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. -- You are receiving this mail because: You are watching all bug changes.
