Building KDE-3.2.1 from Source---figured out how to get kcontrol ui to display proper options

[Jim Jensen]

The Appearances & Themes section of the kcontrol ui is populated by
<filename>.desktop items in /usr/share/applications/kde/, and whose
beginning text is like this: 

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Icon=ksplash
Exec=kcmshell ksplashthememgr
DocPath=ksplashml/themes.html

X-KDE-ModuleType=Library
X-KDE-Library=ksplashtmemes
X-KDE-FactoryName=ksplashthemes
X-KDE-ParentApp=kcontrol

Name=Splash Screen
...

and whose last line is like this:

Categories=Qt;KDE;X-KDE-settings-looknfeel

The last line immediately above tells kcontrol to display this option in
the "Appearances & Themes" section of the option list.

Now, the reason that only Splash Screen appears (initially after
building KDE-3.2.1 from source) in the Appearances & Themes section is
that file ksplashthememgr.desktop is the only file in
/usr/share/applications/kde/ that has the above properties.

There is a file colors.desktop (any others) that closely resemble the
format above.  The only difference I can find is that they contain a
line Type=Application among the first few lines.  Specifically,
colors.desktop begins like:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Exec=kcmshell colors
Icon=colorscm
Type=Application
DocPath=kcontrol/colors/index.html

...

and ends like:

Categories=Qt;KDE;X-KDE-settings-looknfeel

To get Colors to appear in the kcontrol ui section Appearances & Themes,
I deleted the line "Type=Application" and saved the file as
kcolors.desktop.  Magic!!  Now the kcontrol ui Appearances & Themes
section contains Colors and Splash Screen.

Why on earth all this doesn't happen automatically during build is a
mystery to me.  But it is clear that to get the kcontrol ui sections
populated correctly, some editing (removal of the Type=application line)
of .desktop files in /usr/share/applications/kde/, and saving as... is
needed.

This only took me about 4 hours to figure out :(

Regards

Jim Jensen






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