Stephen Dowdy posted on Sat, 05 Aug 2017 11:23:38 -0600 as excerpted:
> I have LOTS of windows, and while task manager window grouping in KDE4
> started off pretty bad early on, it got better for me.
>
> In Debian Jessie, i would have issues running 3 different firefox
> profiles with differing Class Instance names, where it would still
> *usually* correctly separately group them, but sometimes draw the
> incorrect icon for them.
>
> Now, in Debian Stretch, the icon managers are *TERRIBLE* at grouping my
> firefox windows.
>
> I have *hundreds* of firefox windows, and i'm lucky if task manager
> manages to make 1 or 2 groups of a few tens or dozens, and then ALL of
> the rest become individual task manager icons.
>
> (race condition?)
Sounds like it.
Right here at the top I'll mention that my usage is much different than
yours so the degree of practical help I can provide is very limited, but
I do run live-git "kde family", from frameworks, thru plasma and apps,
and follow plasma's (that's the whole desktop including kwin, plasma
system settings, etc, not just the shell) development via the plasma-devel
list which gets all the pre-master-merge discussion, and am thus at least
somewhat aware of developments that don't directly affect my own use, but
will affect yours. It's on that basis that I'm replying.
I neither group windows nor use a taskbar at all, here, preferring window
management alternatives such as the alt-tab switcher, multiple desktops
with switching via desktop scroll or cube, the window list menu which I
have configured to popup with a "middle" button click, etc. It also
helps that I have a /huge/ desktop, a 65"/165cm 4K TV (3840x2160) as my
primary monitor, with window rules set to default most windows to
1280x1080, so I can do a 6-off grid of three windows wide by two high, so
I don't need to Z-axis stack them so deeply, particularly when using
multiple desktops as well. (I also have a secondary 48"/122cm "full-HD"
TV (1920x1080), on which I can and often do have a full-screen youtube or
the like session playing, the idea being it can be full-screen on that
monitor and still not encroach on my 3x2-window main work display area.)
Between that and the fact that I'm an old-timer whose computer workflow
consists of opening windows to work on, working on them, then closing
them, closing and restarting windows/apps as needed rather than leaving
them hanging around unused for days at a time, I don't usually get the
number of windows you're quoting and thus don't tend to end up /needing/
to manage hundreds of windows at a time.
Tho I will often open up to perhaps 50 firefox windows or so while
catching up on news, along with a news/feed/mail reader (which close to
the tray and I seldom have more than one open at a time), maybe a reply
window for messages such as this, and perhaps 2-3 konsole windows if I'm
updating (gentoo so that means building from sources) the system at the
same time.
But still almost never more than 100 windows, and most of the time under
50, quite a way from your several hundred. But it works for me, and if
yours works for you... =:^)
> I prefer using Icon-only Task Manager with "Show Launcher when not
> running" (though, interestingly, in Icon-only mode, there's not "Group
> Windows" setting button)
>
> I have tried switching "Alternatives" hoping that doing so would issue a
> "regroup" operation, but it seems that the grouping algorithm is done
> one-time at window creation in some common code?
I'd expect so... people don't tend to like windows showing up in one
group, then moving to a different one just because the name of the window
changed or something similar, after all.
> Is there any way to FORCE the code to re-evaluate grouping? Or, is this
> bug fixed in subsequent Plasma or KDE Frameworks (or whatever component)
> releases?
One "hackish/manual" technique I've had some success with, is using the
command line at first, then scripting if whatever bug is forcing it
continues to happen frequently enough, to quit (kquitapp or killall, or
using htop, ksysguard, etc) and restart whatever plasma component,
whether that be kwin (kwin-x11), plasmashell (the desktop activities and
panels themselves), krunner (the run dialog), xembedsniproxy (the
"legacy" tray app proxy), etc. Just don't try to quit and restart
ksmserver, startx, xinit, startkde, etc, or you'll shutdown the entire
session!
In fact, I've one entire hotkey launcher menu dedicated to resetting/
restarting various components, both kde/plasma related as above, and
otherwise (resetting mouse accel (xset m(ouse)), keyboard repeat rate
(xset r(epeat)), reloading my now kde-independent due to kde breaking
what was working just fine with no work-alike alternative on major
upgrades several times hotkey app (sxhkd for the hotkeys and a hand-
rolled konsole/bash-script combo for hotkey menus) after editing its
config, etc).
Since I don't use window
