Seems to resolve itself / is a by-product of the show desktop bug. Try the fix first.
You could always delete desktop plasma cache after you’ve made the upgrade then do the fix.
Hi wolfi323, that worked to solve the Show Desktop Icon problem. Thanks!
However, the problem with the panel resize markers disappearing persists even after the Show Desktop Bug fix is applied. My top panel is a partial length auto-hidden panel and the panel width markers do not appear when resizing the panel which makes it just about impossible to re-size the panel. Also, everytime that I log back in to my system then my top panel has been arbitrarily resized too small for the number of icons that I have added and so I have to attempt to enlarge the panel without seeing the panel resize markers. This happens every time that I logout/login and is very annoying.
I have deleted ~/.cache but the panel width markers remain invisible. Does anybody know how to fix this?
Thanks,
Gordon
So just to be clear. For a new panel you unlock widgets. Right click ‘Add Panel’ >> ‘Empty Panel’. Right click on the empty panel >> click ‘Panel Settings’ gives you NO Length (of panel) arrows at the very top and very bottom?? Or do you mean the ‘Width’ button (that adjusts panel height) doesn’t appear?
With the Show Desktop bug I saw the length arrows and I could move them, just, but I couldn’t centre, left or right them.
Hi David,
The width button is fine but the length arrows at either end of the panels have disappeared and are not visible. Do you have any suggestions on how to get the length arrorws back?
I want to sort this out and keep the Plasma 5 repo, however, if I am unable to get this fixed then I will have to revert back to KDE 5.5 and use the Leap repo for KDE since this problem is quite annoying.
Thanks,
Gordon
I haven’t seen that specific problem crop up anywhere, not even sure why it would apart from plasma corruption, so I don’t know, maybe Wolfi has bumped into it?
Well, the problem with the “Show Desktop” plasmoid is that it gets an infinite width (or height if in a vertical panel), which also resizes the panel to infinity.
I suppose that’s the problem why the arrows are missing in your case, i.e. they are there but are outside of the screen.
I would try to click on the panel’s “toolbox” icon (formerly known as “cashew”, the 3 bars on the right end of the panel), click on “More Settings” (the right-most button) and choose “Maximize Panel”. That should resize it to the screen’s width and make the arrows reappear I hope.
If that doesn’t help, you can also remove the panel and create a new one as david_banner wrote, that should fix it too.
You can choose “Default Panel” instead of “Empty Panel” though to not having to start from scratch… 
No, I haven’t experienced that either.
As mentioned in my previous post I can imagine it being caused by the “show desktop” plasmoid bug, maybe it depends on other factors (e.g. graphics driver, screen setup) as well though so not everybody sees it.
I’m encountering problems when my Thinkpad is connected to Dock (the Qt 5.5 multiple monitors problems), so I tried doing a distribution upgrade of Qt, without also including Plasma dist-upgrade, but that’s not allowed, various KDE packages have an equality dependency on Qt 5.5.1:
libKF5Declarative5
kwin5
frameworkintegration-plugin
kwayland
calibre
So is the Qt 5.6 API not backward compatible with the Qt 5.5 API, so these equality constraints are needed?
If I want the Qt 5.6 fixes for multiple monitors, do I also need to upgrade Plasma at the same time?
Do you plan to backport the Qt 5.6 multiple monitor fixes to Qt 5.5 in the main updates repo?
It is backward compatible, but it is not forward compatible.
I.e. software built with/for 5.6 might not work with 5.5.
But the things you mention use private Qt API, and this is allowed to change on a new feature version (5.5->5.6).
If I want the Qt 5.6 fixes for multiple monitors, do I also need to upgrade Plasma at the same time?
Yes.
Do you plan to backport the Qt 5.6 multiple monitor fixes to Qt 5.5 in the main updates repo?
I don’t think so. That’s probably not feasible.
I don’t know whether Qt 5.6 will be released as update for Leap 42.1 or not. Probably not in the short run in any case. (being a new major release, Qt 5.6.0 might also have some new bugs… One of them causes kcalc to freeze on start e.g., we added a workaround to the kcalc package in KDE:Applications though)
And there’s of course the problem that we’d need to update other things as well, though that was already the case with 5.5.1 too.
