Kicker Hacks
KDE tips & tweaks
Kconfig XT is a framework for applications configuration data. It
centers around a group of XML files that contain information about
configuration options in a single location.
How does this affect end users?
In an application such as Kicker there are currently a wealth of
configuration options that aren’t revealed in the graphical
interface. The kcfg xml files can give us an insight into the
configuration options we can modify directly in the application’s rc
file.
Entries in kickerrc are aggregated into groups. Each of these groups represents
one of the sections in your kickerrc file, as delimited by headings.
Any options within the “menus” group in the xml file must be applied
directly under the [menus] heading in kickerrc.
Some of Kicker’s applets have their own rc files. One example of this
is the taskbar, which has it’s own ktaskbarrc. These seperate files
often have only a single top level group of settings.
0
This shows us the name of the entry, and it’s type. ‘Int’ stands for
integer, and the label gives us a further hint as to what values might
be accepted. The value represents the height of a menu entry’s icon in
pixels. If you wanted larger icons in your KMenu, you could set this
option in your kickerrc under the [menus] heading
MenuEntryHeight=22
Restart kicker with dcop kicker kicker restart and open the
KMenu. You’ll see the icons are now 22 pixels high.
These tweaks are taken from the current development version of kicker
in SVN trunk. Some of these hacks will work with KDE 3.4, but stay
tuned for KDE 3.5 for even more tweaking goodness.
Top Tweaks:
ktaskbarrc
[General]
MaximumButtonWidth
This option allows you to specify the maximum width of taskbar
buttons in pixels. The default is 200 pixels wide.
MinimumButtonHeight
This option allows you to specify the minimum height of
taskbar buttons in pixels. This can allow you to specify how many rows
of buttons you’d like on your taskbar. If kicker is 36 pixels
high, setting a minimum button height of 12 would then give
you three rows of taskbar buttons.
kickerrc
[menus]
ShowMenuTitles
This option allows you to configure whether the KMenu section
titles are shown. Setting this option to False will remove
the section heading titles. The default is ‘True’.
MenuEntryHeight
This option allows you to specify the height of menu entry
icons in pixels. The default is 16 pixels, also represented
as ‘0′. To disable icons entirely, set the value to -1.
[KMenu]
SidePixmapName
In the graphical configuration dialog, you can only enable or
disable the showing of the side pixmap. You can set the
filename that kicker uses for the side pixmap here. The
default filename is ‘kside.png’ Either specify a full path, or
copy the file to . You can also copy an
alternative file of the default name to this location to
change the side pixmap without setting this option.
SideTileName
This is the name of the file used as a tile to fill the height
of the K Menu that the SidePixmapName doesn’t cover. The
default is ‘kside_tile.png’. Either specify a full path, or
copy the file to `kde-config
–localprefix`/share/apps/kicker/pics/.
You can also copy an alternative file of the
default name to this location to change the side tile without
setting this option.
ShowText
This option controls whether the K Menu Button has a text
label displayed. The current default is ‘false’
Text
This option specifies the text to be displayed as a label on
the K Menu Button. The default is “Applications”, translated
into your language.
[buttons]
ShowMouseOverEffects
This option specifies whether mouse over
effects are enabled or disabled. The default is ‘True’
MouseOversShowIcon
This option specifies whether the mouse over effect displays
an icon in the tooltip. The default is ‘True’
MouseOversShowText
This option specifies whether the mouse over effect displays a
text label in the tooltip. The default is ‘True’. To acheive
an effect more like the previous KDE version’s icon zooming,
set this to false.
MouseOversSpeed
This option specifies the speed of the fade effect on the
tooltip, measured in thousanths of a second. The default is
500. Setting a value of 0 disables the fade effect and causes
the tooltip to appear immediately. This value cannot be less than 0.
MouseOversShowDelay
This option specifies the delay in milliseconds between
hovering the mouse over a panel icon and the effect being
displayed. The default is 250. This value cannot be less than 0.
MouseOversHideDelay
This option specifies the delay in miliseconds before the
mouse over effect is hidden. The default is 200. This value
cannot be less than 0.
IconMargin
This option specifies the margin between panel icons and the
panel border in pixels. The default is 3. Setting this to a
smaller value can give you larger button icons depending on
kicker height.
Resources: