How to persist my KDE Activity organization across logins?

[MountainX]

I would like to utilize KDE's Plasma Activities PLUS have specific application instances (and documents) assigned to Activities. Is it possible to have an application open up with a specific document loaded when I open an activity? Ideally, I would like the applications and documents I had open last in an Actiivity (before logging out) to be opened again when I reopen that Activity after logging in. And I don't want them to open unless I open that Activity.

I also want to completely associate an Activity with a virtual desktop and have that association persisted.

Example:
Activity: Financial: I would like to always have Libre Office Calc in this Activity plus a specific financial spreadsheet open in Calc when I open this Activity. I also want it to always be on virtual desktop 2. I don't want the applications or documents associated with this Activity to "show up" unless I switch to this Activity. And I want everything to be "as I left it" after I log out and then later log back in.

Activity: Member Management: I would like to always have Libre Office Calc in this Activity plus a membership/user-list spreadsheet open in Calc when I open this Activity. I also want it to always be on virtual desktop 3. Same conditions as above.

I have figured out how to get all this set up once, but as soon as I log out and log back in, my entire desktop is a mess. It seems like a bug, but I don't understand what causes my problems because a) I'm new to KDE and just figuring out how all this works, and b) so many things get screwed up after I log back in that I don't know where to start in describing what went wrong. Basically , everything seems to go wrong and nothing works like I would expect. I mentioned this in a prior post somewhere and a bunch of people started telling me how buggy KDE is. It made me think solving this is hopeless.

However, I can offer one specific example of the problems I'm seeing: the applications are definitely no longer open just in their activities. The pinning of applications to Activities seems to get really screwed up. All the application instances from different Activities show up jumbled together on my main (default) Activity. Some applications open without the last loaded document. Some give errors. Others do open. It's just a mess.

The ability to organize one's working area so well is great. But it can take a lot of time and effort to do that organization. If it isn't saved (persisted across logins), the whole feature is basically worthless to me. Can someone explain to me what is going on? Am I seeing bugs? Or am I doing something wrong?

(I've been reading every Plasma Activities and virtual desktop tutorial I can find.) I have Kubuntu 11.10 loaded on my machine now. But I also have the Ubuntu 12.04 Unity beta 1 CD in my hand and I'm almost at the point of giving up on KDE and trying Unity (cough, cough). Please don't let me go to Unity!!! Unity is what drove me to decide that KDE was my future.

[SecretCode]

KDE is still miles better than Unity even without Activities.

I've spent quite a while exploring what activities can do ... and currently I don't use them. The concept is great but the implementation is just not mature enough yet, for me at least (in particular lacking keyboard shortcuts and easy ways to move windows between shortcuts, all of which are very easy to do with KWin and virtual desktops).

Your specific requirement to launch applications when you open a given activity seems to be part of the intention but afaik is not actually implemented yet. I don't know why (other than lots of development to do and limited numbers of developers). The only complication in the concept, compared to the way you've described it, is that I think activities are supposed to associate with documents (or at least windows), not whole applications. You clearly might want a Dolphin window at a particular folder in your financial activity, and a LibreOffice window with a particular document, while still having that app in other activities. I think the challenge of defining what is associated with each activity (window by title, document or folder by disk location, web page by URL) and how applications are supposed to open and close such windows/documents when a given activity is started or stopped is quite a complex one.




But again ... KDE is still miles better than Unity even without Activities!

[rms]

In addition, I have noticed in Oneiric KDE 4.7.* - 4.8 if hardware power button is used for shutdown, KDE is unable to load any running apps or documents from the previous session. It is only when I use shutdown option from launcher or through shutdown widget that current session is saved properly and all open apps are restored at next boot.

[MountainX]

Thank you for the replies, rms and SecretCode. That's helpful. Other people have told me that Plasma Activities are buggy, so it's not the first time I'm hearing that. I'm starting to understand that if I use KDE, I'm going to have to use it differently than I intended. What frustrates me is that the KDE developers are touting Activities as a key advantage to KDE and I bought into that philosophy. But the implementation isn't up to par with the concept, unfortunately.

If everything in KDE worked as designed, there would be no contest between it and Unity (for me, personally).

[rms]

KDE devs are slowly putting everything in order, I see a definite improvement from 4.4.*-4.8. Actually, only certain apps like dosbox and similar are not restored. Occasionally Firefox pops up where it shouldn't but apart from that all is good and will probably get even more usable.