Leap 42.2 will definitely come with 5.6.x, though.
None of that worked. Maximizing existing panels, creating new panels, etc., all lacked the panel length arrows for resizing the panels. However, I found that if I deleted ~/.config then the default KDE configuration was back to normal with the panel length arrows displayed. I would have to rebuild my entire desktop after reverting to the default KDE settings but I may be willing to do that. However, after deleting ~/.config then I had no sound, so I have reverted back to my original ~/.config. Does anybody know how to recover sound after deleting ~/.config?
Thanks,
Gordon
By not deleting the corresponding files, or at least copying them from your old ~/.config/?
It’s probably ~/.config/pulse/ that’s needed to “recover” your sound.
Anyway, this sounds like a theme issue to me then.
What desktop theme are you using?
Instead of wiping out ~/.config/, try to switch just the desktop theme to “Breeze” (or “openSUSE”).
Deleting the plasma-* files in ~/.cache/ might help too, but shouldn’t be necessary.
And a related question would be if you can still resize the panel?
I suppose if that’s the problem, only the graphics are missing but the resize “buttons” are still there and functional.
Hi wolfi,
You nailed it! Its my theme. I’m using the Slim Glow theme and, when I change the theme to either Breeze or OpenSUSE, then the panel width arrow indicators reappear. So, problem solved!
Thanks very much!
Gordon
If in fact Qt 5.6 is now needed for the latest Plasma 5.6 then they should update the repositories page
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:KDE_repositories#KDE_Frameworks_5_.26_Plasma_5
Qt is omitted for Leap 42.1 on that page
It has been updated meanwhile.
The problem was that the complete Wiki was locked because of spam attacks, so nobody was able to update the page.
See http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-bugs/2016-03/msg03430.html
AFAIK that’s a KDE4 theme, so it might not fully support the latest Plasma5…
Hi Wolfi,
Yes, I think that you are right that the author has not updated the Slim Glow theme for Plasma 5. In fact, the last update was in 2012. Everything else in the Slim Glow theme works great with Plasma 5… But it is a bug. See:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=346858
FYI,
Gordon
Well, it is a bug insofar as apparently the Slim Glow theme doesn’t contain the graphics elements that Plasma5 (now) expects for those sliders.
IIANM there was a “bug” in Plasma that it used the wrong ones for those sliders and that got fixed at some point.
That fix probably “broke” the Slim Glow theme then in this regard, or put differently the theme only worked by mistake before.
FYI, a desktop theme only consists of SVG graphics files. So if you wanted to you could modify those files with inkscape or similar to fix the problem.
I cannot give you more details though as I never messed around with those themes myself. You could have a look at the “default” (breeze) theme though to see how it should be like.
Themes are located in /usr/share/plasma/desktoptheme/ and ~/.local/share/plasma/desktoptheme (the latter overrides the former for the corresponding user, so you can also replace certain files from the system-wide installed themes with your own version).
Hi Wolfi,
Thanks for that info! I may do that since, in that KDE bug, the theme’s auth[FONT=verdana]or, Ivan Čukić, says that he has known about the bug since May of last year. So, he apparently isn’t motivated to fix it. I’ve never gone theming with KDE so there may be a bit of a learning curve. Hopefully, I will have some spare time soon to look into that.
Thanks again,
Gordon
[/FONT]
[FONT=verdana]
[/FONT]Just in case, here’s some guidance about Plasma(5) theming:
https://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Plasma5/ThemeDetails
I have no idea how up-to-date that is though…
Thanks Wolfi.
I think that I found the exact section that needs fixing under “/containment-controls.svg”. The Slim Glow author has not responded to my private messages or posts at opendesktop.org or to my post on the aforementioned bug on bugs.kde.org so I’m guessing that he doesn’t have any interest in fixing the bug himself. The only problem is that I will not have time to devote to this for a few weeks. Nevertheless, I plan to delve into it sometimes later this month.
Thanks again!
Gordon