The Problem:
I’m expecting that when setting Sort: Alphabetically in the Task Manager Settings that tasks would be sorted alphabetically by their display name. However, what I’m observing is that they are sorted alphabetically by their program name and then by creation order if they have the same program name.
The display name is never taken into account which is very confusing when specifying Sort: Alphabetically and nothing looks like it is in alphabetical order.
My Use Case:
I use PyCharm for all my python development needs and at work I manage 20+ separate code projects and I like to have most of these projects open so I can quickly switch between them. Because they are sorted in the order they were opened, it makes it very difficult to scan through the list of tasks to find the one I want. It would be far more convenient for me if they were actually sorted alphabetically so I could easily find the one I want.
Source of the Problem:
After doing a bit of searching I stumbled upon the following revision to the task manager’s sorting behaviour: https://github.com/KDE/plasma-workspace/commit/410086d06bf0b6195030fec5e9ac848cc50f50a7 (I’m no allowed to post an actual link but hopefully this is ok…)
Essentially the behavior was intentionally changed because the contributor thought it would be better for multi-windowed applications that frequently change window titles (e.g. web browsers) to have a stable order in the task manager.
While I agree that the behaviour is a desirable option for some applications, it would be nice to be able to configure it.
Simple Proposal:
- Create a new “Creation Time” option to represent the current behaviour
- Change the “Alphabetical” option to be true alphabetical sorting based on the display name
Robust Proposal:
Change the “Sort” setting from a single selection combo box into a list of sorting priorities with options like the following that you could combine:
- By desktop
- By activity
- By program name
- By display name
- By creation order
This will allow users much more control over the sorting behaviour. If I want the current “Alphabetically” behaviour I could specify the following Sorting priorities:
- By program name
- By creation order
So tasks would be sorted first by their program name and then if tasks have the same program name they would be sorted in the order they were created.
If I want true alphabetical sorting based on display name I could set it to:
- By display name