Michael McBride
This documentation describes KDE's control center.
Table of Contents
- 1. The KDE Control Center
- 2. Using The KDE Control Center
- 3. The KControl Modules
- 4. Laptop Modules Notes
- 5. Modules
- File Associations
- File Manager
- Block Devices
- DMA Channel Information
- Device Information
- Input/Output Port Information
- Interrupt Request (IRQ) Lines in Use
- Memory Information
- Network Interfaces
- PCI-bus and Installed PCI Cards
- PCMCIA
- Partition Information
- Processor Information
- Protocols
- SCSI Interface Information
- Samba Status Information
- Soundcard Information
- USB
- X Server Information
- Background
- Colors
- Desktop
- Fonts
- Icons
- Launch Feedback
- Panel
- Screensaver
- Shortcuts
- Style
- Taskbar
- Theme Manager
- Window Behavior
- Window Decoration
- LAN Browsing
- Preferences
- SOCKS
- Talk Configuration
- Windows Shares
- Keyboard
- Mouse
- Not yet documented
- Accessibility
- Country and Language
- Encryption Configuration
- Konsole
- Passwords
- Session Manager
- Spell Checking
- The Battery Monitor Panel
- Energy
- Laptop Power Control
- Low Battery Critical
- The Low Battery Warning and Low Battery Critical Panels
- MIDI Configuration
- Mixer
- Sound Server
- System bell
- System Notification
- Alarm Daemon
- Date and Time
- Font Installer
- Login Manager
- The XML RPC Daemon
- Cache
- Cookies
- Enhanced Browsing
- Browsing With Konqueror
- Netscape Plugins
- Proxies
- Stylesheets
- User Agent
- 6. Credits and License
The KDE Control Center
The KDE Control Center (from now on referred to simply as ‘the control center’) provides you with a centralized and convenient way to configure all of your KDE settings.
The control center is made up of multiple modules. Each module is a separate application, but the control center organizes all of these programs into a convenient location.
Tip
Each control center module can be executed individually
See section entitled Running individual control center modules for more information.
The control center groups the configuration modules into categories, so they are easy to locate. Within each category, the control center shows all the modules in a list, so it is easier to find the right configuration module.
Using The KDE Control Center
This next section details the use of the control center itself. For information on individual modules, please see Control Center Modules
The KDE Control Center can be started 3 ways:
By selecting K Button->Control Center from the KDE Panel.
By pressing Alt+F2.
This will bring up a dialog box. Type kcontrol, and click Run.
You can type kcontrol & at any command prompt.
All three of these methods are equivalent, and produce the same result.
The KDE Control Center Screen
When you start the control center, you are presented with a window, which can be divided into 3 functional parts.
The KDE Control Center Screen
Across the top is a menubar. The menubar will provide you with quick access to most of KDE Control Center's features. The menus are detailed in The KDE Control Center Menus.
Along the left hand side, is a column. This is a where you choose which module to configure. You can learn how to navigate through the modules in the section called Navigating Modules.
The main panel shows you some system information.
In this example, we are running KDE 2.99, we started KDE Control Center as user adridg, the computer is named aramis, it is a FreeBSD system, Version 4.4-RELEASE, on a Pentium.
The KControl Menus
This next section gives you a brief description of what each menu item does.
These options determine how the module selection looks and behaves.
- View->Mode
Determines whether to use Tree view, or Icon view for your modules.
With Tree view, each submenu appears as an indented list.
With Icon view, when you click on a category, the categories disappear and are replaced with the module list. You then use the up button to return to the categories.
- View->Icon size
Using this option, you can choose Small, Medium, or Large icons to select your modules.
Note
This menu item only controls the icon size if you are in Icon View. If you choose Tree View, the Small icon size will be used, no matter what size was previously selected in Icon View.
The modules menu is a shortcut to take you directly to any module in the control center.
- Help->Contents... (F1)
Invokes the KDE Help system starting at the this application help pages. (this document).
- Help->What's This? (Shift+F1)
Changes the mouse cursor to a combination arrow and question mark. Clicking on items within this application will open a help window (if one exists for the particular item) explaining the item's function.
- Help->Report Bug...
Opens the Bug report dialog where you can report a bug or request a “wishlist” feature.
- Help->About this application
This will display version and author information.
- Help->About KDE
This displays the KDE version and other basic information.
Exiting The KDE Control Center
You can exit the control center one of three ways:
Select File->Quit from the menu bar.
Type Ctrl+Q on the keyboard.
Click on the Close button on the frame surrounding the control center.
Running Individual Modules
You can run individual modules without running kcontrol by selecting K Button->Preferences from the KDE panel. You can then select the module you want to run in the submenus.
The KControl Modules
In order to make it as easy as possible, the KControl has organized similar options into groups. Each group is called a module. When you click on the name of a module in the left window, you will be presented with the options of the module on the right.
Each module will have some or all of the following buttons:
- Help
This button will give you help specific to the current module. The button will show you a short summary help page in the left window. At the bottom of that window, you can click on a link to get more detailed help.
- Use Defaults
This button will restore this module to its default values. You must click OK to save the options.
- Apply
Clicking this button will save all changes to KDE. If you have changed anything, clicking Apply will cause the changes to take effect.
- Reset
This button will “Reset” the module. The exact effect will depend on the module.
Note
You must save the options of one module using Apply before you can change to a different module.
If you try to change without saving your options, you will be asked if you want to save your changes, or discard them.
This is a list of the standard configuration modules (sorted by category) provided by the KDE base package. Please note that there may be many more modules on your system if you have installed additional software.
- File Browsing
- Information
Block Devices, DMA-Channels, Devices, IO-Ports, Interrupts, Memory, Network Interfaces PCI, PCMCIA, Partitions, Processor, SCSI, Samba Status, Sound, USB Devices X-Server
- Look and Feel
Background, Colors, Desktop, Fonts, Icons, Key Bindings, Launch feedback, Panel, Screensaver, Style, System Notifications, Taskbar, Theme Manager, Window Behavior, Window Decoration.
- Network
E-Mail, LAN Browsing, Preferences, Protocols, SOCKS, Talk Configuration Windows Shares
- Peripherals
- Personalization
Accessibility, Country & Language, Crypto, Passwords Spell Checking.
- Power Control
Battery Monitor, Energy, Laptop Power Control, Low Battery Critical, Low Battery Warning
- Sound
- System
Date and Time, Konsole, Login Manager, Printing Manager, Session Manager,
- Web Browsing
Cookies, Enhanced Browsing, Konqueror Browser, Netscape Plugins, Proxies & Cache, Stylesheets, User Agent,
Laptop Modules Notes
In order to use the laptop modules, you must have the kernel APM package installed in your kernel. Useful information on how to do this can be found at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/apm.html and in the Battery Powered Linux mini-HOWTO at http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Battery-Powered.html.
If you want the suspend and standby menu commands to work then you should install the Linux® apmd package (version 2.4 or later). If you want to use them from non-root accounts you must mark the apm command ‘set uid root’.
To do this, log on as root and enter:
%chown root /usr/bin/apm;chmod +s /usr/bin/apm
Warning
By doing this you will allow any user of your system to put it into suspend or standby states - if you are the only user, this should not be a problem.
Also note that any program which has root access, can be a potential security problem. You should carefully determine if there are any security concerns before giving any program root permissions.
Modules
One of the most convenient aspects of KDE, is its ability to automatically match a data file, with its application. As an example, when you click on your favorite KWord document in Konqueror, KDE automatically starts KWord, and automatically loads that file into KWord so you can begin working on it.
In the example above, the KWord Data file, is associated with KWord (the application). These file associations are crucial to the functioning of KDE.
When KDE is installed, it automatically creates hundreds of file associations to many of the most common data types. These initial associations are based on the most commonly included software, and the most common user preferences.
Unfortunately, KDE can not:
predict every possible combination of software and data files
prepare for file formats not yet invented
or predict everyone's favorite application for certain file formats
You can change your current file associations or add new file associations using this module.
Each file association is recorded as a mime type. MIME stands for ‘Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions’. It allows a computer to determine the type of file, without opening and analyzing the format of each and every file.
The file associations are organized into several categories:
Application
Audio
Image
Inode
Message
Multipart
Print
Text
Video
All of the file associations are sorted into one of these categories.
There is also an overview category ‘All’, which displays all the file types in one list, without categorizing them.
Note
There is no functional difference between any of the categories. These categories are designed to help organize your file associations, but they do not alter the associations in any way.
The categories are listed in the box labeled Known Types.
You can explore each of these categories, and see the file associations contained within each one, by simply double clicking on the category name. You will be presented with a list of the associated mime-types under that category.
Tip
You can also search for a particular MIME type by using the search box. The search box is labeled Find filename pattern and is located above the category list.
Simply type the first letter of the MIME type you are interested in. The categories are automatically expanded, and only the mime-types that include that letter are displayed.
You can then enter a second character and the mime-types will be further limited to mime types containing those two characters.
If you want to add a new MIME type to your file associations, you can click on the Add... button. A small dialog box will appear. You select the category from the drop down box, and type the MIME name in the blank labeled Type name. Click OK to add the new mime type, or click Cancel to not add any new mime-types.
If you want to remove a MIME type, simply select the MIME type you want to delete by clicking once with the mouse on the MIME type name. Then click the button labeled Remove. The MIME type will be deleted immediately.
Before you can edit a MIME types property, you must first specify which MIME type. Simply browse through the categories until you find the MIME type you want to edit, then click once on it with the mouse.
As soon as you have selected the MIME type, the current values of the MIME type will appear in the module window.
You will notice the current values are split into two tabs: General and Embedding
- General
There are 4 properties for each MIME type in this tab:
Mime Type Icon is the icon that will be visible when using Konqueror as a file manager.
Filename Patterns is a search pattern which KDE will use to determine the MIME type.
Description is a short description of the file type. This is for your benefit only.
Application Preference Order determines which applications will be associated with the specified MIME type.
- Embedding Tab
The Embedding tab allows you to determine if an file will be viewed within a Konqueror window, or by starting the application.
To change the icon, simply click on the Icon button. A dialog box will appear, which will show you all available icons. Simply click once with the mouse on the icon of your choice, and click OK.
The box labeled Filename Patterns, determines what files will be included within this mime-type.
Usually, files are selected based on their suffix. (Examples: Files that end with .wav are sound files, using the WAV format and files that end in .c are program files written in C).
You should enter your filename mask in this combo box.
The asterisk (*) is a wildcard character that will be used with nearly every mime type mask. A complete discussion of wildcards is beyond the scope of this manual, but it is important to understand that the asterisk (in this context), “matches” any number of characters. As an example: *.pdf will match Datafile.pdf, Graphics.pdf and User.pdf, but not PDF, Datafile.PDF, or .pdf.
Tip
It is very beneficial to have multiple masks. One for lower case, one for upper case, etc. This will help ensure that KDE can determine the file type more accurately.
You can type a short description of the MIME type in the text box labeled Description. This label is to help you, it does not affect the function of the MIME type.
There are four buttons (Move Up, Move Down, Add and Remove) and a combo box (which lists the applications) which are used to configure the applications.
The combo box lists all of the applications associated with a specific MIME type. The list is in a specific order. The top application is the first application tried. The next application down the list is the second, etc.
Note
What do you mean there is more than one application per MIME type? Why is this necessary?
We started out by saying that KDE comes preconfigured with hundreds of file associations. The reality is, each system that KDE is installed on has a different selection of applications. By allowing multiple associations per MIME type, KDE can continue to operate when a certain application is not installed on the system.
As an example:
For the MIME type pdf, there are two applications associated with this file type. The first program is called PS Viewer. If your system does not have PS Viewer installed, then KDE automatically starts the second application Adobe Acrobat Reader. As you can see, this will help keep KDE running strong as you add and subtract applications.
We have established that the order is important. You can change the order of the applications by clicking once with the mouse on the application you want to move, and then clicking either Move Up or Move Down. This will shift the currently selected application up or down the list of applications.
You can add new applications to the list by clicking the button labeled Add. A dialog box will appear. Using the dialog box, you can select the application you want to use for this mime type. Click OK when you are done, and the application will be added to the current list.
You can remove an application (thereby ensuring that the application will never run with this MIME type by clicking once on the name of the application, and clicking the Remove button.
Tip
It is a good idea to use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to adjust the unwanted application to a lower position in the list, rather than deleting the application from the list entirely. Once you have deleted an application, if your preferred application should become compromised, there will not be an application to view the data document.
By clicking on the Embedding tab, you are presented with:
Three radio buttons labeled Left click action. This determines how Konqueror views the selected MIME type.
- Show file in embedded viewer
If this is selected, the file will be shown within the Konqueror window.
- Show file in separate viewer
This will cause a separate window to be created when showing this mime-type.
- Use group settings.
This will cause the mime-type to use the settings for the mime-type group. (if you are editing an audio mime type, then the settings for the audio group are used).
Below this, is a listbox labeled Services Preference Order
When you are in Konqueror, you can right mouse click, and a menu will with an entry labeled Preview with... will appear. This box lists the applications that will appear, in the order they will appear, under this menu.
You can use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to change the order.
When you are done making any changes to mime types, you can click Apply to make your changes permanent, but keep you in this module.
You can click OK to make your changes permanent and return you to the main screen of the control center.
You can click Cancel to abort any changes and return you to the main screen of the control center.
Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
File Manager
In this module, you can configure various aspects of Konqueror's file manager functionality.
Note
Konqueror's web browser functionality has its own configuration module.
The configuration options for the file manager are organized under tabs as follows:
- Behavior
This tab contains a couple of Konqueror global options
- Appearance
This tab contains options customizing the appearance of Konqueror windows, such as the default font text color.
- Trash
This tab contains options for customizing the default behavior of Konqueror when you “delete” a file.
- Previews
On this tab, you can customize when Konqueror should show previews.
- Open directories in separate windows
If this option is checked, a new Konqueror window will be created when you open a directory, rather than simply showing that directory's contents in the current window.
- Show network operations in a single window
If unchecked, and you download a file, a dialog box will appear that shows the status of the download.
Individual Download Dialog Box
If you start a new transfer, another dialog box will appear. (Netscape® users will be familiar with this behavior)
If checked, all transfer status windows will be grouped together under a single dialog box.
Collected Download Dialog Box
If you choose to use the Collected download dialog box, you can delete transfers by clicking once on the transfer you want to cancel, then clicking the Delete Button on the left.
- Show file tips
Here you can control if, when moving the mouse over a file, you want to see a small popup window with additional information about that file.
- Number of file tip entries
Here you can set how many items of information are displayed.
- Home URL
This is the URL (e.g. a directory or a web page) where Konqueror will jump to when the Home button is pressed.
The default is the users home directory, indicated with a ~.
- Minimize memory usage
This setting determines Konqueror's behavior when it comes to memory management. You can choose between the following options:
- Never
Disables the minimization of memory usage and allows you to make each browsing activity independent from the others.
Konqueror will make no attempts whatsoever to minimize it's use of memory. If you have a very large amount of RAM, this might make Konqueror faster. If you have insufficient RAM, it might make Konqueror run much slower, as more information is paged to disk.
- For local browsing only (recommended)
Konqueror will try to minimize memory usage when you are browsing local filesystems, including network drives.
- For web browsing only
Konqueror will only try to minimize memory usage when you are browsing the web.
- Always (use with care)
This setting is not recommended, and should only be used if you are very low on resources.
Note
A word on minimizing memory usage in Konqueror
With this option activated, only one instance of Konqueror will exist in the memory of your computer at any moment, no matter how many browsing windows you open, thus reducing resource requirements.
Be aware that this also means that, if something goes wrong, all your browsing windows will be closed simultaneously.
The following settings determine how text and colors are displayed in Konqueror File Manager mode windows.
- Standard Font
This is the font used to display text such as file names in Konqueror windows.
- Font Size
Lets you control the size of text, while the Standard Font setting determines the font face used.
- Normal Text Color
Determines the standard text color.
- Word-wrap icon text
When checked, long filenames will be wrapped onto multiple lines, rather than showing only the part of the filename that fits on a single line.
Tip
If you uncheck this option, you can still see word-wrapped filenames by pausing the mouse pointer over the icon.
- Underline filenames
When Underline filenames is checked, filenames will be underlined so that they look like links on a web page.
- Display filesizes in bytes
The final check box on this page determines how Konqueror displays file sizes, when you are in one of the file manager modes that normally shows this information. If you check the Display filesizes in bytes box, then file sizes are always shown in bytes. If you leave it unchecked, then file sizes are shown in bytes, kilobytes, and Megabytes, depending on their size.
The Ask confirmation for setting tells Konqueror what to do when you choose to “Delete”, “Trash”, or “Shred” a file in a Konqueror window. If any box is checked, Konqueror asks for confirmation before performing the corresponding action.
Konqueror has a preview feature for many file types, including HTML files, images, PostScript® and PDF, sound, web archives (if you have the appropriate Konqueror plugin installed) and text files.
if you enable previews for one of these, files of that particular file type will not be represented by standard icons in the filemanager, but will instead be shown as miniature previews. On slow computers, the previews can take some time to show up, so you might not want to enable this feature.
In this module you can specify which “protocols” you wish the previews to be available for. Creating the previews requires that Konqueror download at least part of the file, in order to create the preview. Konqueror, like the rest of KDE is entirely network transparent, and will treat a remote FTP directory just as if it was on your local hard drive. This can result in a delay, especially if you are viewing, for example, a directory full of images over a slow network connection.
For each protocol, you can independently enable or disable previews. For example, you might enable previews for NFS mounted drives if you have a fast network, but disable them for FTP because your internet connection is via a modem.
You can further refine the maximum size file that Konqueror will attempt to show a preview for. The default is 1 MB. In other words, by default, if a file is 900 kb in size, and the protocol you are viewing the directory with is enabled, then Konqueror will create a preview icon for it. If the file is 1.1 MB in size, Konqueror will not make a preview, even if the protocol is enabled.
You can turn on and off previews “on the fly” from within Konqueror. For example, if you normally want to see image previews on every protocol, but find a particular server is very slow to send you the data, you might turn it off for the present, and turn it on again later.
Block Devices
The module window displays the available file devices and some information about each device. It also allows you to control mount points, and mount/unmount devices.
Normally, the following pieces of information are shown in this tab:
an icon depicting the type of storage
file format
total size
mount point
free disk space
the percentage of space used as a number and as a graph.
Left clicking on the header of a particular column sorts the devices according to that variable. A second left click sorts in the opposite order.
