https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435170

--- Comment #9 from RedBearAK <redb...@redbearnet.com> ---
(In reply to Natalie Clarius from comment #8)
> > But as soon as you press Grave while still holding Alt after doing Alt+Tab, 
> > the Grave key press triggers the app switch event
> 
> What's the problem with that exactly? You can still switch back to a
> different application with Alt+Tab, and you can switch to a different window
> being pulled to the front with Alt+Grave.
> 

Main way I can respond to that is by mentioning how I have "Show selected
window" disabled. I don't like the way the screen keeps changing when that is
enabled. And most desktop environments in Linux or otherwise don't switch to a
window when you are Alt+Tabbing until you release Alt. So it's just odd that
Alt+Grave would instantly bring that app's windows forward as if you had
pressed Alt+Tab and released Alt already. Alt+Grave doesn't pull each
individual window forward as you cycle through with additional Grave presses.
In other words, it acts like Alt+Tab, waiting for you to decide which window
you want before performing an action, except for the very first time you press
Grave after Alt+Tab, when it instantly performs an action. The behavior just
doesn't feel consistent and predictable. There is no opportunity to Escape
without performing any action at all. 

> The idea is that the implementation would be moved from a KWin script, which
> just picks up a signal that a window was activated and catches up on the
> other ones, to the task switcher itself, which knows what keys are being
> pressed and could decide whether or not to also bring other windows forward
> on its own accord.  
> 

Yes, that sounds like a solution. 

> But what you're saying is that the functionality should be ported to core
> KWin for the task switcher component but deliberately be broken in the case
> of using Alt+Grave in conjunction with Alt+Tab, and I'm not sure that's what
> most users who would like to use this option would expect and want.
> 

I'm not aware of asking for anything to be broken. I probably just worded
something wrong. 

> (Also from the GitHub thread)
> 
> > Of course the user can choose to use a thumbnail switcher at all times, but 
> > "app switching" only really makes sense with the somewhat strange "Only one 
> > window per application" KDE task switcher option enabled, which makes 
> > everything weird. 
> 
> Why? What is weird about this option?

How to explain? 

It's weird because when you enable that option the task switcher will only show
a single icon/preview for each "application", no matter how many windows that
app has open. It may or may not be a window preview that does a good job
representing the whole application. 

Application-centric task switching like macOS really treats each application as
a monolithic entity, and so such paradigms usually choose to simply show a
large application icon for each application, instead of a thumbnail preview of
any particular window. Thumbnail sized window previews often look substantially
similar, even for completely different applications. Application icons, on the
other hand, often look very different from one another. So split-second "app
switching" decisions become much easier on the brain, requiring less visual
analysis. 

When you have the "Only one window" option disabled while also trying to use
"app switching" as the main task switching paradigm, you give up the simplicity
of seeing just a single easily distinguished icon in the task switcher. Which,
to me, is one of the primary benefits. If you have six "applications" running
and each has 10 windows open, that's 60 icons (or tiny thumbnails) in the task
switcher dialog with a window-centric task switcher. But only six icons in an
application-centric task switcher dialog. It completely changes the act of task
switching, and the mental model of task switching. 

This was a completely alien way of thinking when I first transitioned from
Windows/Linux and started spending most of my time in macOS. It took me a long
time to let go of the idea that I was being "limited" by not being able to see
all of the open windows on the whole system in the task switcher dialog. But as
you can see, I changed my mental model eventually, and learned to work with it.
Now I really dislike task switchers that try to show me dozens of almost
useless window thumbnails, or even take over the whole screen trying to make
the thumbnails big enough to be usable. 

Pop_OS! does a similar bad thing where it forces the use of the
one-icon-per-app task switcher, but completely breaks the ability to actually
switch to that "application" as a window group. They apparently did not like
the visual complexity of the GNOME "Switch windows" task switcher mode that
shows all open windows as thumbnails, but they rejected the logic of treating
the windows as a group the way that "Switch applications" normally does. Bug
reports were rejected without fixing the issue. 

In the same way, the KDE option "Only one window per application" attempts to
mimic an application-centric visual task switch_ER_ without also mimicking
application-centric logical task switch_ING_. So to me, it produces a very
dissonant, mentally irritating way of task switching. 

Which is mostly fixed by the Kwin script.

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