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Improve sorting of new window in the tasklist
Status:
RESOLVED: FIXED
Severity:
enhancement
Product:
Xfce4-panel
Component:
Window Buttons

Comments

Description Oded Arbel 2004-11-19 05:08:13 CET
Sorry for posting this in "General" - I couldn't find the product for the xfce
taskbar.

When Having many applications open, the taskbar lists them with no particular
order - which actully looks quite random.
This makes it much harder using the taskbar to locate the required application
even if you have less then 10 windows open as one has to scan the entire taskbar
in order to find the requested entry.

I would expect the task bar entries to be orderd/grouped by either application
current workspace, name, type or even order of launch but none of these seems to
be the case.

Screen shot will follow immidietly
Comment 1 Oded Arbel 2004-11-19 05:12:12 CET
Created attachment 107 
Screenshot of many apps open in the taskbar

I would expect that the most useful way is to group by workspace, the same as
it is done in the KDE and GNOME taskbars. This is the list of workspace per
entry in the attached screenshot:

second
second
third
first
second
first
fourth
fourth
second
first

as you can see - totally random
Comment 2 Olivier Fourdan editbugs 2004-11-19 21:33:10 CET
Created attachment 108 
GNOME vs. Xfce taskbar

Sorry, but GNOME doesn't do that either. The code base of that particular
feature (the taskbar) is identical beween GNOME and Xfce, and the attached
screenshot shows that the result is indeed the same...
Comment 3 Brian J. Tarricone (not reading bugmail) 2004-11-19 23:23:42 CET
yeah, this has pissed me off for a really long time.  ever since i first tried
gnome2, actually.  gnome 1.4's taskbar was much more sane.  i'd like to see this
implemented, but it would probably take a bit of work.  definitey a 4.4 thing.

moving milestone to xfce-4.3, reassinging to xfce-utils, and taking bug.  if
anybody else wants in on this, add yourself to the CC...

olivier, is there any kind of standard "timestamp" property that's set on a
window that records when the window was created?
Comment 4 Olivier Fourdan editbugs 2004-11-20 10:11:52 CET
Nope, xfwm4 maitains one for its own use. It is a simple counter that gets
incremented each time a window is created.

I think keeping window together per desktop as requested would be more useful
(or at least a first step), but you know how much I hate to put my hands in that
particular part of the code :)
Comment 5 Brian J. Tarricone (not reading bugmail) 2004-11-20 11:24:39 CET
actually, i only have the taskbar show windows that are on the current
workspace.  even then, the buttons are arranged in a seemingly-random order, and
it annoys me.  personally i think netk-tasklist sucks.  maybe i'll write a new
one for 4.4.  the lack of ability to learn the window creation order kinda ia
shame, though i suppose watching for map/unmap events and keeping an ordered
list around is the way to do it.  as i said, the taskbar in gnome1.4 used to put
them in order, so it probably did something like that.
Comment 6 Brian J. Tarricone (not reading bugmail) 2005-06-28 20:07:19 CEST
This isn't something I'm reasonably going to get to anytime soon.  Reassiging
and adding helpwanted keyword.
Comment 7 Andrew Smith 2007-03-05 09:18:56 CET
i have the same problem, it's still there in xfce 4.4

any order would do (either ordered as launched or grouped by application), as long as it's consistent, right now it does seem random.
Comment 8 Ryan Daly 2007-11-07 17:51:32 CET
I see the same result w/ Xfce v4.4.1.

I'd really like to see alphabetical sorting by the name you see in the Task Bar, or by application group.
Comment 9 Brian J. Tarricone (not reading bugmail) 2007-11-07 18:26:07 CET
This is unlikely to get fixed anytime soon.  We've just moved to using libwnck's WnckTasklist for the tasklist, so requests about that should be filed on GNOME bugzilla (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=libwnck).  We can continue to track it here, though.
Comment 10 Brian J. Tarricone (not reading bugmail) 2007-11-07 18:36:55 CET
It looks like part of this might already work:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52225
This sorts windows in the order they were created, which is good enough for me.  It would be nice to have an option to sort them alphabetically, but that's up to someone else to file against libwnck, cuz I don't really care ^_~.
Comment 11 Nick Schermer editbugs 2008-03-11 08:46:35 CET
I've changed the subject since trunk (libwnck) does a slightly better job in sorting new entries, but there is still an idea to merge tasklist and iconbox.
Comment 12 Ryan Daly 2008-10-09 15:03:31 CEST
I've read some of the bugs linked to http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52225 and I'm still confused as to what the direction is.

What I'd like to see is, when the tasks are grouped, I'd like to see them in alphabetical order.  For example, I have:

Firefox (7)  XTerm (5)  [Inbox for ...]

When I click the Firefox or XTerm buttons, that listing should be alphabetical.  So, clicking XTerm should reveal:

XTerm (5)
   a
   b
   c
   d
   e

But instead, it reveals

XTerm (5)
   b
   a
   d
   c
   e

I'm assuming those are in order of creation.  But, when I have 30+ terms open, it's extremely difficult to find what I'm looking for.

Should I make this comment elsewhere, too?
Comment 13 Nick Schermer editbugs 2008-10-09 16:47:09 CEST
I have a partly finished merge of the tasklist and iconbox and this will feature sorting option (by startup time or alphabetical) but this will be shipped with Xfce 4.8.
Comment 14 Ryan Daly 2008-10-09 17:04:19 CEST
Awesome.  Thanks for the update and your efforts!

Is there any timeline for 4.8 to be released?
Comment 15 Nick Schermer editbugs 2008-10-09 17:09:47 CEST
Haha nope no idea, will probably take some time.
Comment 16 Nick Schermer editbugs 2009-11-28 11:40:06 CET
Ok this is implemented in the devel panel. Up to now 4 sorting orders:

- Timestamp: new apps are appended.
- Group, Timestamp: application groups are sorted alphabetically and then my timestamp, this is the default.
- Window title: sort by title, but this will reorder the buttons when a window name changes.
- Group, Window title: sort by group name and then by window title, less jumpy then the window-title-only sort, but buttons can still reorder when a window title changes (in the group).

Still need to add sorting by workspace when you have "Show all workspaces" enabled, but that will be working soon too.
Comment 17 Nick Schermer editbugs 2010-02-27 15:08:44 CET
Devel branch has been merged in master. A 4.7.0 release will follow soon. If you think this bug is not fixed? Feel free to reopen the bug.
Comment 18 Ryan Daly 2013-07-18 19:36:13 CEST
I believe this bug is still not fixed.  I'm running Ubuntu 12.04 w/ Xfce v4.8.

I have my window buttons grouped and sorted by "Group title and window title".  Yet, under "Terminal", they are not listed in alphabetical order.

Bug #517

Reported by:
Oded Arbel
Reported on: 2004-11-19
Last modified on: 2013-07-18

People

Assignee:
Nick Schermer
CC List:
5 users

Version

Version:
4.7 (master)

Attachments

Screenshot of many apps open in the taskbar (14.89 KB, image/png)
2004-11-19 05:12 CET , Oded Arbel
no flags
GNOME vs. Xfce taskbar (25.95 KB, image/png)
2004-11-19 21:33 CET , Olivier Fourdan
no flags

Additional information