I've been an on-and-off again KDE user since the 1.x days, but left for Xfce when I first encountered KDE4. Now I'm running Fedora 18 on my laptop and am trying to subdue 4.10 to my liking. I really like several of the KDE apps, but not so much the desktop/workspace any more. I have a number of (potentially easily-answered?) questions and instead of starting X individual threads I figured I'd just ask them all at once here.

In systemsettings | Application Appearace | Colors, I can set text selection colors, some of the GUI colors, etc., but not much else. For example, how / where do I set the panel colors? What about other elements? Are they tied only to themes? (say it ain't so...).

Is there any way to prevent the labels of minimized windows (on the panel) from being greyed-out?

I know I can right-click on an Applications menu entry (Classic style) and add it to the panel, but it always goes to the far right end and can't be moved. The panel widgets are not locked but I've found no way to move it... ? Also, the two existing launchers on the panel toggle between an icon and a task button depending on whether they're running or not. I'd like to add what were called (IIRC) in previous KDE versions 'drawers' to the panel - Little pop up icon menus, not 'full' application launchers. I'd also like for the icons on the panel to be static and not toggle to buttons. Is that possible?

How do I truly remove an item from the notification area, not just hide it?

There's one remaining plasmoid on the desktop in the upper right corner labeled "Desktop". How do I remove it?

That's probably enough for now...

Thanks!

All elements of the workspace appearance are tied to the Plasma theme you are currently using. At one point the "Aya" theme did respect the system wide colours which applications used however - so you might want to try it out. Other system colour aware themes or ones more suitable to your taste can probably be found on kde-apps.org if the ones included are not suitable.

Unfortunately one cannot change the fading out of windows in the Task Manager. You might want to try one of the many other alternative task managers to see if it will offer this option though.

If you click the "Cashew" (right end of the panel) then the panel controller will open. At this point hovering over applets should allow you to move them around as necessary.

With regards to existing launchers, it seems like you want shortcuts to applications, rather than the "launchers" you have now. To remove the current launchers, simply right click them and uncheck the "Show a launcher when not running". Then go to the menu and re-add them as normal shortcuts.

For the 'drawer' you might find the 'Shelf' applet (part of Lancelot I think) to be a useful replacement here.

The upper-right corner "applet" is known as the Cashew and it cannot be removed - unless you use a hack such as the "IHateTheCashew" applet, which is not supported. The Cashew is necessary to allow configuring the desktop, and offers options not accessible elsewhere.

> All elements of the workspace appearance are tied to the Plasma theme you are currently using.

Just curious - Do you know the rationale behind excluding that kind of configurability? Wouldn't it be far more flexible if the user had total control over every UI element individually (and the ability to save their settings as a theme) instead of being subject to the whims of a given theme? Of course I'm sure that was a design decision made long ago, but it seems kinda rigid.


> If you click the "Cashew" (right end of the panel) then the panel controller will open.
> At this point hovering over applets should allow you to move them around as necessary.

Got it - Thanks! Is there a way to insert (vertical line) separators between groups of icons?


> With regards to existing launchers, it seems like you want shortcuts to applications, rather
> than the "launchers" you have now. To remove the current launchers, simply right click
> them and uncheck the "Show a launcher when not running". Then go to the menu and
> re-add them as normal shortcuts.

That works, but unfortunately there's no way to group them into a 'popup' configuration.


> For the 'drawer' you might find the 'Shelf' applet (part of Lancelot I think) to be a
> useful replacement here.

I had looked at Shelf a couple of days ago. I've so far been unable to find/add an application shortcut to it. If I right-click, go into the settings dialog and attempt to add something, all I get is a black popup menu (?) of some sort with icons down the left side. No captions nor descriptions are visible to the right of the icons and the moment I move the mouse (what I assume is) the 'selector' flies off to the upper left never to be seen again. I've tried adding one of each icon just to see what they represented, but none of them are application shortcuts. Besides, the resulting menu that pops up is hideously huge.

If I go to the K menu, right click a submenu and choose "Add to panel", it adds the [url]entire[/url] applications menu, not just that submenu, so that doesn't work either.


