KDE Widget gone rogue

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1

Hi,

I moved a widget (comic strip) from another location on the desktop (where it had been running fine) to near the bottom right corner, near the system tray, but when I released the mouse button the widget moved further into the corner and then disappeared off screen! (Dastardly behaviour I dear say!) The widget manager shows that it is still working/installed (the little green check mark). However, there is no way to disable this particular widget from the manager (unlike as in the case with some other widgets I’m familiar with).

I can’t find anything to get the widget’s placement back on screen or, barring that, to stop it and then start over.

Google says there might have been something that used to do this (either kill them or get them centred on screen), but it got nixed by the KDE people at some point as it was deemed part of the “I hate the cashew” anti-establishment movement … and, now, there is just an open bug/wish request: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219931 (which is really a collection of bug reports, such as this particular one that perfectly describes my predicament: “You can’t close a plasmoid if you can’t see it. Such as plasmoids that have made their way off screen.”.

Anyone know of a way to terminate or reposition this rogue operator? Or is it the Jason Bourne of the widget world?

2

Oh, forgot this: Contribute/Bugsquad/KrushDays - KDE TechBase

On which you can find:

When one drags a file/folder from dolphin to the desktop, and tries to resize it a lot, the plasmoid disappears.

  • It seems to work fine for me. Maybe you dropped the plasmoid off the screen? (mutlu_inek, rev. 743425) I simply can’t reproduce this. (mutlu_inek, rev. 746964)
  • It should not be possible to move plasma applets off the screen. There’s no way to ever get them back! This might result in active applets consuming resources, the user is not aware off, because they were moved off-screen by accident. (yojoe)
    [LIST]
  • I second this. Alternatively, they could be at least accessible via a list or smth. (mutlu_inek) This is resolved by Chani. The “Add Widget” dialog now shows running plasmoids which can be summoned back to the center of the screen. :slight_smile: (mutlu_inek, rev. 746964)

[/LIST]

But it is unclear to me when these reports were from or when the supposed resolutions were adopted

3

On 11/14/2012 06:56 PM, Tyler K wrote:
> the widget moved
> further into the corner and then disappeared off screen!

you might TRY (read the caveat in my sig) to change the size of your
screen temporarily and see if you can get to that disappeared off the
screen window…

like, if you normally run 1024x768, change it to 1440x1200 (or whatever)
and see if you can grab that window, and kill it…

–
dd http://tinyurl.com/DD-Caveat

4

Thanks for the suggestion dd.
I don’t know if I’d want to try to drive my panel above its native res (I guess that’s where your caveat comes in rotfl! ), but your suggestion got me thinking about panning the desktop … and then I thought, maybe if I just rotate the desktop … and presto! – one 90 degree rotation and the comic strip widget showed up on the next monitor to the right of the primary. I just killed it on sight. Have relaunched it and all is well again!

Cheers

5

Hilarious. Motto: think outside of the box :smiley:

6

On 11/14/2012 09:26 PM, Tyler K wrote:
> your suggestion got me thinking

GREAT! happy you found the solution!!

–
dd