Flattened navigation with logically combined KCMs
#13 (closed) proposes to nest KCMs more deeply and expose a small number of high-level items as quick settings pages specific to their category, with all KCMs being accessed from within them.
I'd like to make a proposal that is sort of the opposite: we flatten the hierarchy completely and expose only top-level KCMs. To accomplish this without overwhelming users with too many top-level options, many KCMs would have their contents merged into others, or embedded as sub-pages of existing KCMs they are logically related to. Many top-level KCMs therefore become slightly higher-level in concept (e.g. the new "Colors & Themes" KCM, while others are moved up to make them more discoverable (e.g. the new "Mouse & Touchpad" KCM).
Legend
kcm1 [thing1, thing2] means "thing 1 and thing 2 are integrated into kcm1's main view"
kcm1 {thing1, thing2} means "thing 1 and thing2 are embedded into kcm1 as sub-pages"
Proposed organization
Input & Output - 5-8 items
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- Mouse & Touchpad [single/double-click setting and scrollbar clicking behavior from the General Behavior KCM] {Screen Edges} (auto-hides when no mice or touchpads are attached)
- Keyboard {Virtual Keyboard, Shortcuts}
- Touchscreen {Touchscreen Gestures} (auto-hides when no graphics tablets are attached)
- Graphics Tablet (auto-hides when no graphics tablets are attached)
- Game Controller (auto-hides when no game controllers are attached)
- Sound
- Display & Monitor {Gamma}
- Accessibility [Desktop Effects from the Accessibility category, Tooltip and OSD settings from the General Behavior KCM]
Connected Devices - 4-5 items
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- Bluetooth
- Disks & Cameras [Device Actions, Digital Cameras]
- Thunderbolt (auto-hides when the hardware has no Thunderbolt ports)
- KDE Connect
- Printers
Internet - 2 items
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- WiFi & Networking {Firewall, all the miscellaneous Connections KCMs}
- Online Accounts
Appearance & Style - 4 items
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- Wallpaper
- Colors & Themes [Global Themes, Accent color] {Colors, Night Color, Application Style's theme page, Plasma Style, Window Decorations, Icons, Cursors, Sound Theme, Splash Screen, SDDM, Boot Splash Screen}
- Text & Fonts {Font Management}
- Animations [Global animation speed slider, purely visual Desktop Effects, relevant things from Compositor KCM]
Apps & Windows - 4 items
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- Default Applications {File Associations}
- Notifications
- Window Management {Window Behavior, Task Switcher, Desktop Effects from the Window Management category, Application Style's titlebar buttons page, Window Rules, KWin Scripts, Virtual Desktops}
- Activities
Workspace - 3 items
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- General Behavior (to be deleted eventually)
- Search [Plasma Search {Web Shortcuts}, File Search]
Security & Privacy - 4 items
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- Screen Locking
- App Permissions [Flatpak Permission settings] {Legacy X11 App Support}
- KDE Wallet
- Recent Files
- User Feedback
Language & Time - 3 items
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- Language & Formats
- Spell Check
- Date & Time
System - 6 items
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- About
- Energy Saving {Advanced Power Saving}
- Software Update
- Users
- Autostart
- Session [the behavior part of SDDM] {Background Services, Locations}Status quo: 6 categories (one implicit with no header) with 28 top-level items and many child items inside them
Proposal: 9 categories with 35-39 top-level items in them and no children
Any KCMs not listed above are removed because their settings/functionality are merged into other more appropriate KCMs.
With this proposal, we would need to gain the ability to embed a KCM inside another one as a sub-page. Sub-page KCMs would still appear in search results, but not in the sidebar or icon view.