> The Cashew is necessary to allow configuring the desktop, and offers options
> not accessible elsewhere.

So, SystemSettings doesn't contain all configuration items?

Speaking of SystemSettings (seeing you're the maintainer), there's something I noticed the other day. I'm running KDE 4.10 and if I exit SystemSettings using the "X" close button, my application theme and font settings are not preserved. It reverts to Oxygen and the default fonts. However, if I use the exit toolbar button, they are preserved. In fact, I've seen them revert by simply opening SS and closing it via "X", without making any changes at all. I realize this thread isn't about SS, but I figured I'd mention it.

Thanks.

lphilpot wrote:> The Cashew is necessary to allow configuring the desktop, and offers options
> not accessible elsewhere.

So, SystemSettings doesn't contain all configuration items?

No. You will also find some workspace settings outside of System Settings (e.g. Unlock Widgets, Activity settings, desktop settings such as the wallpaper, etc.). Normally you can access them by right-clicking on the desktop, but it's possible to map the right-click to something else.

If you want to hide the cashew I recommend this widget: http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/?content=108460 (you can install it via Add Widgets -> Get New Widgets -> Download New Plasma Widgets). Another common trick is to drag it behind a panel. You can drag the cashew when your widgets are unlocked.

Just curious - Do you know the rationale behind excluding that kind of configurability? Wouldn't it be far more flexible if the user had total control over every UI element individually (and the ability to save their settings as a theme) instead of being subject to the whims of a given theme? Of course I'm sure that was a design decision made long ago, but it seems kinda rigid.

I can't recall an exact rationale, but from my understanding it was done in this way to ensure consistency among the desktop and other workspace applications, as well as allow for maximum flexibility using scalable formats (using SVG). This was aided by people being free to develop themes to suit their personal tastes (many are available on kde-apps.org for instance).

Got it - Thanks! Is there a way to insert (vertical line) separators between groups of icons?

Not sure if a vertical line is available, but you could try the spacer widget, which can be added on demand from the panel controller.

With regards to the shelf applet - I am not sure why that happens unfortunately.

If I go to the K menu, right click a submenu and choose "Add to panel", it adds the [url]entire[/url] applications menu, not just that submenu, so that doesn't work either.

Confirmed. I would guess that this is a regression / bug which crept in at some point. I'd recommend filing a bug here.

Speaking of SystemSettings (seeing you're the maintainer), there's something I noticed the other day. I'm running KDE 4.10 and if I exit SystemSettings using the "X" close button, my application theme and font settings are not preserved. It reverts to Oxygen and the default fonts. However, if I use the exit toolbar button, they are preserved. In fact, I've seen them revert by simply opening SS and closing it via "X", without making any changes at all. I realize this thread isn't about SS, but I figured I'd mention it.

That is certainly not expected behaviour - and I cannot think of a reason why that would happen. The System Settings shell application itself has no code to manipulate the colours and style in use. Just to be sure - you are not opening any control modules right? Also, are your colours / style preferences maintained across sessions? (ie. logout and login cycles).

bcooksley wrote:That is certainly not expected behaviour - and I cannot think of a reason why that would happen. The System Settings shell application itself has no code to manipulate the colours and style in use. Just to be sure - you are not opening any control modules right? Also, are your colours / style preferences maintained across sessions? (ie. logout and login cycles).

I can't say that I've nailed down all the specifics repeatedly, but I've seen more than once (several times) where I've launched SystemsSettings, changed nothing other than to just look around and closed it via "X", then had the font and app theme reset to Sans/Oxygen by itself. Since I've been using the toolbar button, it's not happened again.

Okay. I can't think of any reason why it would happen - as both methods ultimately invoke the some code to cause System Settings to exit.

Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Maybe there was something else at work (although I don't know what it could be), but I definitely saw the pattern more than once. However, I've not had time to specifically try to reproduce it again since then. I've also seen other times where some settings would revert to default - For example, when I switched from GDM to KDM, I was back to Oxygen at the next login despite not having changed it.

Anyway, no big deal now that I can work around it.

If you have any other questions about tweaking KDE functionality, please feel free to open further threads.