Separate activity for each desktop in 4.5?

[Reinhold Rumberger]

On Sunday 15 August 2010, Neil Winchurst wrote:
> On 15/08/10 14:24, Reinhold Rumberger wrote:
> > While I agree that this isn't a major feature, the underlying
> > design decision was stupid and short-sighted. Also, there are
> > some people around with rather bad eyesight for whom this
> > feature is rather crucial.
> > 
> >    --Reinhold
> 
> I have been following this thread with some interest. I still use
> an older version of KDE and I can have different backgrounds for
> each desktop. Now whether that is useful or not is not the point,
> to me at any rate.
> 
> It now seems to be something that is either not easy or not
> possible with the latest versions of KDE. To me the point is
> this. It was easily available in KDE 3*. Why was it not retained
> in version 4*?

If you read the bug thread Clay Weber linked to, you'll get a more 
complete picture, but here's my understanding:

There's essentially two layers to a KDE desktop. The one where all 
the dektop widgets an the background is stored, which can be changed 
by choosing a different activity and the one where the applications 
reside, which contains the different desktops.
In itself that is a pretty good idea, but it's missing at least one 
layer which would be desktop-specific and could contain desktop-
specific widgets and background images.

This current layering is the reason why different backgrounds for 
each desktop and desktop-specific widgets can't be implemented 
without some pretty ugly hacks.

  --Reinhold