Right clicking on a row pops up a menu. If that device is not currently mounted, the Mount device option is available. If the device is mounted, it can be unmounted by choosing Unmount device. Selecting Open filemanager opens a new window with a graphical view of the files on that device.
The appropriate mount and umount commands, and how the file manager is opened from the context menu, can be configured from the kdf application.
This section is modified from the kdf documentation which was authored by Jonathan Singer <jsinger@leeta.net>
Modified for KDE 2.0 by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
DMA Channel Information
This page displays information about the DMA (Direct Memory Access) Channels. A DMA channel is a direct connection that allows devices to transfer data to and from memory without going through the processor. Typically, i386-architecture systems (PC's) have eight DMA channels (0-7).
Note
The exact information displayed is system-dependent. On some systems, DMA Channel information cannot be displayed yet.
On Linux®, this information is read from /proc/dma, which is only available if the /proc pseudo-filesystem is compiled into the kernel.
A list of all currently-registered (ISA bus) DMA channels that are in use is shown. The first column shows the DMA channel, and the second column shows the device which uses that channel.
Unused DMA channels are not listed.
The user cannot modify any settings on this page.
Matthias Hölzer <hoelzer@kde.org>, Helge Deller <helge.deller@ruhruni-bochum.de>, Duncan Haldane <duncan@kde.org>,and Michael McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Device Information
This page displays information about the available devices,
Note
The exact information displayed is system-dependent. On some systems, device information cannot be displayed yet.
On Linux®, this information is read from /proc/devices and /proc/misc, which are only available if the /proc pseudo-filesystem is compiled into the kernel. Devices are listed by group (Character, Block, or Miscellaneous). The device major number is listed, followed by an identifying label.
The user cannot modify any settings on this page.
Matthias Hölzer <hoelzer@kde.org>, Helge Deller <helge.deller@ruhruni-bochum.de>, Duncan Haldane <duncan@kde.org>,and Michael McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Input/Output Port Information
This page displays information about the I/O ports.
I/O Ports are memory addresses used by the processor for direct communication with a device that has sent an interrupt signal to the processor.
The exchange of commands or data between the processor and the device takes place through the I/O port address of the device, which is a hexadecimal number. No two devices can share the same I/O port. Many devices use multiple I/O port addresses, which are expressed as a range of hexadecimal numbers.
Note
The exact information displayed is system-dependent. On some systems, I/O port information can not yet be displayed.
On Linux®, this information is read from /proc/ioports which is only available if the /proc pseudo-filesystem is compiled into the kernel. A list of all currently-registered I/O port regions that are in use is shown.
The first column is the I/O port (or the range of I/O ports), the second column identifies the device that uses these I/O ports.
The user cannot modify any settings on this page.
Matthias Hölzer <hoelzer@kde.org>, Helge Deller <helge.deller@ruhruni-bochum.de>, Duncan Haldane <duncan@kde.org>,and Michael McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Interrupt Request (IRQ) Lines in Use
Matthias Hölzer
Helge Deller
Duncan Haldane
Mike McBride
This page displays information about the Interrupt Request Lines in use, and the devices that use them.
An IRQ is a hardware line used in a PC by (ISA bus) devices like keyboards, modems, sound cards, etc., to send interrupt signals to the processor to tell it that the device is ready to send or accept data. Unfortunately, there are only sixteen IRQ's (0-15) available in the i386 (PC) architecture for sharing among the various ISA devices.
Many hardware problems are the result of IRQ conflicts, when two devices try to use the same IRQ, or software is misconfigured to use a different IRQ from the one a device is actually configured for.
Note
The exact information displayed is system-dependent. On some systems, IRQ information cannot be displayed yet.
On Linux, this information is read from /proc/interrupts, which is only available if the /proc pseudo-filesystem is compiled into the kernel.
The first column, is the IRQ number. The second column, is the number of interrupts that have been received since the last reboot. The third column shows the type of interrupt. The fourth, identifies the device assigned to that interrupt.
The user cannot modify any settings on this page.
Matthias Hölzer <hoelzer@kde.org>, Helge Deller <helge.deller@ruhruni-bochum.de>, Duncan Haldane <duncan@kde.org>,and Michael McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Memory Information
This module displays the current memory usage. It is updated constantly, and can be very useful for pinpointing bottlenecks when certain applications are executed.
The first thing you must understand, is there are two types of ‘memory’, available to the operating system and the programs that run within it.
The first type, is called physical memory. This is the memory located within the memory chips, within your computer. This is the RAM (for Random Acess Memory) you bought when you purchased your computer.
The second type of memory, is called virtual or swap memory. This block of memory, is actually space on the hard drive. The operating system reserves a space on the hard drive for ‘swap space’. The operating system can use this virtual memory (or swap space), if it runs out of physical memory. The reason this is called ‘swap’ memory, is the operating system takes some data that it doesn't think you will want for a while, and saves that to disk in this reserved space. The operating system then loads the new data you need right now. It has ‘swapped’ the not needed data, for the data you need right now. Virtual or swap memory is not as fast as physical memory, so operating systems try to keep data (especially often used data), in the physical memory.
The total memory, is the combined total of physical memory and virtual memory.
This window is divided into a top and bottom section
The top section shows you the total physical memory, total free physical memory, shared memory, and buffered memory.
All four values are represented as the total number of bytes, and as the number of megabytes (1 megabyte = slightly more than 1,000,000 bytes)
The bottom section shows you three graphs:
Total memory (this is the combination of physical and virtual memory).
Physical Memory.
Virtual (or swap) memory.
The green areas are free, and the red areas are used.
Tip
The exact values of each type of memory are not critical, and they change regularly. When you evaluate this page, look at trends.
Does your computer have plenty of free space (green areas)? If not, you can increase the swap size or increase the physical memory.
Also, if your computer seems sluggish: Is your physical memory full, and is the hard drive always seem to be running? This suggests that you do not have enough physical memory, and your computer is relying on the slower virtual memory for commonly used data. Increasing your physical memory will improve the responsivness of your computer.
Michael McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Network Interfaces
This page displays information about the network interfaces installed in your computer.
Note
The exact information displayed is system-dependent. On some systems, this information can not yet be displayed.
The user cannot modify any settings on this page.
This section is modified from the kdf documentation which was authored by Jonathan Singer <jsinger@leeta.net>
Modified for KDE 2.0 by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
PCI-bus and Installed PCI Cards
Matthias Hölzer
Helge Deller
Duncan Haldane
Mike McBride
This page displays information about the PCI-bus and installed PCI cards, and other devices that use the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus.
Note
The exact information displayed is system-dependent. On some systems, PCI-information can not yet be displayed.
On Linux®, this information is read from /proc/pci which is only available if the /proc pseudo-filesystem is compiled into the kernel. A listing of all PCI devices found during kernel initialization, and their configuration, is shown.
Each entry begins with a bus, device and function number.
The user cannot modify any settings on this page.
Matthias Hölzer <hoelzer@kde.org>, Helge Deller <helge.deller@ruhruni-bochum.de>, Duncan Haldane <duncan@kde.org>,and Michael McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
PCMCIA
This module displays information about PCMCIA Cards
The exact information is system dependent. On most systems no information is displayed at all.
This section written by Paul Campbell <paul@taniwha.com>
Partition Information
This page displays information about partitions on your hard drives.
Note
The exact information displayed is system-dependent. On some systems, partition information cannot be displayed yet.
On Linux®, this information is read from /proc/partitions, which is only available if the /proc pseudo-filesystem is compiled into the (2.1.x or later) kernel.
The first two columns are the major and minor numbers respectively. The third column is the number of blocks (usually 1 block = 1024 bytes). The fourth column is a label for the device.
The user cannot modify any settings on this page.
Matthias Hölzer <hoelzer@kde.org>, Helge Deller <helge.deller@ruhruni-bochum.de>, Duncan Haldane <duncan@kde.org>,and Michael McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Processor Information
This page displays information about the system Central Processing Unit (CPU).
Note
The exact information displayed is system-dependent. On some systems, processor information cannot be displayed yet.
On Linux®, this information is read from /proc/cpuinfo, which is only available if the /proc pseudo-filesystem is compiled into the kernel.
The exact contents of the window will depend on the CPU(s) in your machine, but the window is organized into two columns. The first column is the parameter, and the second column is the value of that parameter.
The user cannot modify any settings on this page.
Matthias Hölzer <hoelzer@kde.org>, Helge Deller <helge.deller@ruhruni-bochum.de>, Duncan Haldane <duncan@kde.org>,and Michael McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Protocols
On the left of the panel you will see a list of the IOSlaves that are installed on your system. IOSlaves are how KDE applications “talk” to other computers, other applications, or act on files.
Clicking on an IOSlave name will display some help information about that IOSlave, such as how to use it, and what it does.
The protocols module is purely informational, you cannot change any settings here.
This section written by: Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>
SCSI Interface Information
This page displays information about Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) Interfaces and the attached SCSI devices.
Note
The exact information displayed is system-dependent. On some systems SCSI information cannot be displayed yet.
On Linux®, this information is read from /proc/scsi/scsi, which is only available if the /proc pseudo-filesystem is compiled into the kernel. A listing of all SCSI devices known to the kernel is shown.
The devices are sorted numerically by their host, channel, and ID numbers.
The user cannot modify any settings on this page.
Matthias Hölzer <hoelzer@kde.org>, Helge Deller <helge.deller@ruhruni-bochum.de>, Duncan Haldane <duncan@kde.org>,and Michael McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Samba Status Information
The Samba and NFS Status Monitor is a front end to the programs smbstatus and showmount. Smbstatus reports on current Samba connections, and is part of the suite of Samba tools, which implements the SMB (Session Message Block) protocol, also called the NetBIOS or LanManager protocol.
This protocol can be used to provide printer sharing or drive sharing services on a network including machines running the various flavors of Microsoft® Windows®.
showmount is part of the NFS software package. NFS stands for Network File System and is the traditional UNIX® way to share directories over the network. In this case the output of showmount -a localhost is parsed. On some systems showmount is in /usr/sbin, check if you have showmount in your PATH.
On this page you can see a big list which shows the currently active connections to Samba shares and NFS exports of your machine. The first column shows you whether the resource is a Samba (SMB) share or a NFS export. The second column contains the name of the share, the third the name of the remote host, which accesses this share. The remaining columns have only a meaning for Samba-shares.
The fourth column contains the User ID of the user, who accesses this share. Note that this does not have to be equal to the UNIX® user ID of this user. The same applies for the next column, which displays the group ID of the user.
Each connection to one of your shares is handled by a single process (smbd), the next column shows the process ID (pid) of this smbd. If you kill this process the connected user will be disconnected. If the remote user works from Windows®, as soon as this process is killed a new one will be created, so he will almost not notice it.
The last column shows how many files this user has currently open. Here you see only, how many files he has open just now, you don't see how many he copied or formerly opened etc.
Here you see which Samba- and NFS-shares from other hosts are mounted on your local system. The first column shows wether it is a Samba- or NFS-share, the second column displays the name of the share, and the third shows where it is mounted.
The mounted NFS-shares you should see on Linux® (this has been tested), and it should also work on Solaris™ (this has not been tested).
This page presents the contents of your local samba log file in a nice way. If you open this page, the list will be empty. You have to press the Update button, then the samba log file will be read and the results displayed. Check whether the samba log file on your system is really at the location as specified in the input line. If it is somewhere else or if it has another name, correct it. After changing the file name you have to press Update again.
Samba logs its actions according to the log level (see smb.conf). If loglevel = 1, samba logs only when somebody connects to your machine and when this connection is closed again. If log level = 2, it logs also if somebody opens a file and if he closes the file again. If the log level is higher than 2, yet more stuff is logged.
If you are interested in who accesses your machine, and which files are accessed, you should set the log level to 2 and regularly create a new samba log file (e.g. set up a cron task which once a week moves your current samba log file into another directory or something like that). Otherwise your samba log file may become very big.
With the four checkboxes below the big list you can decide, which events are displayed in the list. You have to press Update to see the results. If the log level of your samba is too low, you won't see everything.
By clicking on the header of one column you can sort the list by this column.
On this page you can filter the contents of the third page for certain contents.
Let's say the Event field (not the one in the list) is set to Connection, Service/File is set to *, Host/User is set to *, Show expanded service info is disabled and Show expanded host info is disabled.
If you press Update now, you will see how often a connection was opened to share * (i.e. to any share) from host * (i.e. from any host). Now enable Show expanded host info and press Update again. Now you will see for every host which matches the wildcard *, how many connections were opened by him.
Now press clear.
Now set the Event field to File Access and enable Show expanded service info and press Update again.
Now you will see how often every single file was accessed. If you enable Show expanded host info too, you will see how often every single user opened each file.
In the input lines Service/File and Host/User you can use the wildcards * and ? in the same way you use them at the command line. Regular expressions are not recognized.
By clicking on the header of a column you can sort the list by this column. This way you can check out which file was opened most often, or which user opened the most files or whatever.
Module copyright 2000: Michael Glauche and A. Neundorf <alexander.neundorf@rz.tu-ilmenau.de>
Originally written by: Michael Glauche
Currently maintained by: A. Neundorf <alexander.neundorf@rz.tu-ilmenau.de>
Contributors
Conversion to kcontrol applet:
Matthias Hoelzer <hoelzer@physik.uni-wurzburg.de>
Use of KProcess instead of popen, and more error checking:
David Faure <David.Faure@insa-lyon.fr>
Conversion to kcmodule, added tab pages 2,3,4, bug fixed:
Alexander Neundorf <alexander.neundorf@rz.tu-ilmenau.de>
Documentation copyright 2000 Alexander Neundorf <alexander.neundorf@rz.tu-ilmenau.de>
Documentation translated to docbook by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Soundcard Information
This page displays information about any soundcards installed in the system.
Note
The exact information displayed is system-dependent. On some systems, soundcard information cannot be displayed yet.
On Linux®, this information is read either from /dev/sndstat, if present, or from /proc/sound, which is only available if the /proc pseudo-filesystem is compiled into the (2.1.x or later) kernel.
The user cannot modify any settings on this page.
Matthias Hölzer <hoelzer@kde.org>, Helge Deller <helge.deller@ruhruni-bochum.de>, Duncan Haldane <duncan@kde.org>,and Michael McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
USB
This module allows you to see the devices attached to your USB bus(es).
This module is for information only, you cannot edit any information you see here.
X Server Information
This screen is useful for getting specific information about your X server and the current session of X.
When you open this module, you are presented with some information. The left hand side of the window is organized into a tree. Some of the elements have a plus sign in front of the label. Clicking this sign opens a “submenu” related to the label. Clicking on a minus sign in front of a label hides the submenu.
The right hand side of the window contains the individual values for each of the parameters on the left.
The information presented will vary depending on your setup.
Note
Some setups may not be able to determine some or all of the parameters.
You can not change any values from this menu. It is for information only.
Michael McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Background
The Background module allows you to configure colors or wallpapers for your desktop background.
It is comprised of three areas:
Desktop selection and Name area.
The background Preview Monitor
An area for determining the background
- Desktop
The area labeled Desktop, lists the currently configured desktops identified by their names.
To configure the background for a desktop, start by clicking on the desktops name.
If you wish to configure all your desktop backgrounds the same, select the checkbox labeled Common Background.
Tip
If you want to change the names of your desktop, you can do that in another module. See Desktop: Number of Desktops for more details.
- Preview Monitor
This is a preview window. It will give you a sense of what to expect with each change.
The display background can be filled: with a single color, with a single color with a pattern over it, by any external program of your choice, or with one of several color gradients.
The area at the bottom is for determining the background contents. It is divided into three tabs.
- Background
This tab, allows you to fill the screen with color.
You should first select the appropriate choice in the drop down box labeled Mode. Your options are:
- Flat
By choosing this mode, you select one color (using the color button labeled Color 1), and the entire background is covered with this one color.
- Pattern
By choosing this mode, you select two colors (using both color buttons).
You then select a pattern by clicking Setup. This opens a new dialog window, which gives you the opportunity to Select a pattern. Simply click once on the pattern of your choice, then click on OK, and KDE will render the pattern you selected using the two colors you selected. For more on patterns, see the section Adding, Removing and Modifying Patterns.
- Background Program
By selecting this option, you can have KDE use an external program to determine the background. This can be any program of your choosing. For more information on this option, see the section entitled Using an external program.
- Horizontal Gradient
By choosing this mode, you select two colors (using both color buttons). KDE will then start with the color selected by Color 1 on the left edge of the screen, and slowly transform into the color selected by Color 2 by the time it gets to the right edge of the screen.
- Vertical Gradient
By choosing this mode, you select two colors (using both color buttons). KDE will then start with the color selected by Color 1 on the top edge of the screen, and slowly transform into the color selected by Color 2 as it moves to the bottom of the screen.
- Pyramid Gradient
By choosing this mode, you select two colors (using both color buttons). KDE will then start with the color selected by Color 1 in each corner of the screen, and slowly transform into the color selected by Color 2 as it moves to the center of the screen.
- Pipecross Gradient
By choosing this mode, you select two colors (using both color buttons). KDE will then start with the color selected by Color 1 in each corner of the screen, and slowly transform into the color selected by Color 2 as it moves to the center of the screen. The “shape” of this gradient is different then the pyramid gradient.
- Elliptic Gradient
By choosing this mode, you select two colors (using both color buttons). KDE will then start with the color selected by Color 2 in the center of the screen, and slowly transform into the color selected by Color 1 as it moves to the edges, in an elliptical pattern.
- Wallpaper
This tab, allows you to load a wallpaper on top of the color gradient.
The wallpaper is an image displayed in the background of your display.
Before you select your wallpaper, you should choose between Single Wallpaper and Multiple Wallpapers. If you choose No Wallpaper then only the background color(s) are displayed.
You should choose one of the modes from the drop down box labeled Mode. Your choices are:
- Centered
The image will be centered on the screen without changing the size of the image. The background colors will be present anywhere the image does not cover.
- Tiled
The image will be duplicated until it fills the entire desktop. The first image will be placed in the upper left corner of the screen, and duplicated downward and to the right.
- Center Tiled
The image will be duplicated until it fills the entire desktop. The first image will be placed in the center of the screen, and duplicated upward, downward to the right, and to the left.
- Centered Maxpect
The image will be placed in the center of the screen. It will be scaled to fit the desktop, but it will not change the aspect ratio of the original image. This will provide you with an image that is not distorted.
- Tiled Maxpect
The image will be placed in the corner of the screen. It will be scaled to fit the desktop, but it will not change the aspect ratio of the original image. This will provide you with an image that is not distorted. If there is any space over, the image will be duplicated to fill it.
