourself, you sure know better. i would say that the majority of people would probably not need zoom level to be saved and restored across logins, but they probably would not care too much, and since it's now an accessibility feature more than it is a desktop effect, i would agree with saving it to disk by default.

i would still make a low prio feature request for "do not save zoom to disk" checkbox though. i use meta + mouse wheel and it triggers several "zoom in" actions per second (i scroll until i'm zoomed in exactly as much as i need to), and generally avoiding extra disk usage to not spin up hdd unnecessarily or to save some ssd health is probably a good practice too

(In reply to Alex Folland from comment #5)
im not a ux expert but i'm not sure how useful a "resetting zoom after a delay" could really be. neither having your zoom level suddenly reset while reading something, nor waiting for timeout instead of manually quitting zoom effect sounds ideal. 

(having some visual indicator for "you are currently zoomed in" kinda makes sense though. maybe a little magnifier glass icon in the corner, that teleports to the other corner if the mouse cursor is close, or something)

It's worth noting that KWin doesn't save every zoom change to disk. Before Plasma 6.5 it only saved the setting when the effect is turned off. (Which happens when you log out, because KWin exits).

In 6.5, zooming in or out just schedules a settings update. It will only happen one second after you stop activating the shortcut. If you use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out, it should only ever hit the disk once.

(In reply to wbqq from comment #7)
> (In reply to Alex Folland from comment #5)
> im not a ux expert but i'm not sure how useful a "resetting zoom after a
> delay" could really be. neither having your zoom level suddenly reset while
> reading something, nor waiting for timeout instead of manually quitting zoom
> effect sounds ideal. 
> 
> (having some visual indicator for "you are currently zoomed in" kinda makes
> sense though. maybe a little magnifier glass icon in the corner, that
> teleports to the other corner if the mouse cursor is close, or something)

It would be useful (In reply to Ritchie Frodomar from comment #8)
> It's worth noting that KWin doesn't save every zoom change to disk. Before
> Plasma 6.5 it only saved the setting when the effect is turned off. (Which
> happens when you log out, because KWin exits).
> 
> In 6.5, zooming in or out just schedules a settings update. It will only
> happen one second after you stop activating the shortcut. If you use the
> scroll wheel to zoom in and out, it should only ever hit the disk once.

As a user who now knows the system is usable zoomed and some people use it that way at all times, I would expect it to only save to disk at logout and never any other time.  Resetting to the preferred zoom level is only a problem for an extreme minority of users and having all users impacted by disk writes just for that extreme minority doesn't make much sense to me.  That being said, it's a minor disk operation on orders of magnitude less impactful than the constant journal logging that's happening anyway, so my opinion is not strong here.

> im not a ux expert but i'm not sure how useful a "resetting zoom after a delay" could really be. neither having your zoom level suddenly reset while reading something, nor waiting for timeout instead of manually quitting zoom effect sounds ideal.

It would have been useful for me when I didn't realize my PC wasn't frozen and thought my GPU was messed up.  It also would have been useful when I didn't remember the shortcut after not having used Plasma for a couple years and having accidentally hit it, which happened once.  I understand now some people like to use zoom for more than a few seconds at a time though, and I'm just not one of those people, so I take it back.  Resetting on login would help me though.

(In reply to Alex Folland from comment #9)
> It would have been useful for me when I didn't realize my PC wasn't frozen and thought my GPU was messed up

it would only help you if you checked the "reset zoom level after timeout" checkbox, which if you were on that settings page checking some boxes, you should already be aware of what zoom effect is and how it works, and thus you wouln't probably want to turn it on. and checking it on by default is certainly evil. maybe instead what makes sense is a hotkey that zooms in only while you hold it down, and quits zoom as soon as you release. With zoom in animation it should be intuitive too - user presses the hotkey, screen zooms in and then instantly out and he realizes he needs to hold the keys (or just meta key) to keep magnification.

> is only a problem for an extreme minority of users

it is now an accessibility feature, not just a desktop effect anymore, so i guess the logic here is that it is made for the minority of people in particular.

maybe having the same effect as accessibility (with saving to disk by default) and as a desktop effect (with no saving to disk and with visual feedback "you are in zoom mode" and with "reset to 100% after n seconds" option) while using same kwin logic for both and same hotkeys, and make them mutually exclusive, maybe that makes sense