I've found some very vague references to editing ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc to get autohide to work w/plasma panel but no good information....does anyone know how to do this?

it has nothing to do with plasma-appletsrc, actually; it's all in plasmarc. and the feature is only in 4.2 (unless you're using recent 4.1 packages from a distro that backported those features; though those backports have some subtle bugs...)[hr]

m0loch wrote:I've found some very vague references to editing ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-appletsrc to get autohide to work w/plasma panel but no good information....does anyone know how to do this?

ah, also .. there's no need for config file hacking; just open the panel toolbox, click on More Settings, pick your hiding preferences.