KWinFT 5.21 Beta Pushes a "Monumental Rewrite" Of The Windowing Logic

[Citan]

Just in case anyone was curious what shading was referring to and didn't want to go through the blog, find a link and look up the definition, this is it:



I don't know how useful of a feature that'd be to people usually? It basically just resizes your window vertically into the height of the titlebar to minimize but keep it around, then restore the original vertical height when desired. Most people probably just minimize normally or manually resize temporarily?

I'd suggest you to try it and see for yourself, in the meanwhile, my own feedback on this is: AWESOME.

Although to be fair it's still situational overall. ^^
But it really makes it easier to live that use-case you're talking about, which can be summed up as "I want this window to free up my field vision for a (more or less) short time".

IF you click on "minimize" button, THEN you'll need to go look for the icon with your mouse and click on it to retrieve full client window.
IF you click on "shade" button instead, THEN you can click on the exact same place afterwards to retrieve full client windows.
Basically, you're sparing brain power and time by reducing at maximum the overhead linked to window management.
And it gets even better considering that on most good desktop environments you have a mouse button associated with it.

When you are usually focusing on one same window for long periods of time, or if you have enough screen space to fit most windows you need for your day, this feature is definitely a ribbon, if not plain useless.
However, when you regularly need to swap window focus for short periods of time and just have no other way than to stack most (typically working on laptop during travel), it's a real life saver.
Typically, youre writing down some document for which you're compulsing several sources on the web.

Note that since years good desktop also provide window transparency which is another way to achieve same (or close to) result. But IIRC this was much more "recent" than "shade" (also called "roll-in/out" in some environments) which has been there since, possibly, the same era as virtual desktops. ^^

If you have a lot of windows isn't it better to utilize virtual desktops or overview windows with "Present Windows" effect and such? I think there's better ways to peek through the window stack for UX than temporary using the shade feature.

How many windows are we talking about here? With browser windows I can easily have 20 or so on a two display system, usually the thumbs in "Present Windows" is sufficient. If I need to interact with a window behind the active one, I just pull it out of the way and do the interaction, then I can return via mouse or shortcut. If the windows aren't the same program, you can also pretty easily switch via a few keyboard shortcuts, on that is nice for lots of windows is typing to filter windows in "Present Windows" or KRunner alt+space.

It's not the same *at all*.
Because all those alternative ways you speak about, while technically allowing to reach the same goal, all induce a visual overhaul of your desktop, "glittery effects" or not. Changing desktop particularly.
Even if ultimately all windows are still at the same place once you "release" the "window-focus-changing" effect, you impose yourself a superfluous visual disturbance. With shading, only what's strictly required to update/move does it.
When you need to flip window many times per hour (sometimes per minute XD) and it's all about the same 2 (occasionally 3) windows, it makes a big difference. Especially when, precisely, you otherwise have a dozen windows around.
It also meshes much better with all those KDE specific options to stick window or define stack order.

It's exactly like the difference between visiting the same website with "lazy loading of relevant part" (all navigation/menu stay there whatever url you consult) vs "reload whole html page on every new visit". Even if technically navigation and menus are always at the same place, it's far from being as comfortable.

Of course, if you set and learned a shortcut for every single window yourself, it's probably even better. ^^

[polarathene]

I use double click on the title bar to shade and I use it regularly. I find it handy e.g. on dialogs, but also use it to get a quick glimpse on the window below. It's way faster than moving the dialog/window around or resizing it manually. Also it requires no context switch like having to deal with the window list/task bar plasmoids.

Fair enough

I'd suggest you to try it and see for yourself, in the meanwhile, my own feedback on this is: AWESOME.

I've seen it before and remember trying that feature years ago. I didn't find it that interesting personally. There is the drop-down console yakuake which is similar benefit that you refer to I think? There's also some utilities you can get that enable that functionality for any app generically IIRC.

It seems like from your description and others that you mostly use it with a single top-level window to perform some temporary (albeit potentially frequent) action. There isn't any major reason to have the title bar visually present, you describe as using it for a quick peek or interaction with a window beneath it in the stack. Then you interact with the shaded title bar again to restore that window.

Presumably the issue with the taskbar minimizing is the location / distance to move mouse to and click? (then perhaps a hidden dock on the top edge would work just as well?)

Or perhaps you just need a kwin effect similar to hide all / show desktop, but only affecting the active window to temporarily hide it. Then just have a keyboard shortcut, an applet (like the show desktop button), or a trigger like mouse corner. For a laptop you could even setup a touchpad gesture. If this is just as good of a solution, then it's probably something KWinFT can support (KWin too), just needs someone to write the code for supporting that effect.

[Steffo]

I really don't like how he is naming persons and blaming them in public.
And while his work might be pretty good, it isn't revolutionary for sure! The concept of multi user OS, multi tasking, virtual memory, bezier curves, the mouse, a graphical user interface with windows etc. are revolutionary...
"Revolutionary" is an extreme big word.

[smartalgorithm]

Well, KDE 6 is also de-QTing where it makes sense.

let it be...

[bug77]

let it be...

My bad, it's actually Qt6 itself that is moving towards plain C++: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...r-Improvements

[smartalgorithm]

My bad, it's actually Qt6 itself that is moving towards plain C++: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...r-Improvements

yep, this i knew... pretty logical move.

[Zan Lynx]

Have any of you managed to get two diferent screen scales with X11? I have a HiDPI display and another HD one. I know that it's not supported by Plasma, but maybe changing configuration files or something...

It has been too long since I set this up but the general idea is to get all of your screens into the same scale, which is HiDPI. What you need to do is configure your HD display so it renders in UHD and downscales 2x into HD for output to the actual monitor.

[R41N3R]

I really don't like how he is naming persons and blaming them in public.
And while his work might be pretty good, it isn't revolutionary for sure! The concept of multi user OS, multi tasking, virtual memory, bezier curves, the mouse, a graphical user interface with windows etc. are revolutionary...
"Revolutionary" is an extreme big word.

Well, it is only fair to the reader if you provide examples instead of just pain points without any reference. I think we all are old enough to verify the sources and to make up our own opinion. If you look at Nate's blog you get bug reports/commits and names as well. How are you otherwise supposed to talk about something if you do not provide this vital information?

[Steffo]

Well, it is only fair to the reader if you provide examples instead of just pain points without any reference. I think we all are old enough to verify the sources and to make up our own opinion.

You can refer to source code, but being personal, can get very ugly and escalating.

If you look at Nate's blog you get bug reports/commits and names as well.

What an inappropriate and relativizing comparison! Referencing to bug reports or commits is not blaming!

[bug77]

Well, it is only fair to the reader if you provide examples instead of just pain points without any reference. I think we all are old enough to verify the sources and to make up our own opinion. If you look at Nate's blog you get bug reports/commits and names as well. How are you otherwise supposed to talk about something if you do not provide this vital information?

This is a cultural thing, at least in part. E.g. in the US Coca-Cola is allowed to make a commercial where they say "we're better than Pepsi". On the other side of the pond, they aren't allowed to do that. They must go with "we're better than other competing products".
That's why some people are ok with naming names, some aren't.
Imho, it's ok to name names when the situation calls for it, just make sure not to make it all about people.