That makes sense to me. The current KCM is quite a programmer-centric method of organization ("we need a place to configure all the KWin effects") rather than a user-centric one where the effects are considered ordinary features like any other ones and grouped with their related features.

Looking through the KCM, this seems quite doable (UI-wise, no idea about implementation difficulty):

• The effects in the Accessibility section could move into the accessibility KCM
• The effects in the Focus section could move into the Window Behavior KCM's Focus tab
• The effects in the Tools section could move into the Compositor KCM
• The effects in the Virtual Desktop Switching animation section, plus "Desktop Cube" could move into the Virtual Desktops KCM
• The rest of the effects in the Window Management section could move into the Window Behavior KCM's Advanced tab
• Everything that's left in the Appearance and Window Open/Close animation sections could stay where they are, and then the KCM would contain only visual effects and no behavior effects, and could be renamed to "Visual Effects" and moved into the Appearance section in System settings

@davidedmundson does this sound like the kind of thing you had in mind the last time you proposed splitting out the non-visual effects?

I think so.

I'll write out my opinion in a super generic form, and you can tell me if it matches your thoughts.

In the current form, one chooses which plugins to enable, then afterwards chooses how to activate them.

IMHO the first step (desktops KCM) shouldn't exist. We should have UIs to choose what happens when you hit a corner or when you press a button. That should implicitly enable the relevant plugin.

Obviously that's much easier said than done, and there's a lot of details within that to figure out.

Yes, that matches my preference as well. Essentially we stop treating the effects as special things worthy of their own dedicated config ui and just treat them like any other feature you can enable, disable, or configure.