KDE4-widgets & multidesktops

[wedgetail]

old-polack

Now I am confused, can I ask how you get a widget on the desktop and not an Icon. Seems I have half Icons and half Widgets ie the additonal ones I have put on, not default ones.

The widgets and Icons look almost the same but when I right click the widgets talk about properties down the bottom and Icons have just 3 lines option.

My Icons seems to stay where they are put.

When I use the menu and for example add konsole to desktop this gives me an Icon always on dt5 no matter what desktop I am presently in.

dt1, dt5, dt6 these show Folder View Desktop
dt2, dt3, dt4, dt7 and dt8 show Desktop Desktop in activities.

I have not locked anything yet.

I am also rather unfamiliar with the new presentation terms.

[Texstar]

My icons haven't moved once since I placed them on the desktop.  

Widgets are locked. Icons --> Lock in Place is checked. It's reproducible on command.

If I right click on any one, choose Properties, then click the OK button, without doing anything else; same thing.

If I right click and choose Open With --> Kwrite then change anything in the text, even just add a new line, as soon as I click Save, same thing again.

I pick an icon from the menu and select add to desktop. Then I drag it where I want. Then it stays there login after login. Maybe they don't like it when you try to change their properties.

[wedgetail]

If I do this

Code: [Select]

[gert@localhost ~]$ rpm --help > ~/Desktop/101004_test.txt
[gert@localhost ~]$

I get a widget on my desktop.

If I try to use the PC > More Applications > Terminals > Konsole [right click add to desktop]

This becomes what I call an Icon.

Right click on this icon and I get only 3 lines option:

Icon Folder Settings
Folder View Options
Remove this Icon

I could have stuffed something, but the system works surprisingly well at the moment.

Edit:
From what I can see the small number of item on the desktop that I have placed here are all what I call Icons. Text files, pdf files, CAD datafile, postscript file, xml file and jpg files. These  Widgets have been placed by application files.

There is one application, the big 3D CAD program VariCAD which I have installed, Desktop Icon for this is a Widget, I think I installed this by hand but how I made it a Widget, I have forgotten.  

Aaaah, now I remember having seen old-polack's answer below how he gets his Widgets, I think this was what I did, made a desktop widget copy.

[Old-Polack]

old-polack

Now I am confused, can I ask how you get a widget on the desktop and not an Icon. Seems I have half Icons and half Widgets ie the additonal ones I have put on, not default ones.

The widgets and Icons look almost the same but when I right click the widgets talk about properties down the bottom and Icons have just 3 lines option.

My Icons seems to stay where they are put.

When I use the menu and for example add konsole to desktop this gives me an Icon always on dt5 no matter what desktop I am presently in.

dt1, dt5, dt6 these show Folder View Desktop
dt2, dt3, dt4, dt7 and dt8 show Deskto Desktop in activities.

I have not locked anything yet.

I am also rather unfamiliar with the new presentation terms.

Again, to demonstrate:

I click the desktop link to /usr/share/applications/kde4, drag the amarok.desktop file to the desktop and choose Copy Here. The file does not appear because it is behind the Konqueror File Manager item. I find it by hovering over each item in turn until it's found. I un-check the Icon --> Lock in Place from a desktop right click, then drag the Amarok item/widget/icon to be above the Kompare item. So far no change, but there is a red check mark on the Amarok item. I right click the Amarok item, click the Permissions tab, then check the Is executable box, then click the OK button. I now have this, again.



Note the new Amarok item at the lower left, highlighted.

And after putting everything back in place yet again, we see the new Amerok item where I originally placed it.



I can now lock the non lockable icons, but why bother?

[exwintech]

Old-Polack - As you say, KDE-4 might have come a long way - but it also has a very long way to go....

And I wish it a safe and happy journey while going there - ASAP.....  

Re "all of that eye-candy stuff" - it'd be nice if there was a CC option - or maybe a "Plain STD Linux KDE" install option, just to can the lot, and leave Users who want a "conventional" set of Desktops with "usual" Menus, to work with.