- Scaled
The image will be scaled to fit the desktop. It will be stretched to fit to all four corners.
Note
If you have selected No Wallpaper selected, you will not be able to choose a wallpaper.
Simply change to any other mode. You will now be able to select a wallpaper.
To select a wallpaper, you may either select the wallpaper from the drop down list labeled Wallpaper, or by clicking on the Browse button.
Tip
Displaying wallpaper requires that the image be kept in memory. If you are low on memory, using a small, tiled image or none at all is recommended.
Scaling or centering a small image still requires an image the size of your display to be maintained in memory.
You may also select Multiple which causes a sequence of backgrounds to be displayed. The sequence can be either random, or in a specific order.
You select this, by placing a mark in the checkbox labeled Multiple. You then click Setup. For more on this, read the section entitled Sequential Backgrounds.
The third tab, Advanced, contains the options to make a smooth transition (blend) from the wallpaper as it changes to the background.
The blending area consists of three elements:
A drop-down box, which allows you to select the blending mode. Many of the modes are similar to blending modes for background colors. Select your mode from the list, and the preview window shows you what it will look like.
Balance slider. This adjusts the blending. The results can be seen in the preview window.
Limit pixmap cache. This check box, when selected, allows you to determine how much maximum memory KDE will use to store pixmap info. The default is usually the best choice.
Clicking Apply, changes the actual desktop backgrounds and makes the change permanent.
A pattern, is a picture file, which KDE uses as a template to draw your background. The picture file provides the shapes, but KDE provides the colors. KDE 2.2 is packaged with several patterns, but you can add new patterns.
You use a pattern by first selecting Pattern, from the Mode drop down box in the Background section.
Then you click Setup.
This opens a dialog box. The dialog box consists of a list of all current patterns, and three buttons: Add, Remove, and Modify.
In front of some of the pattern names, is a small globe. This signifies that this is a system wide (or global) pattern, and is available to everyone. Those patterns without a picture, are user patterns, and not available to other users.
To use a pattern that is already on the list, simply click once on the pattern, then click on OK.
Adding a pattern to the list
If you click on the Add button, yet another dialog box appears, with three blanks:
A text entry line labeled Name. This will be the descriptive name of the newly created pattern.
A text entry line labeled Comment. This is a descriptive comment. It is also a good place to enter the artist, date of creation, etc.
A text entry line labeled Image, and a Browse button next to it. Either by entering the filename directly into the text entry line, or by browsing through the button labeled Browse, you need to locate for KDE an image file to use in the pattern. These image files are usually JPEG files.
Once you have selected a file, you can press OK to create the new pattern based on the information you have edited, or click Cancel, to stop without creating a new pattern.
You should now see your new pattern in the list.
To remove a pattern from the list, simply click on the name of the pattern once, and click Remove. KDE will verify that you do want to delete this pattern. Simply Click Yes. Clicking No will not remove the pattern from the list.
Tip
Deleting a pattern does not delete the image file associated with the pattern.
Note
If you did not create the pattern, you cannot remove the pattern from the system. Only the system administrator can remove global patterns.
To modify a pattern, simply click on the pattern name and then click on Modify. You will now have a chance to change any parameters of the pattern. Click OK to save your changes, or click Cancel to ignore your changes
To use an external program to determine and change the background of KDE, simply select Background Program. To configure this option, then click Setup.
This will bring up a dialog box, which will let you add in one or more programs, determine their options, set their refresh times, etc.
Using external programs to modify or change the background is beyond the scope of this document.
KDE can automatically change wallpapers on your system at a specified time. You give it the list of image files, and it can either change them in a predetermined order, or randomly.
To have KDE automatically change your wallpaper, first you must set the layout of the wallpaper in the drop down box labeled Mode. Then select the Multiple Wallpapers option. The Setup Multiple ... Button will become active. Click it once.
This will bring up a dialog box.
First, set the time between changes in the spin box labeled Interval. You can select from common values, or enter your own. The range of values is from once every 5 minutes to once every 240 minutes.
Now, use the drop down box labeled mode to determine if the backgrounds should be chosen randomly, or displayed in the order listed below.
Once this is done, you can now create a list of backgrounds for KDE to choose from. Use the Add and Remove buttons to alter the list to your satisfaction.
Click OK to accept your changes, or Cancel to leave without making any changes permanent.
Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>, Mark Donohoe, Martin Jones <mjones@kde.org>, Duncan H.
Colors
The Color Selection module is comprised of 4 sections:
Note
A Widget is a commonly-used programmer's term for referring to User Interface elements such as buttons, menus, and scroll bars. You can think of them as the fundamental pieces that are assembled to make your application.
This section of the dialog demonstrates how a color scheme applies to a sample selection of widgets. It provides you with a preview of your current color choices.
A color scheme consists of a set of 18 colors.
Each of the widgets is labled to help you identify how your changes will impact the color scheme.
The currently selected member of the color scheme is shown in the combo box. This widget color can be changed by clicking on the colored box below the combo box. A color selection dialog will then appear, from which you may select a new color. When you are happy with your color selection, press Ok in the color selection dialog. The color will be updated in the Preview Area.
You may select any member of the color scheme from the color combination box.
The Contrast slider allows you to change the contrast bewteen different shadings of the selected colors.
The Preview area instantly updates to show the effect of your change.
Various color schemes are supplied with KDE. These include:
| KDE default, |
| Atlas green |
| BeOS, |
| Blue slate, |
| CDE |
| Dark Blue, |
| Desert red, |
| Digital CDE, |
| Pale gray, |
| Pumpkin, |
| Solaris CDE, |
| Storm, |
| Redmond, |
| System, |
| Next, |
| Point Reyes Green, |
| Media Peach |
| EveX |
| and KDE 1. |
To preview a scheme click on its name in the list box.
You can use the KDE-supplied Color Schemes as a starting point to devise your own Scheme. Click on the Add button to store the color scheme under a new name, then modify it.
When such a user-created Color Scheme is selected, changes to it (as shown in the Preview) can be saved with the Save Changes button; it can also be deleted with the Remove button.
Note
The KDE-supplied Schemes themselves cannot be changed or deleted.
This section written by Mark Donohoe and Martin Jones.
Updated for KDE 2.0 by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Desktop
This module is used to change some of the most commonly needed options for the KDE desktop.
This module has several tabs, labeled: Desktop, Appearance and Number of Desktops and Paths.
In this section, you can see several options on the left:
- Enable Desktop Menu
This option determines whether there is a menu across the top of the KDE Desktop in the style of the Mac® OS.
- Enable Icons on Desktop
Uncheck this option if you do not want to have icons on the desktop. Without icons the desktop will be somewhat faster, but you will no longer be able to drag files to the desktop.
This will not remove any files already stored on the desktop, they will instead be hidden.
- Align Icons Vertically on Desktop
If this option is enabled, KDE will place all of the icons in columns along the left side of the screen whenever you select Arrange Icons from the Desktop Menu. If this option is disabled, then KDE will place all icons in a row along the top of the screen.
- Show Hidden Files on Desktop
If this option is enabled, then all hidden files will appear on the desktop. Generally this only clutters your desktop area, but if you are often working with hidden files or directories, this can be useful.
Warning
Be very careful when deleting or modifying hidden files. Many of these files are configuration files and are essential for the correct operation of your computer.
- Programs in Desktop Window
Enabling this option allows you to set a program as your desktop background, for example xearth, or KWorldClock
To the right of these options you can see a list titled Show Previews for. The KDE desktop has a preview feature for many file types, including HTML files, images, PostScript® and PDF, sound, web archives (if you have the appropriate Konqueror plugin installed) and text files.
if you enable previews for one of these, files of that particular file type will not be represented by standard icons on the desktop, but will instead be shown as miniature previews. On slow computers, the previews can take some time to show up, so you might not want to enable this feature.
The mouse button section allows you to determine what happens when you click one of the three mouse buttons on the Desktop (where there is no window).
Note
Not all mice have three buttons. Two button mice can usually activate the Middle button by pressing both the Left and Right mouse buttons at the same time.
For each of the three mouse buttons, you can select:
- No Action
When you use this mouse button, nothing happens.
- Window list menu
This brings up a submenu with all the virtual desktops. Under each virtual desktop, you can select any window currently located on that desktop. Once selected, KDE will switch to that desktop, and place the focus on that window.
- Desktop Menu.
This brings up a submenu with commands specific to KDE. You can create icons, edit bookmarks, cut and paste, get help, run commands, configure KDE, arrange icons, lock the screen and log out of KDE. The exact content of the menu varies depending on the current status of KDE.
- Application Menu
This brings up the Application Menus (also know as the K Menus), so you can start a new application.
Here you can configure how icons on your desktop appear.
- Standard Font
This option can be used to change the typeface used on the desktop. Simply select your typeface from the dropdown box.
- Font Size
You can change the relative size of the text on the Desktop.
- Normal Text Color
This option lets you select the color of normal (or unhighlighted) text.
- Text Background Color
This option lets you select the background color of normal text. If left unchecked, the text has a transparent background.
- Underline filenames
Determines if file names are underlined on the Desktop.
KDE offers you the possibility to have several virtual desktops. In this tab you can configure the number of desktops as well as their names. Just use the slider to adjust the number of desktops. You can assign names to the desktops by entering text into the text fields below.
You can use this section to configure where Desktop files, Trash files, and Autostart files are stored on your computer as well as the standard path for documents. By changing the values in the first three of these paths, you will automatically move the files from their previous to their new location.
Warning
If you are reading this, you probably shouldn't be changing the paths. You can render your system almost unusable if incorrect values are entered here.
Fonts
This module is designed to allow you to easily select different fonts for different parts of the KDE Desktop.
The panel consists of different font groups to give you a lot of flexibility in configuring your fonts:
General (Used everywhere the other font groups don't apply)
Fixed width (Anywhere a non-proportional font is specified)
File Manager (Font to use in the KDE file manager)
Toolbar (Font used in KDE application toolbars)
Menu (Font used in KDE application menus)
Window Title (Font used in the window title)
Taskbar (Font used in the taskbar panel applet).
Each font has a corresponding Choose... button. By clicking on this button, a dialog box appears. You can use this dialog box to choose a new font, font style, size and character set. Then press OK.
An example of the font you have chosen will be displayed in the space between the font group name and the choose button.
When you are done, simply click OK, and all necessary components of KDE will be restarted so your changes can take affect immediatly.
Finally, there is a check box to enable Anti Aliasing for fonts. The ability to use Anti Aliased fonts and icons requires that you have support in both X and the Qt™ toolkit, and that you have suitable fonts installed, and are using the built in font serving capabilities of the X server. If you still are having problems, please contact the appropriate KDE mailing list, or check the FAQ.
The Adjust All Fonts... allows you to quickly set a property or set of properties of all the fonts selected above. A font selection dialog similar to the standard one will appear, but you will notice checkboxes that allow you to change the Font, Font style or Size independently of each other. You can choose any one, two, or three of these options, and they will be applied to all the font groups.
For example, if you have selected several different font faces above, and realize they are all a size too big (this often happens when you change screen resolution, for instance), you can apply a new font size to all the fonts, without affecting your customized font faces and styles.
This section written by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Slightly updated for KDE 2.2 by Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>
Icons
KDE comes with a full set of icons in several sizes. These icons are being used all over KDE: desktop, panel, the Konqueror file manager, in every toolbar of every KDE application, etc. The icons control module offers you very flexible ways of customizing the way KDE handles icons. You can:
choose different icon sizes
assign effects to icons (for example make them semi-transparent or colorize them)
configure these settings for each of the different places icons will be used in: for example the desktop, toolbars etc.
Important
Please note that some of these settings may depend on your selected icon theme. KDE comes with one icon themes by default, high color. There is also a low color theme in the kdeartwork package, along with others.
Starting at the top, you can see some example icons. These change in appearance depending on the icon theme you select. Most default installations will have only one icon theme available, the KDE default High color theme. There are others contained separately in the kdeartwork package, and you can download more from the internet.
Use the Install New Theme to browse to the location of newly downloaded and unpacked themes, and they will then become available to select from above.
Looking at this second page of the icons control module, you will see two areas:
An area labelled Use of Icon. Here you can choose which particular usage of icons you want to configure, for example Toolbar.
An area at the top where you can see how icons of the selected kind will look like using the current settings. Note that the state of this preview also depends on the icon state selected in the Effects tab (don't worry about that now, we'll explain that below).
When you want to configure icons, first select the usage of icons you want to configure. Change the settings until you like the preview. You can then choose a different icon usage and configure that. At the end, if you are satisfied with your settings, click OK or Apply to take the changes in effect.
There are two further options to consider, Size and Effects.
You have two options relating to icon sizes. First, you can choose of a list of icon sizes. Second, you can tell KDE to draw all pixels using double sized pixels. The largest icon sizes are especially useful for visually impaired people.
Which sizes will be offered by the icon size listbox depends on the icon theme you have selected in the icon themes control module. For example, the low color icon theme only offers the sizes 16 and 32 for desktop icons and 16, 22 and 32 for toolbar icons. The high color theme offers icon sizes 16, 32 and 48 as well as sizes from 64 to 128. However, as KDE can not have all these icon sizes in store, icons using size 64 to 128 will be automatically generated which may result in a loss of quality.
If the icon sizes offered by your chosen icon theme are not enough for you, there's still the option Double sized pixels. If this option is selected, all icons will have double sized pixels, i.e. a 2x2 block instead of normal pixels. While this makes it possible to achieve very large icon sizes, the quality is poor: icons will look “blocky”, an effect you may remember if you've grown up using a Sinclair ZX Spectrum or similar. If this is an option for you, using the large sizes offerd by KDE's high color icon theme will always result in a much better quality than using the low color icon theme with double sized pixels.
You can also choose to have smoothed icons, an effect similar to anti-aliasing of fonts. Enable the checkbox Blend alpha channel to see this in action, but note that it will slow down graphics on a slower computer.
Finally you can configure certain “filters” to be applied on every icon. Actually, you can configure these filters not just for every kind of icon usage, but for every one of three states an icon can be in:
- Default
This is how the icon will look normally
- Active:
This is how the icon will look when the mouse cursor is over the icon
- Disabled:
This is how the icon will look if its corresponding action is disabled, i.e clicking on it will not lead to any result
Select one of these states to configure a corresponding icon effect. Please note that this configuration will only affect icons of the currently selected Use of Icon category(see above): configuring an effect for active icons, while Toolbar icon usage is selected, will not affect active icons used in other places.
Below the list of icon states there are two options: you can configure an effect and you can select the semi-transparent option, which will make the background “shine through” the icon. To the right of the effects list box there's a setup button to pass additional parameters to a filter.
The following effects can be applied to icons:
- No Effect:
Icons will be used without applying any effect
- To Gray:
This filter will apply a grayish look to the icon. Click Setup... to configure the intensity of this filter. Note that it is customary for most user interfaces to use this effect for disabled icons only.
- Colorize:
Icons will be colorized using a custom color. For example you may configure active icons (i.e. the icon the mouse cursor is over) to shine golden. Click Setup... to configure the used color and the intensity of the colorization.
- Gamma:
A different gamma value will be applied to all icons. If you're no photographer and don't know what Gamma is: it's quite similar to what people call contrast. Just play around with the gamma settings by clicking on Setup... to get a feeling for this effect.
- Desaturate:
Icons will be drawn desaturated. This is quite similar to the ‘Color’ setting on your television. Click Setup... to configure the amount of desaturation.
This section written by: Jost Schenck <jost@schenck.de>
Launch Feedback
Sometimes it is reassuring to know that your computer didn't just ignore your command, and something is happening behind the scenes. In this module you can configure visible feedback to help you know if you really hit that icon or not.
The traditional way to indicate that your computer is busy is to modify the cursor, and you can turn this on by checking the Enable Busy Cursor checkbox.
With this option enabled, your cursor will have an icon attached to it for a short time, when a new application is being launched. You can configure how long this icon is displayed beside your cursor with the Startup indication timeout (seconds): spinbox. The default is 15 seconds.
If the default cursor is not eye catching enough, or you just want a more visible reminder, you can Enable blinking, in which case the busy cursor icon will be animated.
Traditional KDE launch notification has taken another form, which you can also enable and disable here. Normally when you start an application, it gets an immediate entry in the taskbar, with the icon replaced by a spinning KDE gear to let you know something is happening. You can toggle this behavior on and off with the Enable Taskbar Notification checkbox, and when it's enabled, you can set a time in the Startup indication timeout (seconds): spinbox.
Not all applications that you start will eventually show a window, or an entry in the taskbar. Some of them, for example, are docked into the KDE system tray. Alternatively, it might be that you sent it off to a different virtual desktop, and “Show all windows” is unchecked in the KDE Control Center module Taskbar. Setting a timeout ensures that, even in these cases, you can still get launch feedback, but also that it will go away when the job is done.
This section written by: Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>
Panel
The KDE panel (often referred to as Kicker) is the bar that you'll usually find at the bottom of the screen when you start up KDE for the first time. The panel gives you quick access to applications and makes it easier for you to organize your desktop. Using the KDE panel you can for example
launch applications using the K menu or the application buttons
switch desktops using the panel's pager applet
switch active windows, and minimize or maximize them
browse directory using the browser menu functionality
access panel applets that extend the panel's functionality, offering for example mixers, clocks or a system monitor
In the Position tab you can configure some basic functionality of the KDE panel (i.e. functionality you'd find in other panel applications as well; later we'll come to the more interesting features).
In the Location frame you can choose which screen border the panel should be attached to. Please note that usually the available space is used more efficiently if the panel is aligned horizontally, i.e. attached to the top or bottom screen border. If you want to play around with different settings you can change the panel's position even easier by dragging the panel from one border to the other.
You are not limited to a panel in the corner of the screen. You can choose to have it aligned Left, Center, or Right. For example, you could emulate a CDE style panel by setting it to centered and about 75% of the screen width.
The panel's size can be Tiny, Small, Medium, Large or Custom. In Custom mode, you can resize Kicker by grabbing the edge with the mouse, and dragging. Depending on which applets you use you may find that some applets work better at different panel sizes.
You can also set the panel to be less than the desktop height or width. Use the slider, or set a percentage directly in the spinbox.
As you might imagine, this will result in Kicker sometimes having more entries than it can fit into the space you have allowed it. In this case, you will find your panel has scrollbuttons on the end, and you need to scroll the panel to see all of it.
The Expand to fit required size checkbox will enable Kicker to always take enough space to display all it's icons, even if this is more than the percentage you have set to be used.
