Following Latte and an Indicators tale, today I am going to introduce you another major feature that Latte git version supported this month, Shared Layouts.
“Lets share our docks and panels in different Activities”
- Share the same top panel between two different layouts at different Activities -- youtube presentation - |
Why do we need Shared Layouts for?
Latte v0.8 introduced Latte layouts that could function in Multiple mode. Meaning that the layouts can be assigned to different Activities and all together can work simultaneously based on the Activities running. That approach of course has limits. In case you want to share a dock/panel between different layouts you can not. The only thing you could do is to Copy the panel or view that you want in more than one layouts and have different instances in different Activities. These instances of course could not sync their settings and they were all running at the same time, meaning more memory usage because of all these duplicates.
I suppose that in the past the users called this feature "Different panels at Different Activities". Latte v0.9 actually answers that completely with Shared Layouts.
What can Shared Layouts do?
Any Latte layout can be Shared To one or more layouts under Multiple Layouts mode. Contrary to Shared Layouts all the other layouts that are NOT-Shared are now called Central in order to distinguish them. All these layouts can live at the same time at different Activities and cooperate with each other of course.
Note: I dont know how to describe this better so please watch the youtube video in the beginning in order to understand better the concept
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| Shared "TopPanel" layout that lives with "My Profile" and "Unity Dream" layouts at the same time |
Shared Layouts Goals
- Any layout can act as Central or Shared layout BUT NOT at the same time
- A Central Layout can be assigned to ONLY ONE Shared Layout BUT the Shared Layout can be assigned to one or more Central layouts at the same time
- Central Layouts define the Activities to follow and its SHARED layout will just obey
- Panels/Docks from Shared Layouts have ALWAYS HIGHER PRIORITY to be drawn in the screen compared to Panels/Docks from Central Layouts
- Multi-Screen behavior should work out of the box with no restrictions
- Docks/Panels from Shared or Central Layouts can be moved/exchanged from layout to layout freely with no restrictions
Latte with [1-6] can now act in multi-layouts / multi-activities / multi-screens mode with no restrictions
Epilogue
I dont know how many Latte users will need this feature, probably very few... On the other hand I always try to promote and enhance the Plasma Activities concept because I really believe in them... 😃
That is all for now, I hope you enjoy and play with Shared Layouts! Personally I love them and I have switched to a Multiple Layouts mode with Shared Layouts to keep things in sync...
That is all for now, I hope you enjoy and play with Shared Layouts! Personally I love them and I have switched to a Multiple Layouts mode with Shared Layouts to keep things in sync...
Donations
You can find Latte at Liberapay if you want to support,
or you can split
your donation between my active projects in kde store.
