I've just built KDE 4.14 from source on Opensuse 12.3 and everything appears to work fine. Apart from a couple of anomalies in the widow handling :

1. All programs, KDE or otherwise, appear with their windows sized vertically too big - they try to extend to the bottom of the screen rather than extending just to the top of the task bar. Where is the option to tell KWIn (or whatever) to automatically size all widows to fit between the available space. E.g on Konsole I can't see its tab bar, it is behind the KDE taskbar. I can manually resize each screen but this should be automatic. "Maximise" doesn't do it.

2. A few non-KDE programs such as Thunderbird display text of some features in really small font.Such as Thunderbird local folders and messages listing, tiny, whereas the actual messages are displayed at correct size. I have set all font sizes and types to the size I want in the KDE configuration screen and this works correctly apart from these few exceptions.

any help gratefully received.
Rod

Point 1 solved. I need to select both Panel settings -> More Settings -> "Always visible" AND " Windows can cover".

Point 2 still a problem with non-KDE programs e.g. right-click options text is really small..

ad 1) this is a multiscreen setup and the panel is on an inner edge?
-> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94470 (Strutting is not supported for such, this is a protocol bug - no component can fix that alone)

ad 2)
Thunderbird (and Firefox) use XUL on top of Gtk+ - they won't respect KDE settings, but you can adjust font sizes in the applications themself resp. by configuring gtk+
For the latter, there should be a ystemsettings module (you might have to explicitly install it) or you can use applications like "gtk-chtheme"

ad 2)
Thunderbird (and Firefox) use XUL on top of Gtk+ - they won't respect KDE settings, but you can adjust font sizes in the applications themself resp. by configuring gtk+
For the latter, there should be a ystemsettings module (you might have to explicitly install it) or you can use applications like "gtk-chtheme"

Thanks, problem does indeed seem to be with Thunderbird, not KDE.. I downloaded a Thunderbird add-on which allows me to explicitly specify the program fonts for menu, lists etc. Irritating : makes Linux look harder to use than Windows.
Question for experts : does this show that Mozilla has not worked closely enough with KDE ?