Note that if you do this, you then can still set a smaller percentage than the amount of space Kicker requires to show all the currently visible items, but it will be ignored. If you want to make Kicker smaller, you should reduce it's size above in the Panel Size section.
Depending on your screen resolution you may find that the panel takes away too much of your precious screen real estate. To save screen space, the panel offers an auto hide feature. When this feature is enabled, the panel will hide when the mouse cursor has not been moved over it for a configurable amount of time. If you move the mouse to the panel's screen border it will show up again. Check the Enable automatic hide option in the Automatic Hide frame to enable this feature. Using the Delay in seconds slider you can configure the amount of time the panel will wait before it hides.
When the panel's hide buttons are enabled you'll see a button on the right hand side of the panel (by default), with an arrow pointing to the screen border. If you click on this button, the panel will slide away in that direction. After that, you'll see just a show button in that corner, which will make the panel show again.
The default setting is to have only Enable right/bottom hide button checked. You can check the other box to Enable left/top hide button. You can have both hide buttons enabled at once, or you can turn both of them off.
Use the slider to set the size of the hide buttons.
Using the Manual Hide Animation (for the hide buttons) and Auto Hide Animation (for the auto hide functionality) options you can configure whether the panel will softly slide away or just disappear. You can enable or disable both animations using the Enable options and you can change the speed of the animation using the sliders.
Using the Look & Feel tab you can configure the panel's overall appearance.
You can choose to have tooltips appear when your mouse button is over an icon, by enabling the Show tooltips option. You can also have the icons themselves zoom out when the mouse is over them, with the Enable icon zooming option.
The KDE panel supports so-called ‘tiled buttons’. This means that the buttons shown on the panel will be drawn using configurable images. To enable button tiling, check the Enable background tiles option in the Buttons tab. Then you can configure tiles for certain kinds of buttons.
For every kind of panel button there's a frame offering an Enabled option to enable or disable tiled images. If tiles are enabled for this kind of button, you can choose a tile in the combo box below and the box on the right will show a preview of this tile.
The Background Image is a picture that will be used to draw the panel's background, just like you can use a picture for the desktop background. Check the Enable background image option to enable this feature. You can specify an image file in the line edit box below or choose one by clicking on the Browse button. You'll see a preview of the selected picture on the right.
In the Menus tab you can configure the panel menu's behavior. This affects the K menu you will often use to launch applications, the browser menus you can use to access directories and other menus like the recent documents menu.
The K Menu Layout frame offers you some options to configure the K menu's functionality. The Show "Bookmarks" submenu and Show "Recent Documents" submenu options will enable submenus showing your konqueror bookmarks and the last documents you've opened using KDE applications respectivly. The Show "Quick Browser" submenu option will enable a browser menu.
Show side image will add a small image to the side of the K menu. This is on by default.
Merge different menu locations will show all applications in the same directories, regardless of where the corresponding configuration files are stored: for example, enabling this option will show system wide applications in your Applications menu as well as you own ones. If you'd disable this option, there would be one applications menu for the whole system and one in a submenu containing only your personal entries.
The menu cache is a feature that can make the panel's menus appear faster on screen: instead of reading the menu information from disk every time you access a menu, the panel will remember menu entries after accessing the menus for the first time. However, depending on the amount of memory available to your system, you might want this cache to be cleared after some time. Check the Clear menu cache option if you want the cache to be cleared after some time. You can configure the amount of time after which the cache will be cleared using the slider below.
In the Browser Menus frame you can configure whether the panel's browser menus will show hidden files or not (hidden files on unix systems are those whose filenames begin with a dot) as well as how many files at most will be shown in a browser menu. The latter option may be especially useful if you have a rather small screen resolution, as then the browser menus will quickly fill up your screen when you browse directories containing many files.
The quick start section in the K menu offers quick access to programs you have used often or recently. In the "Quick Start" section contains frame you can choose whether this section will show the most recently or the most frequently used programs. Using the option Max number of "Quick Start" entries you can configure how many programs the quick start section will remember.
Applets are small plugins that extend the pager's functionality. KDE comes with some applets but they may be provided by third parties as well. Panel applets can be started using two different ways: internal or externally. While ‘internal’ is the preferred way to load applets, this can raise stability or security problems when you are using poorly programmed third-party applets. To address these problems, applets can be marked ‘trusted’. You might want to configure the panel to treat trusted applets different from untrusted ones. Your options are:
Load only trusted applets internal: All applets but the ones marked ‘trusted’ will be loaded using an external wrapper application.
Load startup config applets internal: The applets shown on KDE startup will be loaded internally, others will be loaded using an external wrapper application.
Load all applets internal: will load all applets internally, regardless of whether they're trusted or not.
For stability and security reasons, we recommend using one of the first two options and that you mark only those applets as ‘trusted’ that come with the KDE base packages.
To mark applets ‘trusted’ or ‘untrusted’ you can move them from one of the shown listboxes to the other. Just try selecting an applet in the list of trusted applets and click the >> button. This will move the selected applet to the other list, while clicking the << button will move the selected applet of the list of available applets to the list of trusted ones.
Kicker has many extensions, which you normally add by Right clicking on the panel and choosing Add->Extension, and choosing an item. Extensions are things like child panels, an external taskbar instead of (or as well as) the one embedded in the panel, and much more.
You cannot add extensions in this page of the module, but you can configure them. The options on this page are disabled unless you have added a Kicker extension.
The options available are the same as those for locating the main Kicker panel, on the Position tab of this dialog.
You can configure where on the screen the extension should be (Left, Right, Top or Bottom).
You can also configure if it has hide buttons visible, if it should auto hide, and if so, how much delay before it hides itself.
These options are configurable on a per extension basis, so you can have different options for each one.
This section written by: Jost Schenck <jost@schenck.de>
Minor update by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Some new options added by Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>
Screensaver
Using this module, you can choose your screensaver, determine how quickly the screen is saved, and add or remove password protection to your screensaver.
At the top left corner of the module, is a check-box labeled Enable Screensaver. This box must have a mark in it, or KDE will not launch any screensaver and it will not allow you to adjust the settings of your screensaver.
Along the left side, is a list of all available screensavers. You can select a screensaver by simply clicking on the name of the screensaver. Once you have selected a screensaver, you will see a small preview on the preview monitor on the right.
Note
The preview monitor will often show the screensaver larger than it is when the screensaver is activated. This is done on purpose, since many of the details of the screensavers would be uninteligable if actually scaled down to such a small size.
Each screensaver has a different set of setup options. By clicking on Setup, a dialog box will appear with all available options. As you adjust the options, the preview box in the dialog box will show you what effect you will achieve with the current settings.
When you are done setting up your screensaver, click OK.
Clicking Cancel, will erase any changes you made in this dialog box, and return you to the screensaver module.
Clicking About, will give you the Copyright and Author information if you are interested.
When you think you have all the options set the way you want, simply click on Test, to immediately start the screensaver exactly as it will appear.
Below the Preview Monitor, is a spin box, which determines the period of inactivity before the screensaver should be started. You can enter any number from 1-120 minutes in this box.
Below that, is a check-box, labeled Require Password. If checked, when you click a key, or click a mouse button to end the screensaver, and return to your work, you must enter a password. The password used is the same password you used to login to your machine. If left blank, no password is required.
At the bottom of the right side of the module, is a slider labeled Priority. If your screensaver appears jumpy, you should increase the priority closer to the High end. This will tell your computer to devote more time to the screensaver, and less time to other tasks.
KDE does not prevent another screensaver from working. To use a different screensaver, such as xscreensaver, simply disable the KDE Screen Saver, and set up your other screen saver program normally.
If you want to remove a screensaver from the list in this Control Center Module, you will need to rename a file on your system.
Caution
Working as a root user is a potentially dangerous situation. While unlikely, it is entirely possible to do permenant damage to your system while working as root.
Be very careful following the next set of directions
To delete a screensaver, type the following commands:
bash$ cd $KDEDIR/share/applnk/System/ScreenSavers bash$ ls
This will give you a list of files. You will notice similarities between some of the file names and the screensaver you want to remove. Simply rename the file of similarly named desktop file to a name which does not end in desktop.
Example:
bash$ cd $KDEDIR/share/applnk/System/ScreenSavers bash$ mv KSpace.desktop KSpace.backup
Will remove Space (GL) from the list
Note
You must close the KDE Control Center entirely and restart it before the changes will be seen.
To restore the disabled screensaver, simply rename the file back to its original name:
bash$ cd $KDEDIR/share/applnk/System/ScreenSavers bash$ mv KSpace.backup KSpace.desktop
Restart the KDE Control Center, and the screensaver is back in the list.
Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Shortcuts
While most of the funtionality offered by KDE can be accessed using a simple ‘point and click’ interface, many people prefer using the keyboard for some tasks. Pressing something like Ctrl+F is often just faster than moving your hands off the keyboard to the mouse, opening the Edit menu and selecting Find.
As different people have different preferences about keyboard shortcuts, KDE offers full customization of so-called ‘key bindings’. A key binding or shortcut is a combination of an action with a key or a combination of keys.
In the Shortcuts control module you'll see a list of ‘key schemes’, a list of key bindings in the currently selected scheme and a frame where you can customize the currently selected key binding. Also, you'll see a tab for Global shortcuts and one for Application shortcuts.
Global shortcuts and application shortcuts work just the same. Actually, in a certain way application shortcuts are “global” as well. The only difference is:
“Global shortcuts” are shortcuts for actions that make sense even when no application is opened. These shortcuts usually refer to actions like switching desktops, manipulating windows etc.
“Application shortcuts” refer to actions that are often available in applications, such as Save, Print, Copy etc.
Please note, that the application shortcuts configured here are only the standard actions often found in applications. Most applications will define their own actions as well, for which you have to customize key bindings using the application's key bindings dialog.
Configuring key bindings is pretty easy. In the middle of the key bindings control module you'll find a list of available actions. If there's a key binding configured for that action you'll find it right next to it. Just select the action you want to configure.
After you've selected an action you'll notice that most of the controls below the action list are enabled. There you can configure a combination of keys or maybe no key binding at all for the selected action.
No key: the selected action will not be associated with any key.
Default key: the selected action will be associated with KDE's default value. This is a good choice for most actions, as KDE comes with reasonable key bindings we have thought about.
Custom key: if this option is enabled, you can create a key combination for the selected action. Just select any modifiers (i.e. Shift, Ctrl, or Alt) and then select a key: just click on the key symbol and after that press the key you wan't to assign to this key combination.
As with all control modules, your changes won't take in effect until you click OK or Apply. Click Cancel to discard all changes.
A key binding scheme is a set of key bindings that you can access using its name. KDE comes with one pre-defined key binding scheme called KDE default for 3 modifiers. In addion to that scheme, you'll always see a scheme named Current scheme that stands for the set of key bindings you are using right now (i.e. not the current settings you are playing with, but what you've been using up to now).
When you are playing with the key bindings for the first time you don't have to be afraid of changing the default bindings: KDE won't let you overwrite the defaults, so you can always switch back to the factory presets. By choosing Current scheme you can return to the set of key bindings you've been using up to now. However, be careful not to select a scheme when you've made changes to the key bindings you don't want to lose.
When you are satisfied with a set of key bindings you've created, you may want to save them to a scheme of your own, so that you can still experiment with the bindings and always return to a certain scheme. You can always do this by clicking on the Add button. You will be prompted for a name and then the new scheme will appear in the key schemes listbox. You can remove your own schemes again by selecting a scheme and clicking the Remove button. Click the Save changes button to save any changes you have made to the currently selected scheme. Note that you can not remove or save changes to KDE default or to Current scheme.
Important
If you want to save your changes while a read-only scheme is selected, you always have to add a new scheme first! If you select one of your own schemes because you want to save the changes to that one, the control module will switch to the key bindings of that scheme, discarding your changes.
Different keyboards offer different sets of modifier keys. A Mac® keyboard, for example, does not have a Ctrl key, and instead has an Option key. Here you can see what the available modifier keys for the current keyboard are.
If you enable Macintosh keyboard the list of modifiers will change.
If you have enabled the Mac® keyboard, you can further enable MacOS-style modifier usage, to make KDE behave more like the Mac® OS.
Finally, you can change what a keypress sends to the X-Server in the X Modifier Mapping section. A common example is to reconfigure the Caps Lock key, which is rarely used, to be another Ctrl key. This is especially nice if you are a touch typist, as Caps Lock is much easier to reach than either of the Ctrl keys on a standard keyboard.
This section written by: Jost Schenck <jost@schenck.de>
Style
This module is used to configure how the individual widgets are drawn by KDE.
Note
A Widget is a commonly-used programmer's term for referring to User Interface elements such as buttons, menus, and scroll bars. You can think of them as the fundamental pieces that are assembled to make your application.
You can configure how the widgets are drawn with this module, but to change the color of the widgets, you should refer to the section entitled Colors.
This panel is divided into three sections.
The top list box, contains a list of the pre-defined styles. Each style has a name, and a brief description.
To change styles, simply click on the style name, and press Apply to see what the new widgets look like.
This section written by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Updated for KDE 2.2 by Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>
Taskbar
The taskbar, is a quick way to switch between applications. The taskbar can be located in the panel (default), or outside the panel on the desktop.
This module has options to control how the taskbar operates:
The top option, labeled Show windows from all desktops, determines if all open windows are included in the taskbar or not. By default, the taskbar only shows the open windows on the current desktop. If this option is enabled, the taskbar will show all open windows on all desktops.
Using the Show window list button option, you can enable a little button to be shown in the taskbar: this button will open a popup menu offering access to applications on other desktops as well as some useful actions, like Unclutter Windows.
The next option, Group similar tasks allows you to save some space on your taskbar, by only showing one icon for each running application, no matter how many windows are shown. You can click on the icon to display a menu of all the windows that are available. This is most useful when you have enabled Show all windows.
Sort tasks by virtual desktop changes the sort order of the icons on the taskbar, so that windows on virtual desktop 1 are shown first (to the left, or at the top of the taskbar), followed by windows on virtual desktop 2, and so on.
Finally, you can disable the application icons, and show just the text. You might want to do this to save space on your taskbar, for example.
The next set of options allow you to customize the actions performed with different mouse clicks on taskbar icons.
You can select any action from the list for the left mouse button, the middle mouse button and the right mouse button.
The options available are:
- Show Task List
Show the list of tasks grouped under the icon you have clicked on. If there is only one task or window for that icon, it will become the active window.
This is the default action for the left mouse button
- Cycle Through Windows
If there is more than one task grouped under the icon, switch from one to the next, until you release the button (i.e. when you have reached the window you are looking for). If there is only one task or window for that icon, it will become the active window.
This is the default action for the middle mouse button if window grouping is enabled.
- Show Operations Menu
Show the operations menu for the application. This allows you to minimize, maximize etc., move windows between desktops, and close windows. You can perform these actions on all windows grouped under that icon, or on any single window, by choosing it from the submenu.
This is the default action for the right mouse button
- Activate, Raise, or Minimize Task
Cycle between states for the selected window.
This is the default action for the middle mouse button if window grouping is not enabled.
- Raise Task, Lower Task, Minimize Task
These three options make sense only if window grouping is disabled. They are fairly self-explanatory. Raise means to make active, bring to the front, and give focus. Lower means, send to the back, and give focus to whichever window is now on top.
This section written by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Updated by Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>.
Theme Manager
With this module you can install, view, and even create, KDE themes.
This page is divided into two tabs: Installer, Contents.
Here you can install, preview and create KDE themes. Themes created this way may not cover all the configurable options that KDE has to offer. However, they do cover most options and are a great way to get started.
On the left, you can see a list of themes that KDE is aware of. Selecting one of the names will change the preview image in the middle of the pane, to give you a small taste of what the theme looks like. Any information the author has provided about the theme, for example, a longer or more descriptive name, is displayed in the bottom of the pane.
Along with the normal KControl buttons at the bottom, you have four new ones to the right of the module. Add... allows you to add a new theme to the list on the left. Pressing it will open a normal KDE file dialog, where you can browse to the location of themes you have downloaded or created.
The Save As... button allows you to save an existing theme with a new name, for example to allow you to easily modify it without damaging the original. It is strongly recommended that you use this if you intend creating themes by hand, you can get very unexpected results if there are errors in a theme file.
Create will create a theme that contains your current desktop settings. Themes created this way are fairly unsophisticated, but they are a very good start to learning to make your own.
Finally, it's very easy to collect alot of themes that look rather nice on a website, but aren't to your taste once you've tried them. The Remove... will remedy this situation, removing the theme from the list on the left.
This page works together with the previous one, allowing you to custom fit a theme to your own needs.
Not all themes contain instructions (or images) for all the configurable parts of KDE. For example, some contain a color scheme, a desktop wallpaper, and a style for the panel, but they don't have any icons or Window Decoration instructions.
Another common situation is to find you have finally got your own icon theme, color scheme or window decoration arrangement ‘just so’, and although you'd like to try out a theme, you don't want to mess up your current installation.
Using this page, you can see immediately what categories of changes the theme will make, and you can enable or disable its effects on those categories.
The list under the heading Work on the following parts will show you a checkbox to the left if the theme is going to affect that item, and to the right if the theme actually contains any contents for that category.
You can use the Clear button to clear all the checkboxes, and the Invert button to check all the checkboxes that are currently empty, and clear those that were checked.
For example, the ‘Eclipse’ theme that comes with a base KDE installation contains contents for all the configurable items, and is by default set up to change them all to its own settings. The ‘MGBreizh’ theme contains contents for everything except the icons. The ‘Technical’ theme, which you can find in the kdeartwork package, contains only the icons, so if you were to install ‘MGBreizh’, and then ‘Technical’, you would find you still had mostly the ‘MGBreizh’ theme in place, but with new icons.
Taking this same scenario, what if you really didn't want the ‘MGBreizh’ theme anymore, and wanted to remove it, and just use the ‘Technical’ icon theme with a plain desktop?
You have two choices here. You can check the Uninstall parts of previous theme box, and then any installed theme will be entirely removed before the new one is installed. Or you could just install the ‘Default’ theme, which really isn't a theme, it's more of a theme cleaner - it removes all other themes, and resets all your desktop theme settings to the KDE default appearance.
This section was written by Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>.
Window Behavior
In the upper part of this control module you can see several panels: Focus, Actions, Moving and Advanced. In the Focus panel you can configure how windows gain or lose focus, i.e. become active or inactive. Using Actions you can configure how windows react to mouse clicks. Moving allows you to configure how windows move and place themselves when started. The Advanced options concern window placement, movement or resizing.