I do realise that to attract new younger Users to Linux, they might like a Desktop setup that behaves like an "exciting" Computer-Game with Whizzbangs, Sparklies, and Unpredictables, to play with... What might suit a lot of folk a few years into Linux - is if that could all be turned off...

Of course, I must be a boring-old-lot - as I just want a half-dozen or so "working Desktops" - that stay where they're put - don't turn into other "Views" or "UFOs" - and have any icons put on the Desktop - remain where put. I don't spend most of my day doing "Advanced Linux Configurations" - or trying to find out just how many Peculiar Floating and Wandering Sort-of-Desktops the KDE-4 Circus can be configured into...

As for the Hysterical and Unpredictable appearances and disappearances of Dolphin - heh! It pops up from the right end of Panel - to announce it's going to do something - try to click to get it to do anything - and it vanishes. So then you try to click it up from the left end of Panel - and it offers several choices - most of which it can't do... Finally you get it open - then find you can't Drag-Drop or Copy what used to be Files and Directories by left-clicking on the icon.. No, you have to hover over it until the text shows under it - then left-drag or click ONLY on the text...

It's rather like the "drag on the text-name" improvement for DOS-3.x in the 1980s...

Ohh - the problems are with Nvidia Cards, too - not just the Audio and Audacity - in HDD installs...? No 3D functions in KDE-4.... Wonderful - glad I'll be hanging on to KDE-3 in the other box, then...

Which leads to another graphics thing - in V-Box KDE-4s (2 of them) - I've put in the new Kdenlive video-editor.... Not really expecting that to work well in a virtual install - just for a look at it. Is it "that" flaky-unstable" in the HDD installs, too?

Does Digikam work properly in an HDD KDE-4 install?

If not - might KDE-4 some day be able to run Raw-Therapee - said on the Camera Forums to be the best Linux RAW post-processor...?

At present I'm running Windows Raw-therapee in Wine - but as Wine isn't really suited to KDE-4 - it might not do that...

Needing to have another HDD install (perhaps in the other box) - of the Distro with name like "Bye-Baby-Bunting" - just to get an in-Linux HDD version of Raw-Therapee - would be a distinct pain....  

Maybe, one day, we - this Linux Forum, and others - can one day get back to mostly discussing Linux, its apps, tools and etcs - rather than being a Medicare-Outstation for KDE-4....

And with all then being so much happier - Fun and Ravings might return to SandBox...  

Regards, Dave.

[wedgetail]

old-polack
I would like to know how many others have got this idea of placing a Widget on the desktop   I am really out on deep water here.

I can confirm if I follow your description but I have chosen konsole from same source path as you did. To be different I copied the item in the directory and went back to a Desktop Desktop view but of course i could not paste to this, so I went to my dt1 which is a Folder View Desktop and here I can paste. I right click in the middle of the screen, nice and empty and paste.

The konsole picture snaps to and empty space at the end of the left hand side columns and what I call Widgets.  Now I drag the widget to the centre of the screen and stare gloomingly at the red mark but it does not budge until I do like you permissions tick execute and the silly thing immediately evaporates from the centre and turns up in the place where it first landed when pasted.

On that desktop I have a group of OO.o icons sitting at the right hand side, looking on in disdain at the behaviour of the flighty konsole widget. They did not move one pixel.

You are onto something but I don't know what.

If you however made an entry in the menu for xyz whatever icon and then used the menu to select xyz and right click to place this item on the desktop ( you will still have to find it but it will sit on top of something, probably Home) then move it to wherever position. I think this will tether it.

What is going on is something I don't understand but I can now understand why people may get varying results and I think this is why Textstar did not have moving well what will we call them/it.  The movers can be recognised by the + sign when hovering over them and the none movers have faint tools.
  

[Old-Polack]

My icons haven't moved once since I placed them on the desktop.  

Widgets are locked. Icons --> Lock in Place is checked. It's reproducible on command.

If I right click on any one, choose Properties, then click the OK button, without doing anything else; same thing.

If I right click and choose Open With --> Kwrite then change anything in the text, even just add a new line, as soon as I click Save, same thing again.

I pick an icon from the menu and select add to desktop. Then I drag it where I want. Then it stays there login after login. Maybe they don't like it when you try to change their properties.

