Manual Grouping of Task Panel items no longer possible

[evilC]

Hi, I installed Raring, but at some point recently it seems I got upgraded to Saucy.

When I first installed, I am 99% sure that manual grouping by ALT+dragging icons over one another worked (See here).

Now with Saucy, it no longer works, the icons just get re-ordered.

Specifically, it appears that the "Manually" option from the Grouping dropdown has gone.

[Rog132]

http://blogs.kde.org/2013/07/29/kde-...w-task-manager

...
There's also some bad news (with a side dish of glimmers-of-hope)

Sadly, a few features didn't make it into the new version - yet, at least.

...The other two are support for manual grouping...

[evilC]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Aaarg, this feature was pretty much the defining reason why I started moving from development on windows to linux.
Is it possible to go back to the old version? I really really need this.

[Rog132]

Is it possible to go back to the old version?

It depends:

If you mean: Is it possible to install a package from the KDE 4.10 and the KDE desktop is working fine - maybe not.

But if you mean: Is it possible to to rebuild the KDE 4.10 task manager to the KDE 4.11 - probably, the sources are available.


There are alternative task managers:



The plasma-widget-smooth-tasks is in the repositories:

~$ apt-cache show plasma-widget-smooth-tasks
Package: plasma-widget-smooth-tasks
Priority: optional
Section: universe/kde
...
Description: alternate task manager plasma widget
This task manager replacement shows only task icons
to increase the free space of the panel.
...
Homepage: https://bitbucket.org/flupp/smooth-tasks-fork/

Fancy tasks: http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php...?content=99737

The Fancy tasks seems to have the grouping




Smooth Tasks 2: http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/?content=148813

[evilC]

Thanks once again for your time.

I am having issues installing fancy tasks (New to Kubuntu).

I tried installing the .deb from the download page at kde-apps.org, and it seemed to install OK (All dependencies good), but I cannot work out how to add a fancy task manager.

Right Click Desktop > Add Panel > Fancy Panel brings up an empty "Panel Settings" box, all I can do is OK or Cancel.
Hitting OK creates a shadow at the bottom of the screen. I presume this is the task panel, but nothing ever appears in it.
I can right click this area and do "Remove Panel", but I get no other options.

[evilC]

OK, I think I am making progress...

I am now trying to add a Fancy Tasks widget to an existing panel.

If I try to add a Fancy Tasks widget to a normal panel, I can drag the widget to the panel, but when I release, I just get a red icon with a white X.

When I hover the X, it says "Unable to load the widget. Could not find requested component: fancytasks".

If I add a fancy panel, a shadowed area appears at the bottom of the screen. If I right click that, there is no "Add Widget" option.

Also, the fancy panel configuration goes crazy when I try to move it around screen edges. I have multi-monitor, and when I try to move it, it flickers between various monitors, inverts mouse movement (ie dragging panel up in top half of screen moves the panel down!) and all kinds of craziness.

[evilC]

I installed Smooth tasks and managed to get that to work, however it does not support manual grouping.

I guess that may be only in smooth tasks 2? Not sure I am ready for compiling from source yet.

It seems that the intended mechanism is indeed to add a tasks widget to an existing panel, so the red X I am seeing for Fancy Tasks seems to indicate that it does not work for some reason. Any help appreciated.

[evilC]

I bit the bullet and tried to install Smooth Tasks 2 from source, but upon executing

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX='kde4-config --prefix' ..

I get:

CMake Error at /usr/share/cmake-2.8/Modules/FindKDE4.cmake:98 (message):
ERROR: cmake/modules/FindKDE4Internal.cmake not found in
/home/evilc/.kde/share/apps;/usr/share/kubuntu-default-settings/kde4-profile/default/share/apps;/usr/share/kde4/apps

[Rog132]

Old task manager

Earlier:

But if you mean: Is it possible to to rebuild the KDE 4.10 task manager to the KDE 4.11 - probably, the sources are available.

Yes, it is possible...