Note
Please note that the configuration in this module will not take effect if you don't use KDE's native window manager, KWin. If you do use a different window manager, please refer to its documentation for how to customize window behavior.
The ‘focus’, of the desktop refers to the window which the user is currently working on. The window with focus is often referred to as the ‘active window’.
There are four methods KDE can use to determine the current focus:
- Click to Focus
With this option, you simply click on the window to make that window active.
All the other options within this section have no effect when this option is chosen.
- Focus follows mouse
To change the focus of a window, simply place the mouse pointer over the window. If the mouse pointer is then moved to an area of the desktop without another window, the last window retains the focus.
In other window managers, this is sometimes known as ‘Sloppy focus follows mouse’.
- Focus under mouse
The window under the mouse, has the focus. If, however, the mouse pointer is in an area of the desktop that has no windows, no window will be active.
- Focus strictly under mouse
Similar to Focus under mouse, but even more strict with its interpretation.
Once you have determined the focus policy, there are two more options which you can determine.
By placing a mark in front of Auto Raise, KDE can bring a window to the front if the mouse is over that window for a specified period of time. This is very useful with the Focus follows Mouse option. You can determine the delay by using the slider bar/spin box comination.
Tip
Setting the delay too short, will cause a rapid fire changing of windows, which can be quite distracting. Most people will like a delay of 100-300 ms. This is responsive, but it will let you slide over the corners of a window on your way to your destination without bringing that window to the front.
If you do not use Auto Raise, make sure the Click Raise option has a mark in front of it. You will not be happy with both Auto Raise and Click Raise disabled.
In the Keyboard frame you can configure the way switching between applications or desktops using Alt+Tab or Ctrl+Tab.
Switching applications using Alt+Tab, i.e. holding down Alt while repeatedly pressing the Tab key, can take place in KDE mode or in CDE mode: in KDE mode you will see a box in the middle of the screen showing you the currently selected application while you are still holding down the Alt key. In CDE mode you don't get any visual feedback.
Finally there is an option where you can choose to Traverse windows on all desktops or not. With this enabled, switching windows with Alt+Tab will show all windows, on all desktops, and take you to the appropriate desktop for the window you select. With it disabled, only windows on your current desktop are selectable with Alt+Tab, and you must use Ctrl+Tab to switch to other desktops yourself.
In this panel you can configure what happens to windows when a mouse is clicked on them. This panel is divided into 4 sections.
This section provides a single dropdown box. You can select either Shade, or Maximize.
Selecting Maximise, causes KDE to maximise the window whenever you doubleclick on the titlebar. Shade, on the other hand, causes the window to be reduced to simply the titlebar. Double clicking on the titlebar again, restores the window to its normal size.
Tip
You can have windows automatically unshade when you simply place the mouse over their shaded titlebar. Just check the Enable Hover check box in the Advanced tab of this module. This is a great way to reclaim desktop space when you're cutting and pasting between a lot of windows, for example.
This section, allows you to determine what happens when you single click on the titlebar or frame of a window. Notice that you can have different actions associated with the same click depending on whether the window is active or not.
For each combination of mousebuttons, modifiers, Active and Inactive, you can select the most appropriate choice. The actions are as follows:
- Activate
Make this window active.
- Lower
Will move this window to the bottom of the display. This will get the window out of the way.
- Nothing
Just like it says. Nothing happens.
- Operations Menu
Will bring up a small submenu, where you can choose window related commands (i.e. Maximize, Minimize, Close, etc.).
- Raise
Will bring the window to the top of the display. All other windows which overlap with this one, will be hidden ‘below’ it.
- Toggle Raise and Lower
This will raise windows which are not on top, and lower windows which are already on top.
This part of the module, allows you to configure what happens when you click on an inactive window, with any of the three mouse buttons.
Your choices are as follows:
- Activate, Raise and pass click
This makes the clicked window active, raises it to the top of the display, and passes a mouse click to the application within the window.
- Activate and pass click
This makes the clicked window active and passes a mouse click to the application within the window.
- Activate
This simply makes the clicked window active. The mouse click is not passed on to the application within the window.
- Activate and Raise
This makes the clicked window active and raises the window to the top of the display. The mouse click is not passed on to the application within the window.
This bottom section, allows you to configure additional actions, when the Alt key is pressed, and a mouse click is made on a window.
Once again, you can select different actions for Left, Middle and Right button clicks.
Your choices are:
- Lower
Will move this window to the bottom of the display. This will get the window out of the way.
- Move
Allows you to drag the selected window around the desktop.
- Nothing
Just like it says. Nothing happens.
- Raise
Will bring the window to the top of the display. All other windows which overlap with this one, will be hidden ‘below’ it.
- Resize
Allows you to change the size of the selected window.
- Toggle Raise and Lower
This will raise windows which are not on top, and lower windows which are already on top.
The options here determine how windows appear on screen when you are moving them. Most of these options exact a price in performance, so if you want to streamline your desktop, you should turn them off. However, if you have a fast computer, they may make your day a little more pleasant, so leave them on.
- Display content in moving windows
Enable this option if you want a window's content to be fully shown while moving it, instead of just showing a window ‘skeleton’. The result may not be satisfying on slow computers without graphic acceleration.
- Display content in resizing windows
Enable this option if you want a window's content to be shown while resizing it, instead of just showing a window ‘skeleton’. The result, again, may not be satisfying on slower computers.
- Animate Minimize and Restore
Enable this option if you want an animation shown when windows are minimized or restored.
With the slider, you can set the speed of the animation.
- Allow Moving and Resizing of maximized windows
When enabled, this feature activates the border of maximized windows, and allows you to move or resize them just as you can normal windows.
- Placement
The placement policy determines where a new window will appear on the desktop. For now there are three policies. Smart will try to achieve a minimum overlap of windows, Cascade will cascade the windows, and Random will use a random position.
The rest of this page allows you to configure the Snap Zones. These are like a magnetic field along the side of the deskop and each window, which will make windows snap alongside when moved near.
- Border Snap Zones
Here you can set the snap zone for screen borders. Moving a window within the configured distance will make it snap to the edge of the desktop.
- Window snap zone
Here you can set the snap zone for windows. As with screen borders, moving a window near to another will make it snap to the edge as if the windows were magnetized.
- Snap windows only when overlapping
If checked, windows will not snap together if they are only near each other, they must be overlapping, by the configured amount or less.
In the Advanced panel you can do more advanced fine tuning to the window behavior.
Shading
- Animate
If this option is enabled, shading, or rolling up a window until just the title bar is shown, will be animated.
- Shade hover
If this option is enabled, a shaded window will un-shade automatically when the mouse pointer has been over the title bar for some time. Use the slider to configure the delay un-shading.
Finally, you can configure Active Desktop Borders. If this is enabled, moving the mouse to a screen border will change your desktop. This is useful if you want to drag windows from one desktop to another.
You can set this option to Disabled, which is the default, to Only when moving windows, or to Always enabled in which case just pushing your mouse against the side of the screen will switch you to a new desktop.
Window Decoration
This module allows you to select a style for the borders around windows.
Each style has a different look, but also a different ‘feel’. Some have (sometimes invisible) 'resize' borders all around the edge, which make resizing easier but moving more difficult. Some have no borders on certain edges. One (‘BII’) even has a dynamically sized and positioned title element.
You are encouraged to experiment with the different styles until you find one which best suits your pattern of work.
Apart from choosing the window decoration itself, you can choose here two further options: If there should be a tooltip, if you hover your mouse over a window button, and if the window decoration should attempt to use a custom set button order.
Tip
The tooltips can be quite useful if you have set a custom button order, and then changed to an unfamiliar window decoration.
This page has instructions directly on it - just drag around the buttons until you have the order that makes you comfortable.
Note
Not all the window decorations are able to comply with your custom set button order. The ones that cannot are being converted, but at the time of this release they have not been all been changed.
If there are any configurable options for the theme you chose on the first page, they will show up here.
In particular, if you chose to use the IceWM theme, you can choose here which of the many IceWM themes to use. The IceWM theme has instructions on the page as to where you should copy the theme files, and once this is done, you can simply select the theme you want to use.
This section written by Rik Hemsley <rik@kde.org>
Updated by Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>
The email module of the KControl allows you to enter and save some basic email information. This information is used when performing functions related to email within KDE, for example, when sending bug reports from the KDE crash handler application.
Programs such as KMail, which are used for reading and sending email, may offer many more options for customizing the way in which email is handled. These options depend upon the specific program being used. KMail, for instance, offers its own configuration facilities.
Some of the information needed for configuring email should have been provided by your internet service provider (ISP). If you are connected to a local network, then the system administrator of your network should be able to help you.
There are two areas of configuration in this module. To help you get started, some of the fields are automatically filled in using the login information on the system. Looking at the page from top to bottom, these areas are:
- User Information:
Details for the user currently logged in.
In the text box labeled Full Name, type your full name as you would like it to appear in the email messages that you send. If you work for a company or organization, you can enter its name in the text box labeled Organization.
To be able to use email, you must enter your email address in the text box labeled Email address. If replies to your email messages should be sent to a different address, you can enter that address in the text box labeled Reply Address. Usually, however, this text box should simply be left blank, and replies will go to your email address as typed.
- Preferred Email Client:
The email program which you use to send and receive email (there may be more than one available on your system.)
The default email program is KMail, but you can change this either by typing the name of the program in the provided text box, or by clicking on the Browse... button, and selecting the program using the dialog box that pops up.
If the program you want to use for email is a console or text-based application (for example, the Pine email program), check the Run in terminal option.
Your ISP should have given you a user name and a password to log into the email server. Often, the user name is the same as the part of the email address that comes before the @ character.
This section written by:
Krishna Tateneni <tateneni@pluto.njcc.com>.
Updated by Jost Schenck <jost@schenck.de>.
LAN Browsing
Preferences
Here you can set timeout values. You might want to tweak them if your connection is very slow, but the default settings are appropriate for most users.
Here Timeout Values are the length of time an application should wait for an answer from a network operation.
You can configure the following timeouts:
- Socket Read
Sets how long to wait for a socket read operation.
- Proxy Connect
Sets how long to wait for a connection to a proxy server, if one is configured.
- Server Connect
Sets how long to wait for a connection to a remote server.
- Server Response
Sets how long to wait for a reply from a remote server.
You can configure FTP Options here. At present there is just one option, Enable Passive Mode (PASV).
Passive FTP is often required when you are behind a firewall. Many firewalls only permit connections that were initiated from “the inside”. Passive FTP is controlled by the client, which makes it usable through firewalls.
SOCKS
SOCKS is a protocol to execute proxy requests for a client. SOCKS is capable of authentication and encryption of traffic, and is often found in corporate settings, as opposed to home users. For more information about SOCKS, see the NEC website
With this module you can enable most of the network aware KDE applications to transparently use SOCKS.
Setting up of a SOCKS client is outside the scope of this document, and the differences between the commonly used ones are very large. If you already have a working SOCKS implementation, allowing you to use commandline clients (for example, if lynx or ftp are already working) then you can simply check the Enable SOCKS support checkbox.
When this box is checked, several further options become available to you.
First, you should select which of the various SOCKS clients you have installed on your computer. KDE will attempt to find this out by itself, if you choose Auto detect. If you know the client you have, you could choose either NEC Socks or Dante. If you have a custom built SOCKS library to use, you can select Use custom library and then enter the path to it in the Path field.
If you want KDE to auto detect the SOCKS library in use, but you suspect it isn't looking in the right places or you have installed it in a non-standard location, then you can add further paths to be searched in the bottom of this panel. Use the Add and Remove to add or remove paths.
At any time while filling in this module, you can press the Test button, and KDE will report immediately with a message box to tell you if it could find and initialize SOCKS or not.
Changes made here will not affect any applications that are already open. You will need to close and restart them before they are able to connect via SOCKS.
Section written by: Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>
Talk Configuration
Please see the KTalkd manual for more information (you can read it by entering help:/ktalkd/ in a Konqueror window.)
Windows Shares
In many small local area networks the SMB protocol is used to offer network services. Names like ‘Windows® Network’ or ‘Windows® for Workgroups Network’ or ‘LanManager’ are often used as well. Using SMB you can access so-called ‘shares’ (i.e. directories made available by the server) as well as printers.
KDE comes with builtin support for the SMB protocol. As KDE is network-transparent that means you can access SMB shares from everywhere you can access your local files, for example in the Konqueror file manager and in the file dialog. To make use of this you should provide KDE with some information on your SMB network. But don't worry, this is normally pretty simple as, for example, all the Windows clients in your network need and have the same information.
Note
For the SMB protocol to work it is required to have Samba correctly installed. If you have an NT domain controller, you will need at least Samba version 2.0 or higher. If you want to access Windows® 2000 shares, you will need Samba version 2.0.7 or higher. Older versions may work too, but have not been tested.
Although there are alot of insecure SMB networks out there which allow access to anyone, in principle you have to authenticate yourself to access the services of an SMB server. By default, KDE will use the data entered in the Default user name and Default password fields to authenticate itself on SMB hosts. If you leave the field Default user name empty, KDE will try to access SMB hosts without a username. If you leave the default password empty, it will try without a password. If KDE is unsuccessful accessing the host using these settings, you will be asked for a username and a password.
Important
While it makes things more comfortable if KDE stores your SMB password, this may be a security problem. If you are using SMB in a security conscious environment, you should not store your password here but rather enter it anew every time you need to access an SMB host.
In the Workgroup field, you can enter your workgroup name. If you don't know it, ask your system administrator or have a look at other already configured machines in your network. However, in most cases providing the workgroup name is not required, so you probably can also leave this empty.
If the option Show hidden shares is checked, shares ending with a ‘$’ will be shown.
This section written by: Jost Schenck <jost@schenck.de>
Keyboard
This module allows you to choose how your keyboard works.
The actual effect of setting these options depends upon the features provided by your keyboard hardware and the X server on which KDE is running. As an example, you may find that changing the key click volume has no effect because that feature is not available on your system.
Here you can select the keyboard layouts available to you from KDE, or you can disable alternative keyboard layouts entirely, by unchecking the Enable keyboard layouts box.
The first option available is to select your physical Keyboard Model.
Next you can select the Primary Layout you wish to use, which would normally be the physical layout of keys on the keyboard.
You can enable additional keyboard layouts below this. You can select as many from the list as you like.
If you enable additional layouts, you will find a new icon embedded in your panel system tray. This will initially be set to your primary layout. You can right click on this icon to choose any of the additional layouts you have selected in this module, or choose the Configure from the menu to reopen the module to change your settings.
You can configure the switching policy, so that keyboard layouts switch on a Global basis, per Window Class, or on a Window basis.
You can set Xkb Options here also.
- Keyboard Repeat
When this option is selected, pressing and holding down a key emits the same character repeatedly until the key is released. Pressing and holding the key will have the same effect as pressing it multiple times in succession.
Tip
Almost all users will want to have this option enabled, because it makes navigating through documents with the arrow keys significantly easier.
- Key Click Volume
If supported, this option allows you to hear audible clicks from your computer's speakers when you press the keys on your keyboard. In essence, this simulates the “click” of a mechanical type-writer. You can change the loudness of the key click feedback by dragging the slider button or by clicking the up/down arrows on the spin-button. Setting the volume to 0% turns off the key click.
Many computers won't support this function.
Tip
Very few people would choose to enable this option, since it generally annoys everyone else in the room. However, if your heart yearns for the pre-soft-key era, this may help you to re-experience the warm sentimentality of days-gone-by.
- NumLock on KDE Startup
You can choose to either always Turn on or Turn off the NumLock when KDE starts, or you can choose to have KDE leave NumLock at whatever it was set to before KDE started up.
Mouse
This module allows you to configure your pointing device. Your pointing device may be a mouse, a track ball, a touch-pad, or another piece of hardware that performs a similar function.
This module is divided into 2 tabs: General and Advanced
- Button Mapping
If you are left-handed, you may prefer to swap the functions of the left and right buttons on your pointing device by choosing the “left-handed” option. If your pointing device has more than two buttons, only those that function as the left and right buttons are affected. For example, if you have a three-button mouse, the middle button is unaffected.
- Single-click to open files and folders
This is the default setting for KDE. Clicking once on an icon will open it. To select you can drag around the icon(s) or Ctrl+Right click, or simply click and hold to drag it.
- Change pointer shape over icons
When this option is checked, the shape of the mouse pointer changes whenever it is over an icon.
Tip
This option should be checked in most situations. It gives more visual feedback and says, in essence, if you click here, something will happen.
- Double-click to open files and folders (select icons on first click)
If this option is not checked, icons/files will be opened with a single click of the left mouse-button. This default behavior is consistent with what you would expect when you click links in most web browsers. If checked however, icons/files will be opened with a double click, while a single click will only select the icon or file. This is the behavior you may know from other desktops or operating systems.
- Visual feedback on activation
When this option is checked, KDE gives you visual feedback whenever you click on something and activate it.
- Large Cursor
This will give KDE a larger mouse cursor.
Note
The large cursor will not be seen until KDE is restarted.
- Automatically Select Icons
If you check this option, pausing the mouse pointer over an icon on the screen will automatically select that icon. This may be useful when single clicks opens icons, and you only want to select the icon without opening it.
Tip
You can still select an icon or file without opening it, even when Single Click Opens is checked. This is done by either holding down the Ctrl key and then clicking, or by dragging a box around the icon(s) or file(s) which you wish to select.
If you have activated this option, you can use the slider to select how long the mouse pointer must rest on an icon before it becomes selected.
- Pointer Acceleration
This option allows you to change the relationship between the distance that the mouse pointer moves on the screen and the relative movement of the physical device itself (which may be a mouse, track-ball, or some other pointing device.)
A high value for the acceleration multiplier will lead to large movements of the mouse pointer on the screen, even when you only make a small movement with the physical device.
Tip
A multiplier between 1x and 3x will works well for many systems. With a multiplier over 3x the mouse pointer may become difficult to control.
- Pointer Threshold
The threshold is the smallest distance that the mouse pointer must move on the screen before acceleration has any effect. If the movement is within the threshold, the mouse pointer moves as if the acceleration were set to 1x.
Thus, when you make small movements with the physical device (e.g. mouse), you still have fine control of the mouse pointer on the screen, whereas larger movements of the physical device will move the mouse pointer rapidly to different areas on the screen.
You can set the threshold value by dragging the slider button or by clicking the up/down arrows on the spin-button to the left of the slider.