All my desktop items are <whatever>.desktop files, designed expressly to be editable, and to sit inertly where I place them, on the desktop. Could very well be why they have .desktop in their name. They have behaved exactly as they should, in KDE1, KDE2, KDE3, and KDE4, until the upgrade to KDE4.4.4 or KDE4.4.5.

I really don't know exactly with which upgrade this started, but many bug reports from all distributions have been filed, There are multiple threads on this forum about this shifting of supposedly locked icons, with links to some of the bug reports. There were a lot of "this bug is the same as that bug" entries, and groupings of the reports, but not much action, other than that, seen from the KDE devs. Somewhere it was reported that the fix would be included with the 4.5.2 release, but that's obviously not happened.

My desktop stays as arranged, through numerous reboots, too. It does not stay as arranged if any or the properties are checked, or changed, in the manner in which they were designed to be checked or changed.

If one creates a new .desktop file to run a personal script, the icon order is immediately trashed. The KDE devs had it right, for at least 12 years, but screwed it up with a relatively recent upgrade.

[wedgetail]

Ah, so that was how it was done in the past too manipulating the .desktop have learnt a bit again.

My last test  I went and made a minor test to another widget properties and sure enough, konsole widget came flying home to the coup.

This beyond me.   

[Texstar]

Unlock Widget
Open Menu
Right Click on Item
Select Add to Desktop
Move Icon where you want it.
Lock Widgets
Done!

Stop doing that other stuff!

Reminds me when your momma told you to come straight home after school. tee hee



 

[wedgetail]

Texstar

Would you please tell me how to unlock something that is not locked and I will try.  

Following your description there is no need to lock anything they will stay nicely where they are put, well until you stuff something up. But they ain't widgets or if they are the first ones are not.

Edit:
I locked all widgets via the desktop.  Moved some widgets to the right to join the nonWidgets then changed a permission on an untouched Widget from read to read and write,  bang, all the widgets are home in the coop.  The nonWidgets could not care less they just stay put.

[Texstar]

Texstar

Would you please tell me how to unlock something that is not locked and I will try. 

Following your description there is no need to lock anything they will stay nicely where they are put, well until you stuff something up. But they ain't widgets or if they are the first ones are not.

I got my widgets locked. You might not. Depends on how you want it. Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special configurations don't upset us... have it your way.... Burger King...err KDE! NOT!

[wedgetail]

Texstar
Like the picture though. 

I believe you have what I now define as nonWidgets, right click and you get 3 options. 

Right click on a  Widget and yes you get more options.  The free one is the buggers do what they like as far as placement.

[Texstar]

Texstar
Like the picture though. 

I believe you have what I now define as nonWidgets, right click and you get 3 options. 

Right click on a  Widget and yes you get more options.  The free one is the buggers do what they like as far as placement.

Maybe they are free range icons. 

[Old-Polack]

Blah de blah blah blah...

Unlock Widget
Open Menu
Right Click on Item
Select Add to Desktop
Move Icon where you want it.
Lock Widgets
Done!

Stop doing that other stuff!

Reminds me when your momma told you to come straight home after school.

 

I looked and looked, but couldn't find a single menu item that said "Play a DVD with Xine", nor one that said "Play a DVD with MPlayer" and certainly not one that said "Play audio CDs with Xmms". There are a lot of apps that can do a lot of things if I want to open the app, then select what I want to do from a menu, then tell it where the item can be found. Many clicks later, I finally get to do what I want to do.

My desktop items do exactly what I want to do with a single click. That's their purpose.

Right click the desktop. The top item in the menu is Create New with a menu of items that one should be able to create;



All are .desktop templates. A lot of the items are broken, as written, but with a bit of experimenting and editing, can be made to work as they should. All will be icons, by KDE definition. All should be lockable, as to their chosen position, but the lock is broken. The icons themselves work just fine.

Yes, they are free range icons. but my broken desktop keeps trying to pen them up.

Down with tyranny... Free the free range icons... Let them dwell in the home of their choice!

[gseaman]

Like all free-range organic animals, they are only 'free' until dinner time! 

Galen