Both the new QML task manager and the 'old' task manager:



The Old task manager has the manual grouping:






How

Downloading the source from the Ubuntu repositories: http://packages.ubuntu.com/raring-updates/kde-workspace

Unpacking:

dpkg-source -x  *.dsc

Copying the .../kde-workspace-4.10.5/plasma/desktop/applets/tasks/ directory to work directory



Editing the CMakeLists.txt

project(plasma-tasks)

find_package(Qt4 REQUIRED)
find_package(KDE4 REQUIRED)
find_package(KDE4Workspace REQUIRED)
include(KDE4Defaults)

add_definitions(${QT_DEFINITIONS} ${KDE4_DEFINITIONS} )
include_directories(${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR} ${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR} ${KDE4_INCLUDES})

set(tasks_SRCS
    windowtaskitem.cpp tasks.cpp taskitemlayout.cpp abstracttaskitem.cpp taskgroupitem.cpp applauncheritem.cpp)

kde4_add_ui_files(tasks_SRCS tasksConfig.ui )
kde4_add_plugin(plasma_applet_tasks_old ${tasks_SRCS})
target_link_libraries(plasma_applet_tasks_old ${KDE4_KDEUI_LIBS} ${KDE4_PLASMA_LIBS} taskmanager)
if(Q_WS_X11)
    target_link_libraries(plasma_applet_tasks_old ${X11_LIBRARIES})
endif(Q_WS_X11)

install(TARGETS plasma_applet_tasks_old DESTINATION ${PLUGIN_INSTALL_DIR})
install(FILES plasma-tasks-old.desktop DESTINATION ${SERVICES_INSTALL_DIR})

Changing the plasma-tasks-default.desktop to plasma-tasks-old.desktop and editing it:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Old Task Manager

Comment=Switch between running applications

Icon=mail-mark-task
Type=Service
X-KDE-ServiceTypes=Plasma/Applet

X-KDE-Library=plasma_applet_tasks_old
X-KDE-PluginInfo-Author=Christian Mollekopf
X-KDE-PluginInfo-Email=chrigi_1@fastmail.fm
X-KDE-PluginInfo-Name=tasks_old
X-KDE-PluginInfo-Version=1.0
X-KDE-PluginInfo-Website=http://plasma.kde.org/
X-KDE-PluginInfo-Category=Windows and Tasks
X-KDE-PluginInfo-Depends=
X-KDE-PluginInfo-License=GPL v2+
X-KDE-PluginInfo-EnabledByDefault=true
X-Plasma-Requires-FileDialog=Unused
X-Plasma-Requires-LaunchApp=Unused

Building it (generic):

mkdir -p builddir
cd builddir && cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=`kde4-config --prefix`
make
sudo make install

Seems to work....


Build depends (probably):

- build-essential
- cmake
- kde-workspace-dev


A ppa search: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas?n...dget-old-tasks

[Rog132]

The Smooth Tasks 2 doesn't have the grouping. About the error:

ERROR: cmake/modules/FindKDE4Internal.cmake not found

- http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=718183

[Rog132]

I am now trying to add a Fancy Tasks widget to an existing panel.

If I try to add a Fancy Tasks widget to a normal panel, I can drag the widget to the panel, but when I release, I just get a red icon with a white X.

When I hover the X, it says "Unable to load the widget. Could not find requested component: fancytasks".

If I add a fancy panel, a shadowed area appears at the bottom of the screen. If I right click that, there is no "Add Widget" option.

The developer has Kubuntu 12.04 packages (KDE 4.8 ?)- I didn't try to install those - I compiled from the source.

[evilC]

OK, so I got fancy tasks compiled from the source. Thanks for your help there.

Unfortunately it is a no-go.
The taskbar icons are way too small, I cannot read the labels.
It keeps crashing.
The images keep corrupting, icons disappear.
There is no enlarge effect when you hover an item.
It seems to combine a launcher with a task manager, and there are a bunch of launcher items in there I do not want (Kontact, IM Contacts, Amarok) and I cannot remove them.
The manual grouping works, but when it creates a group, it creates an extra icon for the group but does not remove the icons of the grouped applications.

Will add more in a minute, it just messed up so bad, my OS is unusable.

[evilC]

Right, back after a reboot and still screwed.

As I mentioned before, Saucy seems to have introduced a new bug (?with multi-monitor?) that when you try to move a panel, it flickers around exhibiting weird behaviour such as moving the panel down when you move the mouse up.

In the process of one of these moves, I now have a super-enlarged portion of fancy tasks covering my primary monitor. It covers the tasks panel and is capturing clicks, so my primary monitor is unusable and I cannot get out of this state.

Right now I am unbelievably furious at the Kubuntu devs for putting me in this position. I had a working dev environment pre-update, and now I cannot earn a living, I just want to cry.

[evilC]

This is a snapshot of my main monitor:

[evilC]

Managed to remove the plasmoid - found a gap in the icons, and could right click, remove panel.

Panel covered confirm dialog, but it had focus so I could hit Enter to confirm.