Tip
In general, the higher you set the Pointer Acceleration value, the higher you'll want to set the Drag Threshold value. For example, A Drag Threshold of 4 pixels may be appropriate for a Pointer Acceleration of 2x, but 10 pixels might be better for 3x.
- Double Click Interval
This is the maximum amount of time between clicks for KDE to register a double click. If you click twice, and the time between those two clicks is less than this number, KDE recognizes that as a double click. If the time between these two clicks is greater than this number, KDE recognises those as two separate single clicks.
- Drag Start Time and Drag Start Distance
If you
KDE will drag the selected item.Click with the mouse
drag within the time specified in Drag Start Time, and
move a distance equal to or greater than the number (of pixels) specified in Drag Start Distance
- Mouse Wheel Scrolls By
If you have a wheel mouse, use the slider to determine how many lines of text one “step” of the mouse wheel will scroll.
Not yet documented
Accessibility
This module is designed to help users who have difficulty hearing audible cues, or who have difficulty using a keyboard or mouse.
The module is divided into three tabs: Bell, Keyboard, Mouse.
This panel is divided into an Audible Bell section and a Visible Bell section.
The top check box labeled Use System bell, determines whether the normal System bell rings. If this option is disabled, the System bell will be silenced.
The next check box down can be used to play a different sound whenever the system bell is triggered. To activate, place a mark in the check box labeled Use customized bell, and enter the complete pathname to the sound file in the text box labeled Sound to Play. If you want, you can select the Browse button to navigate through your filesystem to find the exact file.
For those users who have difficulty hearing the System bell, or those users who have a silent computer, KDE offers the Visible bell. This “bell” can be configured to invert the screen, or to flash a color across the screen.
To use the visible bell, first place a mark in the check box labeled Use visible bell.
You can then select between Invert screen, or Flash screen. If you select Invert screen, all colors on the screen will be reversed. If you choose Flash screen, you can choose the color by clicking the button to the right of the Flash screen selection.
The slider bar can be used to adjust the duration of the visible bell. The default value is 500ms, or half a second.
There are three sections to this panel.
- Use Sticky Keys
If this option is enabled, the user can press and release the Shift, Alt or Ctrl keys, and then press another key to get a key combo (example: Ctrl+Alt+Del could be done with Ctrl then Alt then Del).
Also in this section is a check box labeled Lock Sticky Keys. If this check box is enabled, the Alt, Ctrl and Shift keys stay ‘selected’ until they are ‘de-selected’ by the user.
As an example:
- With Lock Sticky Keys disabled:
The user presses the Shift key, then presses the F key. The computer translates this into Shift+F. Now if the user types a p, the computer interprets this as the letter p (no shift).
- With Lock Sticky Keys enabled:
The user presses the Shift key, then presses the F key. The computer translates this into Shift+F. Now if the user types a p, the computer interprets this as the letter P (Shift+P).
- Slow keys
If this option is enabled, the user must hold the key down for a specified period of time (adjustable with the slider) before the keystroke will be accepted. This helps prevent accidental key strokes.
- Bounce keys
If this option is enabled, the user must wait a specified delay (configurable with the slider) before the next key press can be accepted. This prevents accidental multiple key strokes.
Keyboard navigation helps people who have difficulty with track-balls, digital tablets and mice. These users can now configure KDE to use the arrow keys on the numeric keypad as a replacement.
To enable this option, place a mark in the check box labeled Move mouse with keyboard.
You can use the 5 sliders to adjust the Acceleration delay, Repeat interval, Acceleration time, Maximum speed and Acceleration profile to your comfort.
This section written by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Country and Language
This module of the KDE control center allows you select customization options that depend on the region of the world that you happen to live in. There are four different pages in this module, each of which is described in detail in the following sections.
In most cases, you can simply select the country you live in, and the other options will be set in an appropriate manner.
Below the pages of this module, you can see a preview of what the settings look like. In addition to positive and negative numbers, you can see how positive and negative currency values, long and short dates, and times are displayed. When you change any of the settings, the preview shows the effects of the changes before you apply them.
On this page, there are three lists, from which you can select the country, language, and character set that you want to use.
When you click on the Country list, a menu pops up showing major groups of countries. You can select one of these regions and see a list of the countries that are available for that region.
If the language for the country you have selected is available on your system, it will be selected automatically. For instance, choosing Germany as the country will select German as the language, if it is available.
The default character set, ISO-8859-1, is for use with the ‘Latin 1’ family of languages. If you are not using English or another Western European language, you will need to select the appropriate character set for your language so that fonts are displayed properly. For example, ISO-8859-5 should be used for Cyrillic, and ISO-8859-6 for Arabic.
Note
Note that selecting the character set is not sufficient on it's own! You will also need to have the appropriate fonts installed on your system.
On this page, you can select options for how numbers are displayed. The defaults are selected automatically based on the country which is currently selected.
In the text box labeled Decimal symbol, you can type the character that you want to use to separate the decimal portion of numbers. You could put anything here you wanted to, but really, . and , are the two characters that make the most sense.
Similarly, you can choose the character which is used to group units of thousands in numbers. If no character, not even a space, is present, then there will be no separator for thousands.
Finally, you can choose what character should be prefixed to positive and negative numbers respectively. For example, the default for English is not to have any prefix for positive numbers, and a - for negative numbers.
Unlike the display of ordinary numbers, conventions for currency values do vary from region to region. However, you will find that the defaults are probably fine.
The character or characters representing the currency symbol are based on the country that is currently selected. The decimal symbol and thousands separator work as they do for numbers. The text box labeled Fract digits allows you to specify the number of fractional digits used in displaying currency values.
For both positive and negative currency values, you can control whether the currency symbol appears before or after the numeric value, and how the sign of the value is distinguished in the display. Note that the symbols used for the sign of currency values are the same as those used for other numeric values.
If the checkbox labeled Prefix currency symbol is selected, the currency symbol appears before the numeric value. If this checkbox is cleared, then the currency symbol appears after the numeric value.
There are five choices for the way in which the sign of the currency value is handled:
The Parens around option displays the numeric value within a pair of parentheses.
The Before quantity money option displays the sign before the numeric value, but after any currency symbol that may be present.
The After quantity money option displays the sign after the numeric value, but before any currency symbol that may be present.
The Before money option displays the sign before the numeric value as well as any currency symbol that may be present.
The After money option displays the sign after the numeric value as well as any currency symbol that may be present.
On this page, there are text boxes for the time, long date, and short date, in which you can type format strings to control the way in which times and dates are displayed.
Except for the special codes described below, any other characters in the format strings are displayed literally. The special codes consist of a % sign followed by a character, as shown in the list of codes below:
Time format codes:
HH - The hour according to a 24-hour clock, using two digits (00 to 23).
hH - The hour according to a 24-hour clock, using one or two digits (0 to 23).
PH (uppercase eye) - The hour according to a 12-hour clock, using two digits (01 to 12).
pH (lowercase ell) - The hour according to a 12-hour clock, using one or two digits (1 to 12).
MM - The current minute using two digits (00 to 59).
SS - The current second using two digits (00 to 59).
AMPM - Either ‘am’ or ‘pm’ depending on the hour. Useful with PH or pH.
Date format codes:
YYYY - The year, using 4 digits.
YY - The year, using 2 digits.
MM - The month, using 2 digits (01 to 12).
mM - The month, using 1 or 2 digits (1 to 12).
MONTH - The name of the month.
SHORTMONTH - The abbreviated name of the month.
DD - The day, using 2 digits (01 to 31).
dD - The day, using 1 or 2 digits (1 to 31).
WEEKDAY - The name of the weekday.
SHORTWEEKDAY - The abbreviated name of the weekday.
Finally, if the checkbox labeled Start Week on Monday is selected, then calendars display weeks beginning with Monday as the first day of the week, and ending with Sunday. If this checkbox is cleared, then Sunday is shown as the first day of the week, and Saturday as the last.
Encryption Configuration
Many applications within KDE are capable of exchanging information using encrypted files and/or network transmissions.
Warning
All encryption schemes are only as strong as their weakest link. In general, unless you have some previous training/knowledge, it is better to leave this module unchanged.
The options within this module can be divided into two groups.
Two options along the bottom of the module Warn on entering SSL Mode and Warn on leaving SSL mode, allow you to determine if KDE should inform you when you enter or leave SSL encryption.
The remainder of the options are about determining which encryption methods to use, and which should not be used. Once you have selected the appropriate encryption protocols, simply click Apply to commit your changes.
Tip
Only make changes to this module if specific information about the strength or weakness of a particular encryption method is given to you from a reliable source.
This section written by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>.
Konsole
In this module, you can configure basic settings for Konsole, the KDE terminal. You can also easily create new schemata (appearance files) for Konsole.
This module contains several tab pages: General, Schema, Session and Write Daemon.
This tab page allows you to configure aspects of Konsole's functions. It contains the following options:
- Use Konsole as default terminal application
If you wish to have KDE use another terminal application by default, uncheck this box and enter the preferred application (wterm, rxvt, etc.) in the text field below.
- Show Terminal Size when Resizing
By default, Konsole will show the size (in characters) of the window when you are resizing, allowing you to make the window a specific size. Uncheck this box to turn off this behavior
- Show Frame
Draw an inner frame around the inside of the Konsole window.
- Warn for Open Session on Quit
When set, a warning appears when you try to close a Konsole window with multiple sessions.
- Blinking Cursor
If you have trouble spotting the cursor in the Konsole window, you can have it blink to draw your attention.
- Line Spacing
Change the space between lines of text.
- Consider the following characters part of a word when double clicking
It is a common UNIX® behavior to select a whole word when you double click on it, however, the computer's idea of a word may differ from yours. Add characters here that you would like to be considered always to be “part of a word”. For example, adding the @ character will allow you to double click to select an entire email address.
The Schema page will allow you to easily create, edit and save schemata, with text and background coloring, transparency and background images.
Jonathan Singer <jsinger@leeta.net>
Passwords
This module of the KControl gives you options for configuring the way in which the KDE su program treats passwords. KDE su will ask you for a password when you try to carry out some privileged actions, such as changing the date/time stored in your system clock, or adding new users on your computer.
Privileged actions such as those described above can only be carried out by root or a user with administrator permissions on your system. You will need to enter the password for the root account when you want to carry out such actions.
Important
The options in this module do not affect the behavior of passwords in other programs such as KMail.
There are two configuration options for passwords. The first is to control the visual feedback that you receive when you type a password. The actual characters in the password are never shown on the screen. You can choose to have each character represented by a * character. If you want to make it harder for someone who might be watching your screen to figure out how many characters there are in the password, you can choose to have each character in the password be represented by three asterisks rather than just one. Still another option is not to have any visual feedback at all, so nothing appears on the screen when you type a password.
If you work in a reasonably secure environment, you can check the option labeled Remember Passwords, and then choose a time period in minutes using the spinner labeled Timeout. (You can either type a number between 5 and 1200 minutes, or use the arrows on the spinner.)
If the Remember passwords option has been selected, kdesu will not ask you for a password for the length of time specified, after you have given the password once. Keep in mind, however, that this makes your workstation less secure.
Important
You should avoid selecting the Remember passwords option if you are working in an insecure area, such as a publicly accessible workstation. Also, note that choosing a shorter timeout may be better if you are in a less secure environment.
Session Manager
In this control module you can configure KDE's session manager. This includes just two options:
- Confirm logout
If this option is checked, when logging out KDE will display a dialog asking for confirmation. In this dialog you can also choose whether you want to restore your current session when you login the next time.
- Restore previous session when logging in
If this option is checked, KDE will save your current session's state when you logout. KDE will restore your session on the next login, so you can continue to work with a desktop just like you left it.
This section written by: Jost Schenck <jost@schenck.de>
Spell Checking
The configuration options available here are used by all KDE applications that use KSpell, which is a front end to ispell or aspell.
- Create root/affix combinations not in dictionary
- Consider run-together words as spelling errors
If this is selected, than words that appear in the dictionary separately, but have been run together, are considered to be spelling errors. For example, even though ‘alarm’ and ‘clock’ might be in your dictionary, if ‘alarmclock’ is not, it will be flagged as a spelling error.
- Dictionary:
Choose from the available dictionaries, which one to use for KSpell
- Encoding:
You should select the one that matches the character set you are using. In some cases, dictionaries will support more than one encoding. A dictionary might, for example, accept accented characters when Latin1 is selected, but accept email-style character combinations (like 'a for an accented a) when 7-Bit-ASCII is selected. Please see your dictionary's distribution for more information.
- Client:
You can choose which of the installed client applications on your system to use. ispell
This section was written by Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>, based on the KSpell manual by David Sweet.
The Battery Monitor Panel
Note
The laptop modules require the correct installation of the apm modules. For more information see the section entitled Laptop Information.
This panel controls whether or not a battery state icon appears in KDE's panel.
Once enabled a battery will appear in your docking bar as one of 3 icons - a battery with a red X through it indicates that APM has not been installed (in particular /proc/apm can't be read).
The other two icons indicate the battery state - a small plug with a bar beside it indictes your batteries are charging - the height of the blue portion of the bar indicate how full your batteries are. A small battery in the dock indicates you are running on batteries, the amount of blue in the battery indicates how full your batteries are.
If you left click on the docked icon a pop-up will tell you how much time you have left in minutes.
If you right click you get a pop-up that lets you put your laptop into suspend or standby modes - or to bring up the laptop configuration widget.
All features of Battery are configured from the Setup dialog.
The configuration window can be divided into 3 parts.
- Show Battery Monitor
This controls whether or not the battery icon appears. This is disabled by default.
- Poll
This setting controls how often, in seconds, the battery is updated.
The default is 20 seconds.
- Icons
The battery monitor uses three icons to represent the three states: No APM, Charging, and Not Charging. The icons shown are the “large” icons. To select new ones, click on the buttons and a icon loader dialog will pop up.
Note
If you create your own icons - they will work with the battery monitor - but be carefull.
All the exactly white pixels in the icon get filled by blue for the battery meter - if you want some white looking pixels to stay choose a slightly off-white or grey color for them.
The author does not claim to be a graphic artist and would love for someone to donate some better looking icons to the cause.
This section written by Paul Campbell <paul@taniwha.com>
Converted to Docbook by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Energy
This module is useful for any computer having a monitor labeled Energy Star Compliant. (Energy Star Compliant equipment is equipment that can be configured to automatically enter a power saving mode when appropriate, without human intervention.)
Tip
Energy Star Compliance can be applied to nearly any electrical device. This module, however, does not spin down hard drives, does not shutdown printers, etc. These settings only affect the behavior of your monitor.
For information on shutting down components on a laptop, do not use this module. Instead, refer to the module entitled Laptop Power Control Center, for details.
In the case of computer monitors, the computer can control the monitor, switching it between 4 states: On, Standby, Suspend, and Off.
Note
The following lists of states is a generalization, and you may find that your monitor will differ from the descriptions below.
‘ON’, is the normal operation of your monitor while you are using it.
‘STANDBY’ is usually a minor power saving level. This setting usually involves blanking the screen, and not firing the electron gun, but keeping the electron gun ‘energized’ and ready to go. When you need to use the monitor again, the monitor will come back on very quickly.
‘SUSPEND’ mode, is a very low power alternative. With most monitors, the screen is blanked, the electron gun is shut down, and the magnets that control the electron gun are powered down. While the power saving is substantial, to reactivate the monitor may take up to 10-15 seconds. The computer should always be able to return the monitor to On or Standby while in suspend mode..
‘OFF’, usually means just that. The computer monitor is turned off. This usually means that the computer will not be able to turn the monitor back on by itself. Obviously, this keeps power consumption to a bare minimum (zero).
To use this module, is very simple:
If your monitor is Energy Star Compliant, then you should put a mark in the check box labeled Enable Display Energy Saving. This will activate the Energy saving commands.
The next three slider bars, tell the computer how many minutes of inactivity before automatically switching to a new state. These numbers can be adjusted with either the sliders, or the spin boxes.
Note
These times are not additive, but all start counting at zero.
As an example:
If you set the Standby Mode to 10 minutes, the Suspend mode to 20 minutes, and the Power off at 30 minutes, and you stop using your computer at 9:00, then the monitor will:
Enter Standby mode at 9:10, enter Suspend mode at 9:20, and shut the power off at 9:30
When you are happy with the settings, click OK.
Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Laptop Power Control
Note
The laptop modules require the correct installation of the apm modules. For more information see the section entitled Laptop Information.
This tab provides a screensaver-style interface to the APM suspend/standby modes. It allows you to configure different wait times and/or actions depending on whether or not your laptop is plugged into the wall. It's intended to be used in addition to the existing KDE screensavers - you could for example disable suspend/standby when plugged in to the wall, but enable suspend with a shorter time than your normal screensaver kicks in while running on batteries.
Warning
Standby mode seems to do different things on different laptops - in particular on some it may not stay in standby mode and your laptop may be continually waking/sleeping if you leave it in this mode.
This panel configures the power-down feature of your laptop. It works as a sort of extreme screen saver.
You can configure different timeouts and behavior depending on whether your computer is plugged in or running on battery power.
For both the Powered and Not Powered, you should select one of the following options:
Standby - Puts your laptop into standby state
Suspend - Puts your laptop into suspend state
Off - Nothing happens at the specified time.
Below that, is a text box labeled Wait for. Enter the time in minutes, that your computer should remain unused, before the laptop is powered down.
This section written by Paul Campbell <paul@taniwha.com>
Converted to Docbook by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Low Battery Critical
Note
The laptop modules require the correct installation of the apm modules. For more information see the section entitled Laptop Information.
This module works in exactly the same manner as the Low battery Warning module. By convention, this module should be set to warn you or automatically perform any action necessary just prior to the loss of battery power.
This section written by Paul Campbell <paul@taniwha.com>
Converted to Docbook by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
The Low Battery Warning and Low Battery Critical Panels
These two modules work together to control what happens when a pre-determined low battery condition occurs. There are two of them, so you can set a warning for when time is getting close, and something more desperate for the last minute save or suspend.
Note
The laptop modules require the correct installation of the apm modules. For more information see the section entitled Laptop Information.
Low trigger
This field specifies at which point the battery low state is detected - it is the number of minutes left (according to APM) in your batteries. When this number is crossed the low state is triggered and one or more of the following things will occur
- Run Command
This is a shell command that will be executed when the battery low is detected. By default, this is turned off.
- Play Sound
This specifies a sound to play when battery low is detected. Simply specify the path to the file to have it played. By default, this is turned off.
- System Beep
Enabling this will cause the battery monitor to beep whenever the battery level drops below the preset value. This is probably the least intrusive, yet still active, method of alerting the user that the battery is low. By default, this is on.
- Notify
Enabling this will cause Battery to popup a window when the battery becomes low.
- Suspend
If you have set up /usr/bin/apm to be run setuid (see the instructions for the Power panel) then this check box will appear - if checked it will cause your computer to be put into Suspend mode.
- Standby
Like Suspend above, but it puts your computer into Standby mode.
This section written by Paul Campbell <paul@taniwha.com>
Converted to Docbook by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
MIDI Configuration
This module is used to determine which MIDI device KDE should use. You can also install a MIDI wrapper around the device if you want.
The use of this module is simple. Click once on the MIDI device that you would like to use from the list.
If you want to use a MIDI mapper, simply mark the checkbox below the list labeled Use MIDI Mapper. This will allow you to select the map in the text box below. You can click on the folder icon to browse your filesystem to find the map if you need it.
Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Mixer
This module can be used to configure some of the more basic options of KMix (the KDE Mixer).
The first section, relates to default volumes. With this section, you can save the current volume levels as the default. You can also load the default volume levels (thereby restoring them to the default status).
By selecting the Load volumes on login, you can instruct KDE to automatically load the default volume levels whenever KDE is started.
The next section, lets you specify what hardware KMix should look for.
The slider labeled Maximum number of probed mixers determines when KMix stops looking for soundcards. If you have one soundcard in your computer, you should set this to one. Using a higher number, means KMix will continue to search for a second sound card, which will delay the startup of KMix.
The slider labeled Maximum number of probed devices per mixer determines how many devices KMix tries to detect on each soundcard. If there are more devices on your soundcard than KMix shows on startup, you should increase this number.
This section written by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Sound Server
This control module is used to configure the settings for the aRts sound server (the KDE sound server).
The top option, labeled Start aRts soundserver on KDE startup, enables (or disables) the aRts sound server.
The rest of the panel consists of three options for the aRts soundserver.
- Enable network transparency
If this option is enabled, then sound requests from the network will be honored by the sound server. If this option is disabled, the sound server will only honor requests from the local computer.
- Exchange security and reference info over the X11 server
If you have enabled network transparency, this option will allow the exchange of security and reference information. If in doubt, and you have enabled network transparency, this option should be checked.
- Run soundserver with realtime priority
Enabling this option will give the soundserver priority over other applications, which will help alleviate any problems delivering uninterupted sound.
Note
This option may require permissions you do not have as a regular user.
This option also relies on certain real time support from your system which may not be available.
If you do not have the necessary permissions, or your system does not have the real time support necessary, enabling this option will not cause problems.
- Autosuspend if idle for
Normally aRts locks the sound card device, so that other applications cannot use it. If you enable this option, then if aRts has been idle for the amount of time you set, it will suspend itself, allowing any application access to the sound hardware. If aRts receives another request, it will unsuspend, and continue as normal. Enabling this option may cause a small delay when you start an aRts application.
- Display messages using
The application that will be used to display messages from the aRts server. The default is artsmessage and this should probably not be changed unless you have thoroughly read the aRts documentation.
- Message Display
You can select how detailed the messages are that aRts displays to you. You can choose to see only error messages, debug messages that are useful to the developers (you probably only want that level if you are a developer, or one has asked you to set this). Or you can choose to see generally informational messages when aRts is doing something such as suspending itself.
At the bottom of this page is a button that allows you to Test Sound.
The first option you can configure in the Sound I/O panel is the Sound I/O method. It tells aRts which sound system to use for input and output of sound. Current choices are ALSA (Advanced Linux® Sound Architecture), OSS (Open Sound System), no audio at all and autodetect. In most cases ‘Autodetect’ will be perfect for you.
Other options are:
- Enable full duplex operation
This option allows the soundserver to play and record sound at the same time. This option should be enabled if you use applications (such as internet telephones) which require simultaneous record and playback.
- Use custom sound device
Normally, the sound server defaults to using the device called /dev/dsp for sound output. That should work in most cases. An exception is for instance if you are using devfs, then you should use /dev/sound/dsp instead. Other alternatives are things like /dev/dsp0 or /dev/dsp1 if you have a soundcard that supports multiple outputs, or you have multiple soundcards.
- Use custom sampling rate
Normally, the sound server defaults to using a sampling rate of 44100 Hz (CD quality), which is supported on almost any hardware. If you are using certain Yamaha soundcards, you might need to configure this to 48000 Hz here, if you are using old SoundBlaster cards, like SoundBlaster Pro, you might need to change this to 22050 Hz. All other values are possible, too, and may make sense in certain contexts (i.e. professional studio equipment).
- Other custom options
There are some options offered by aRts which may not be available in this control module, so you can add command line options here which will directly be passed to artsd. The options will be appended, so they will in doubt override the choices made in the GUI. To see the possible choices, open a Konsole window, and type artsd -h.
- Audio buffer size (response time)
This slider determines how quickly the soundserver can use your computers resources. The faster the response time, the higher the CPU load will be.
Tip
I would recommend that you start with the soundserver set at 250 ms, and use KDE for a while. If you notice that the sound does not work correctly, increase the responsivness one step at a time until the problems disappear.
This section written by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Updated by Jost Schenck <jost@schenck.de>
System bell
The system bell or beep is a feature of the X server, which attempts to make good use of the available hardware.
Note
It isn't always possible for the X server to actually make a beep sound with exactly the parameters selected due to hardware limitations. For example, on most PCs, volume control is not very good so the X server seems to fake low volume with a reduced duration of the sound. Thus, if the settings don't seem to do anything, this is because the X server and/or the hardware don't support anything better.
Users are able to set the following parameters for the bell:
volume (percentage of “maximum” volume)
pitch (in Hz)
duration (in milliseconds)
You can use the test button to hear how the current settings will sound.
Pat Dowler, Matthias Hoelzer <mhk@kde.org>
Converted to KDE 2.0 by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
System Notification
KDE, like all applications, needs to inform the user when a problem occurs, a task is completed, or something has happened. KDE uses a set of “System Notifications” to keep the user informed on what is happening.
Using this module, you can determin what KDE does to communicate each event.
The panel consists of a large list of specific events which need to be communicated to the user. This list is organized into a tree, so that you can rapidly find the notification you are looking for.
To configure a notification, simply click on a group, which will open up a subgroup. You can click on subgroups, which may lead to more subgroups, or it may lead to a list of notifications.
Once you have found the notification you are looking for, double-click on the notification.
You will be presented with 4 options:
- Log to file
This will tell KDE to add the notification to the end of a file. Once you place a mark in front of this option, you can enter a filename at the bottom of the module. If you click on the folder to the right of the blank, you can browse through your filesystem and select the file you want.
- Play sound
When this notification is activated, KDE will play a sound. Once you place a mark in front ofthis option, you can enter a filename at the bottom of the module.
If you click on the folder to the right of the blank, you can browse through your filesystem and select the file you want.
By clicking the arrow button to the right of the folder button, you can hear the sound.
Note
Currently, you can only play .wav files. This will likely change in future releases.
Maybe you want to use a special media player to play sound files, e.g. because you use sound files in a special format or you don't use the aRts sound daemon. In that case, check the Use external player option and enter the full path and name of the program you want to use into the text field.
- Show messagebox
When this notification is activated, a message box appears in the middle of the screen to inform the user of the message..
- Standard error output
When this notification is activated, the message is sent to the standard output.
Tip
You are not limited to choosing one option, you can use any combination of these four options for each notification.
You can turn off (or on) all sounds at once, for all installed applications, with the Enable All Sounds Button.
This section written by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Alarm Daemon
This module allows you to configure KAlarmd, the alarm daemon from the kdepim package. It will not be available if you have not installed this package.
There are only two options for this module:
- Start alarm daemon automatically at login
Check this to start the alarm daemon whenever you start a KDE session.
- Check interval [minutes]
How long (in minutes) the alarm daemon should wait between checks for alarms coming due.
These settings apply to every application which uses the alarm daemon. Currently, the applications which use it include KOrganizer and KAlarm. For more information, see their respective handbooks.
Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>
Date and Time
You can use this module to alter the system date and time, using a convienent graphical interface.
Note
You must have system administrator (root) access to change the system date and time. If you do not have this access level, this module will only show you the current settings.
When you first start, you are in display mode only. To modify your settings, click on Administrator Mode. If you are logged in as root, you will go straight to the change dialog. If not, KDE will ask for a superuser password.
You set the date using the left half of the module. Simply choose your month (the drop down box at the top), year (the spin box at the top), and the day of the month (simply click on the day in the calendar).
You set the time using the spin box at the bottom of the clock. Simply click in the hour, minutes or seconds box. You can directly enter your value, or you can click on the + or - buttons to adjust that value up one value.
Note
The time is represented in 24 hour format. If you want the system time to be set to 8:00 PM, you need to set the hour spinbox to 20 (8 + 12). If you want the system time set to 8:00 AM, you should set the hour spinbox to 8.
You can then click on the Time Zone tab.
Simply select your new timezone from the drop down box in the middle of the screen
When you have set the correct date and time, simply click Apply to make the changes permanent.
Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Font Installer
Login Manager
Using this module, you can configure the KDE graphical login manager kdm. You can change how the login screen looks, who has access using the login manager and who can shutdown the computer.
In order to organize all of these options, this module is divided into five sections: Appearance, Font, Background, Sessions, Users and Convenience.
You can switch between the sections using the tabs at the top of the window.
Note
If you are not currently logged in as a superuser, you will need to click the Administrator Mode Button. You will then be asked for a superuser password. Entering a correct password will allow you to modify the settings of this module.
From this page you can change the visual appearance of kdm, KDE's graphical login manager.
The greeting string is the title of the login screen. If the string contains the word HOSTNAME it will be translated to the domainless name of the machine kdm is installed on.
You can then choose to show either the current system time, a logo or nothing special in the login box. Make your choice in the radio buttons labled Logo area. Using the Positions setting, you can choose to either center the content of the logo area or to position it using fixed coordinates.
If you chose Show logo you can now choose a logo:
Drop an image file on the image button.
Click on the image button an select a new image from the image chooser dialog.
If you do not specify a logo the default $KDEDIR/share/apps/kdm/pics/kdelogo.xpm will be displayed.
While KDE's style depends on the settings of the user logged in, the style used by kdm can be configured using the GUI Style option.
Below that, you have two dropdown boxes to choose the language and the country for your login box.
From this section of the module you can change the fonts used in the login window.
You can select three different font styles from the drop down box (Greeting, Fail, Standard) When you click on the Change font button a dialog appears from which you can select the new characteristics for the font style..
The Greeting font is the font used for the title (Greeting String).
The Fail font is used when a login fails.
The Standard font is used all other places in the login window.
An example of each font can be seen in the Example Box.
Here you can change the desktop background which will be displayed when a user logs in. You can have a single color or an image as a background. If you have an image as background and select center the selected background color will be used around the image if it isn't large enough to cover the entire desktop.
The background colors and effects are controlled by the options on the tab labeled Background and you select a background image and its placement from the options on the tab labeled Wallpaper.
To change the default background color(s) simply click either of the color bottons and select a new color.
The dropdown box above the color buttons provides you with several different blend effects. Choose one from the list, and it will be previewed on the small monitor at the top of the window. Your choices are:
- Flat
By choosing this mode, you select one color (using the color button labeled Color 1), and the entire background is covered with this one color.
- Pattern
By choosing this mode, you select two colors (using both color buttons).
You then select a pattern by clicking Setup. This opens a new dialog window, which gives you the opportunity to Select a pattern. Simply click once on the pattern of your choice, then click on OK, and KDE will render the pattern you selected using the two colors you selected. For more on patterns, see the section Background: Adding, Removing and Modifying Patterns.
- Background Program
By selecting this option, you can have KDE use an external program to determine the background. This can be any program of your choosing. For more information on this option, see the section entitled Background: Using an external program.
- Horizontal Gradient
By choosing this mode, you select two colors (using both color buttons). KDE will then start with the color selected by Color 1 on the left edge of the screen, and slowly transform into the color selected by Color 2 by the time it gets to the right edge of the screen.
- Vertical Gradient
By choosing this mode, you select two colors (using both color buttons). KDE will then start with the color selected by Color 1 on the top edge of the screen, and slowly transform into the color selected by Color 2 as it moves to the bottom of the screen.
- Pyramid Gradient
By choosing this mode, you select two colors (using both color buttons). KDE will then start with the color selected by Color 1 in each corner of the screen, and slowly transform into the color selected by Color 2 as it moves to the center of the screen.
- Pipecross Gradient
By choosing this mode, you select two colors (using both color buttons). KDE will then start with the color selected by Color 1 in each corner of the screen, and slowly transform into the color selected by Color 2 as it moves to the center of the screen. The “shape” of this gradient is different then the pyramid gradient.
- Elliptic Gradient
By choosing this mode, you select two colors (using both color buttons). KDE will then start with the color selected by Color 2 in the center of the screen, and slowly transform into the color selected by Color 1 as it moves to the edges, in an elliptical pattern.
The setup button is only needed for if you select Background program or Patterns. In these instances, another window will appear to configure the specifics.
Wallpaper
To select a new background image first, click on the Wallpapers tab, then you can either select an image from the drop-down list labled Wallpaper or select Browse... and select an image file from a file selector.
The image can be displayed in six different ways:
- No wallpaper
No image is displayed. Just the background colors.
- Centered
The image will be centered on the screen. The background colors will be present anywhere the image does not cover.
- Tiled
The image will be duplicated until it fills the entire desktop. The first image will be placed in the upper left corner of the screen, and duplicated downward and to the right.
- Center Tiled
The image will be duplicated until it fills the entire desktop. The first image will be placed in the center of the screen, and duplicated upward, downward to the right, and to the left.
- Centered Maxpect
The image will be placed in the center of the screen. It will be scaled to fit the desktop, but it will not change the aspect ratio of the original image. This will provide you with an image that is not distorted.
- Scaled
The image will be scaled to fit the desktop. It will be streched to fit all four corners.
Allow to shutdown
Use this dropdown box to choose who is allowed to shut down:
None: No one can shutdown the computer using kdm. You must be logged in, and execute a command.
All: Everyone can shutdown the computer using kdm.
Root only: kdm requires that the root password be entered before shutting down the computer.
Console only: The user must be at this console, to shut down the computer.
Commands
Use these 3 blanks to define the exact shutdown command.
The shutdown command defaults to:
/sbin/shutdown
The restart command defaults to:
/sbin/reboot
The Console mode (which restarts the computer as a console only terminal) defaults to:
/sbin/init 3
When Show boot options is enabled, kdm will on reboot offer you options for the lilo boot manager. For this feature to work, you will need to supply the correct paths to your lilo command and to lilos map file.
Define which session types should be accessable from the login window.
For more information on this subject, look at /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession to find your xdm setup files. Also review the xdm man pages, especially under the SESSION PROGRAM section
To add a session, type its name in the blank entitled New types, and click Add new.
To remove a session, select the session from the list and click Remove.
From here you can change the way users are represented in the login window.
As you look on this window, you will see three lists (All users, selected users, and no-show users). You also see an image box, and a set of options along the right side of the window.
The first thing you must decide, is if you are going to show users or not.
If you choose to show users, then the login window will show images (which you select), of a list of users. When someone is ready to login, they select their user name/image, enter their password, and they are granted access.
If you choose not to show users, then the login window will be more traditional. Users will need to type their username, and password to gain entrance. This is the preferred way if you have many users on this terminal.
Along the right edge of the window, are two check boxes:
If Show users is selected, you have chosen to show images of users, instead of making them type their login name.
If Sort users is selected, then the list of users will be sorted alphabetically in the login window. If unchecked, users will be listed in the same order as they are on this page. If Show users is not checked, this has no effect.
Below the user image box, and above the Show users check box, is a set of two radio buttions:
Show only selected users: If this option is selected, only the users contained in the list labelled Selected Users, will be displayed in the login window. If Show users is not checked, this has no effect.
Show all users but no-show users: If this option is selected, all users will be listed, except those users contained in the list entitled No show users. If Show users is not checked, this has no effect.
The pages contains three listboxes. The large listbox on the left shows all the users on the system which might be a genuine user.
The top rightmost listbox shows the selected users and the bottom rightmost listbox shows the users we don't want displayed in the login window.
To move a user from one listbox to another you click on the username in the listbox and selects >> to move the user from the leftmost box the the rightmost box or << to move the user from the rightmost box to the leftmost box.
Note
This section of the manual only applies if Show users is selected. If it is not, this image box has no effect.
Every user on the system can be represented by a image. The image for the user is kept in a file called $KDEDIR/share/apps/kdm/pics/users/$USER.xpm. If the user doesn't have such a file the file $KDEDIR/share/apps/kdm/pics/users/default.xpm will be used instead.
To assign a new image to a user just select the user in one of the listboxes and either drop an imagefile on the image button to the right or click on the image button and select a new image from the image selector.
If no user is currently selected you will be asked if you want to change the default image.
The replacement is performed by a Konqueror process so if the imagefile all ready exists you will be prompted by Konqueror if you want to replace it. If you confirm the image will be replaced - you will NOT have to press the Apply button.
In the convenience tab you can configure some options that make life easier for lazy people, like auto login or disabling passwords.
Important
Please think more than twice before using these options. Every option in the convenience tab is well suited to seriously compromise your system security. Practically, these options are only to be used in a completely non-critical environment, e.g. a private computer at home.
Automatic login will give anyone access to a certain account on your system without doing any authentication. You can enable it using the option Enable auto-login.
Automatic login comes in two flavours: truly automatic login acts like you would expect automatic login to, i.e. kdm will automatically login without expecting any input from the user. Enable this using the Truly automatic login option. If this option is not enabled, kdm will start normally, enabling you to login as any user, and will only perform automatic login if you kill the X server, e.g. by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.
You can choose the account to be used for automatic login in the list below.
Using this feature, you can allow certain users to login without having to provide their password. Enable this feature using the Enable password-less logins option.
Below this option you'll see a list of users for which a password is required, as well as a (by default empty) list of users that don't need to provide a password. When Enable password-less logins is enabled, you can move users from one list into the other, by selecting them and then click the >> and << buttons.
Important
Again, this option should only be used in a safe environment. If you enable it on a rather public system you should take care that only users with heavy access restrictions are granted password-less login, e.g. guest.
The Automatically login after X server crash option allows you to skip the authentication procedure when your X server accidentally crashed. Show previous user will show the name of the last login already entered into the login field in kdm. Some site administrators would consider even this a possible security weakness, because potential attackers then know at least one valid login.
This section written by:
Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>, Thomas Tanghus<tanghus@earthling.net>, and Steffen Hansen <stefh@mip.ou.dk>. Updated by Jost Schenck <jost@schenck.de>.
The XML RPC Daemon
Cache
This module also allows you control the size of the local cache directory used by Konqueror. Note that each user account on your computer has a separate cache directory, and this directory is not shared with other web browsers such as Netscape®.
Storing local copies of web pages that you have visited allows Konqueror to quickly load their contents on subsequent visits. It will only be necessary to reload the contents from the original site if they have changed since your last visit, or if you click the reload button in Konqueror.
On the other page, labeled Cache, you can see the controls that are related to cache settings. If you really don't want any of the web pages you visit to be stored on your computer, you can disable Konqueror's disk cache by clearing the checkbox labeled Use Cache
You can set here how aggressively Konqueror keeps the cache up to date. Keep Cache in sync means that Konqueror will hit the cache for all objects, downloading them if they are not there, and then display the item from the cache. Use Cache if possible means that Konqueror will try the cache, and if an object is not there, it will directly download it for display. Offline Browsing Mode means that Konqueror will try the cache, and if an object is not there, it will not attempt to download it from the Internet.
You can control the size of the cache by typing a number into the text box labeled Average Cache Size. This is the average amount of space in kilobytes that the cache directory is allowed to use. When the cache grows too large, Konqueror will delete older files to reduce the size of the cache directory.
This is however, only an average, and during a browsing session the cache could become substantially larger.
You can use the Clear Cache button to empty the cache at any time.
Cookies
Cookies are a mechanism used by web sites to store and retrieve information using your browser. For example, a web site may allow you to customize the content and layout of the pages you see, so that your choices are persistent across different visits to that web site.
The web site is able to remember your preferences by storing a cookie on your computer. Then, on future visits, the web site retrieves the information stored in the cookie to format the content of the site according to your previously specified preferences.
Thus, cookies play a very useful role in web browsing. Unfortunately, web sites often store and retrieve information in cookies without your explicit knowledge or consent. Some of this information may be quite useful to the web site owners, for example, by allowing them to collect summary statistics on the number of visits different areas of the web sites get, or to customize banner advertising.
The cookies module of the KControl allows you to set policies for the use of cookies when you are browsing the web with the Konqueror web browser.
Warning
Note that the policies that you set using this control module will not apply to other web browsers such as Netscape®.
Using the Policy tab, you can configure the KDE applications will handle cookies. You can do this by specifying a general cookie policy as well as special cookie policies for certain domains or hosts.
The top of the policy tab has a checkbox labeled Enable Cookies. If you leave this unchecked, cookies will be completely disabled. However, this may make browsing rather inconvenient, especially as some web sites require the use of browsers with cookies enabled.
Therefore, you will probably want to enable cookies, and then set specific policies on how you want them to be handled. There are three possible options, as seen in the group of radio buttons labeled "Default Policy".
- Ask for confirmation before accepting cookies
If this option is selected, you will be asked for confirmation every time a cookie is stored or retrieved. You can selectively accept or reject each cookie. The confirmation dialog will also allow you to set a domain specific policy, if you do not want to confirm each cookie for that domain.
- Accept all cookies by default
If this option is selected, all cookies will be accepted without asking for confirmation.
- Reject all cookies by default
If this option is selected, all cookies will be rejected without asking for confirmation.
In addition to the default policy for handling of cookies, which you can set by selecting one of the three options described above, you can also set policies for specific host domains using the controls in the Domain Specific group.
The Ask, Accept, or Reject policy can be applied to a specific domain by clicking on the Add... button, which brings up a dialog. In this dialog, you can type the name of the domain (with a leading dot), then select the policy you want to apply to this domain. Note that entries may also get added while you are browsing, if the default policy is to ask for confirmation, and you choose a general policy for a specific host (for example, by selecting Reject all cookies from this domain when asked to confirm a cookie.)
You can also select a specific host domain from the list, and click the Change... button to choose a different policy for that domain than the one shown in the list.
To delete a domain specific policy, choose a domain from the list, and then click the Delete button. The default policy will apply to domains which have been deleted from the list.
In the Management tab you can browse and selectively delete cookies that have been set in the past.
In the upper part of this dialog you can see a list of domains, displayed as a tree. Click on the little + next to a domain to see all cookies that have been set for this particular target domain. If you select one of these cookies, you'll notice that its contents will show up in the frame Cookie Details below.
By clicking the Delete button you can now delete the selected cookie. Click Delete All to delete all cookies stored.
Choose Reload List to reload the list from your hard disk. You might want to do this if you have had the module open and are testing websites, or have made many changes in the module itself.
Enhanced Browsing
Konqueror offers some features to enhance your browsing experience. Currently, two such features are Internet Keywords and Web Shortcuts.
You may already have noticed that KDE is very internet friendly. For example, you can click on the Run menu item or type the keyboard shortcut assigned to that command (Alt+F2, unless you have changed it) and type in a URI. [1]
Internet Keywords make it easier for you to use well known names such as brand names, celebrities names, etc. For example, instead of typing http://www.kde.org/, you can just type KDE, or even K Desktop Environment. The name you type will be resolved to a URI, and you will be redirected to the appropriate location.
Web shortcuts, on the other hand, let you come up with new pseudo URL schemes, or shortcuts, that basically let you parameterize commonly used URIs. For example, if you like the Google search engine, you can configure KDE so that a pseudo URL scheme like gg will trigger a search on Google. This way, typing gg:my query will search for my query on Google.
Note
One can see why we call these pseudo URL schemes. They are used like a URL scheme, but the input is not properly URL encoded, so one will type google:kde apps and not google:kde+apps.
You can use Internet Keywords in KDE in interactive navigation applications like Konqueror. You can use web shortcuts wherever you would normally use URIs. Shortcuts for several search engines should already be configured on your system, but you can add new keywords, and change or delete existing ones in the enhanced browsing control module.
There is a single tab in this control module. The title of the tab is Keywords. This tab features two main boxes, one for Internet Keywords and one for web shortcuts.
The top of the dialog has a checkbox labeled Enable Internet Keywords. If this option is selected, you can use Internet Keywords in KDE.
Also at the top of the dialog, there is a dropdown list of all the known web shortcuts, which is labeled Fallback Search Engine. You can either select one of the shortcuts from the list or leave it at None. If you select a web shortcut here, whenever you type something that is not an Internet Keyword, your input will be passed to the selected web shortcut. This provides a very pleasant navigation and search experience, where Internet Keywords provide direct navigation, and you are in control of how to search for information when the Internet Keywords database does not contain the name you type. (If you select None then a directory listing of relevant Internet Keywords is provided instead.) Also, if you type something that starts with a question mark, as in ? KDE, your input is directly passed to the web shortcut after stripping the question mark off, bypassing Internet Keywords entirely. This is useful when you really intend to do a search on your favorite search engine.
The descriptive names of defined web shortcuts are shown in a listbox. You may have to use the horizontal scrollbar and move to the right side of the list to see the actual keywords associated with the descriptive names. As with other lists in KDE, you can click on a column heading to toggle the sort order between ascending and descending.
If you doubleclick on a specific entry in the list of defined search providers, the details for that entry are shown in a popup dialog. In addition to the descriptive name for the item, you can also see the URI which is used, as well as the associated shortcuts which you can type anywhere in KDE where URIs are expected. A given search provider can have multiple shortcuts, separated by a comma.
The text boxes are used not only for displaying information about an item in the list of web shortcuts, but also for modifying or adding new items.
You can change the contents of either the Search URI or the URI Shortcuts text box. Click OK to save your changes, and Cancel to exit the dialog with no changes.
If you examine the contents of the Search URI text box, you will find that most, if not all of the entries have a \{@} in them. This sequence of two characters acts as a parameter, which is to say that they are replaced by whatever you happen to type after the colon character that is between a shortcut and its parameter. Let's consider some examples to clarify this idea.
Suppose that the URI is http://www.google.com/search?q=\{@}, and gg is a shortcut to this URI. Then, typing gg:alpha is equivalent to http://www.google.com/search?q=alpha. You could type anything after the : character; whatever you have typed simply replaces the \{@} characters, after being converted to the appropriate character set for the search provider and then properly URL-encoded. Only the \{@} part of the search URI is touched, the rest of it is supposed to be properly URL-encoded already and is left as is.
You can also have shortcuts without parameters. Suppose the URI was file:/home/me/mydocs/kofficefiles/kword and the shortcut was mykword. Then, typing mykword: is the same as typing the complete URI. Note that there is nothing after the colon when typing the shortcut, but the colon is still required in order for the shortcut to be recognized as such.
By now, you will have understood that even though these shortcuts are called web shortcuts, they really are shortcuts to parameterized URIs, which can point not only to web sites like search engines but also to anything else that can be pointed to by a URI. Web shortcuts are a very powerful feature of navigation in KDE.
This section written by Krishna Tateneni <tateneni@pluto.njcc.com> and Yves Arrouye <yves@realnames.com>
[1] Uniform Resource Identifier. A standardized way of referring to a resource such as a file on your computer, a world wide web address, an email address, etc....
Browsing With Konqueror
The Konqueror Browser module of KControl allows you to select various options for the appearance and behavior of Konqueror, the integrated web browser of KDE.
There are five main tabs in this control center module, which are described in detail in the following sections. Briefly, the five tabs are:
- HTML:
Options for handling of links and images in HTML pages.
- Appearance:
Options for the fonts used in displaying web pages.
- Java:
Options for handling Java code embedded in web pages, as well as the security policies to be applied to such code.
- JavaScript:
Options for handling JavaScript code embedded in web pages.
- Plugins
Options about Plugins
The first option you can enable on this page is Enable completion of forms. If you check this box, Konqueror will try to remember what you answer to form questions, and will try to fill in forms for you with the answers you previously used.
You can configure the number of form items Konqueror remembers with the slider below labelled Maximum completions
Note
Of course, anything Konqueror fills in a form with, you can still edit before submitting the form!
The next option is Change cursor over links. If this option is selected, the shape of the cursor will change (usually to a hand) whenever it moves over a hyperlink. This makes it easy to identify links, especially when they are in the form of images.
As a convenience feature, if you enable Right click goes back in history, then clicking an empty area (i.e. not a link) in the Konqueror window will act as if you pressed the Back button on the toolbar.
The next setting is Underline links. /ou can choose to underline links Always. If this option is selected, any text on web pages that acts as a link will be shown in an underlined font. While many web pages do use color to distinguish text that acts as a link, underlining makes it very easy to spot links.
If you don't like underlined links, you can choose Never, so that no links are underlined. Or you can choose a middle ground, Hover, so that links are underlined when the mouse cursor is resting over them, and not underlined the rest of the time.
Many web pages use animated gif images, and these can be very annoying, and in some cases, quite a drain on your system resources. The Animations option lets you choose when animations are enabled. The default is enabled, but you can set this to disabled, or to run the animation only once, even if the file itself contains instructions that the animation should run more times, or continuously.
Finally, the checkbox labeled Automatically load images, allows you to control whether images on web pages are loaded by default. Unless you have a very slow connection, you will probably want to leave this option selected, as there are many web pages that are difficult to use without images. If you don't select the option to automatically load images, you can still view the text on the page, and then load the images if you need them.
Under this tab, you can select various options related to the use of fonts. Although the shapes and sizes of fonts are often part of the design of a web page, you can select some default settings for Konqueror to use.
The first thing you can set here is the font size. There are two settings which work together to allow you a comfortable browsing experience.
Firstly, you can set a Minimum Font Size. This means, even if the font size is set specifically in the page you are viewing, Konqueror will ignore that instruction and never show smaller fonts than you set here.
Next you can set a Medium Font Size. This is not only the default size of text, used when the page doesn't specify sizes, but it is also used as the base size that relative font sizes are calculated against. That is, the HTML instruction ‘smaller’, it means smaller than the size you set for this option.
For either option, you can select the exact font size in points by using the up/down spin control (or just typing) next to the option label.
These options are independent of each other. Pages that do not set a font size, or ask for the default, will display with the size you set from Medium Font Size, while any pages that ask for a size smaller than your Minimum Font Size setting will instead show that size. The one does not affect the other.
The remaining options are for the fonts to be associated with different types of markup used in HTML pages. Note that many web pages may override these settings. If you click anywhere on a control which shows a font name, a list of font names appears, and you can select a different font if you like. (If there are a lot of fonts, a vertical scrollbar appears in the list to allow you to scroll through all of the fonts.)
You can set a font for each ‘type’ of markup, for each Charset, by changing the character set in the first drop down box, and then selecting a font for each category below. This would take quite some time, so you may just want to set up the fonts for your default character set. Most English speaking users will use iso8859-1
Below this, you can set a Font size adjustment for this encoding. Sometimes the fonts you want to use for a particular encoding or language are much larger or smaller than average, so you can use this setting to bring them into line.
You can set a default encoding that Konqueror should assume pages are when rendering them. The default setting is Use language encoding, but you can change it to any encoding available in the list.
Java™ allows applications to be downloaded and run by a web browser, provided you have the necessary software installed on your machine. Many web sites make use of Java™ (for example, online banking services or interactive gaming sites). You should be aware that running programs from unknown sources could pose a threat to the security of your computer, even if the potential extent of the damage is not great.
The checkboxes under Global Settings allows you to turn Java™ support on for all web sites by default. You can also select to turn Java™ on or off for specific hosts. To add a policy for a specific host, click the Add... button to bring up a dialog in which you can type the host name and then choose to accept or reject Java™ code from that particular host, which will add the domain to the list on the left of the page.
You can select a host in the list, and click the Change... button to choose a different policy for that host. Clicking the Delete button removes the policy for the selected host; after deletion, the global settings will then apply to that host. You can import policies from a file by clicking the Import... button. To save the current list to a compressed archive file, click the Export... button.
Finally, the group of controls labeled Java Runtime Settings allows you to set some options for the way in which Java™ should run. If you select the Show Java Console option, Konqueror will open a console window from which Java™ applications can read and write text. While most Java™ applications will not require such a console, it could be helpful in diagnosing problems with Java™ applications.
The Shutdown Applet Server when inactive checkbox allows you to save resources by closing the Java™ Applet Server when it is not in use, rather than leaving it running in the background. Leaving this disabled may make Java™ applets start up faster, but it will use system resources when you are not using a Java™ applet. If you enable this, you can set a timeout.
You can either opt to have Konqueror automatically detect the Java™ installation on your system, or specify the path to the installation yourself by selecting Use user-specified Java. You may want to choose the latter method, for instance, if you have multiple Java™ installations on your system, and want to specify which one to use. If the Java™ Virtual Machine you are using requires any special startup options, you can type them in the text box labeled Additional Java Arguments.
Despite the name, JavaScript is not related at all to Java™.
The first part of this page works the same as the Java™ page settings.
The checkboxes under Global Settings allows you to turn JavaScript support on for all web sites by default. You can also select to turn JavaScript on or off for specific hosts. To add a policy for a specific host, click the Add... button to bring up a dialog in which you can type the host name and then choose to accept or reject JavaScript code from that particular host, which will add the domain to the list on the left of the page.
You can select a host in the list, and click the Change... button to choose a different policy for that host. Clicking the Delete button removes the policy for the selected host; after deletion, the global settings will then apply to that host. You can import policies from a file by clicking the Import... button. To save the current list to a compressed archive file, click the Export... button.
The final set of options on this page determine what happens when a page uses JavaScript to try to open a new window. You can set Konqueror to Allow all such requests, Ask each time a request is made, or Deny all popup requests.
There is currently only one option on this page: Enable Plugins globally. If you disable this checkbox, then Konqueror will not use any plugins. If you enable it, then any installed and configured plugins that it can find will be used by Konqueror
This section written by:
Krishna Tateneni <tateneni@pluto.njcc.com>.
Additional material by Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>
Netscape Plugins
As Netscape®'s Navigator has been a web browsing standard for many years, so-called Netscape® plugins have appeared that allow rich web content. Using those plugins, web sites can contain PDF files, flash animations, video, etc. With Konqueror, you can still use these plugins to take advantage of rich web content.
Note
Netscape® plugins should not be confused with Konqueror plugins. The latter ones specifically extend Konqueror's functionality; they are normally not used to display rich web content.
Konqueror has to know where your Netscape® plugins are installed. This can be in several places, i.e. you might have system-wide plugins in /opt/netscape/plugins and your personal plugins in $HOME/.netscape/plugins. However, Konqueror will not automatically use the installed plugins: it first has to scan a list of directories. You can initiate the scan by clicking Scan for new plugins. Alternatively, you can enable Scan for new plugins at KDE startup so Konqueror will scan the appropriate directories every time KDE starts up, to see whether new plugins have been installed.
Note
Enabling Scan for new plugins at KDE startup can considerably slow down the startup procedure, and is known to give difficulty on certain installations. Turn this option off if you experience problems.
To find plugins, Konqueror will look in the directories specified in the Scan Directories frame. When you use this control module for the first time, this list will already be filled with reasonable paths that should work on most operating systems. If you need to provide a new path, click the New button; then you can either enter the new path in the text edit box to the left, or choose a directory using the file dialog by clicking the New... button. As scanning the directories can take a little time, you might want to remove directories from the list where you know that no plugins are installed: do this by selecting a directory and clicking Remove. Using the Up and Down buttons you can change the order in which directories will be scanned by moving the selected directory up or down.
As usual, click Apply to save your changes permanently.
In this tab, you can see a list of the Netscape® plugins found by Konqueror, displayed as a tree. Double click on a plugin to fold it out and you'll see that the different mime types this plugin can handle will be displayed as branches. Fold out a mime type to see its info.
This tab is for informational purposes only.
This section written by: Jost Schenck <jost@schenck.de>
Proxies
Proxies are programs running on a computer that acts a server on the network you are connected to (whether by modem or other means). These programs receive HTTP and FTP requests, retrieve the relevant files from the internet, and pass them on to the client computer that made the requests.
When you have configured a proxy, HTTP and/or FTP requests are re-routed through the computer that is acting as a proxy server. However, you can also select specific hosts which should be contacted directly, rather than through the proxy server. If you are on a local network, for example, access to local hosts probably doesn't need to go through a proxy server.
You should only need to configure a proxy server if your network administrator requires it (if you are a dial-up user, that would be your internet service provider or ISP). Otherwise, especially if you are feeling a bit confused about this proxy business, but everything seems to be fine with your internet connection, you don't need to change anything.
The first option on the page is a checkbox labeled Use Proxy.
Check this box to enable the use of proxy servers for your internet connection.
Please note that using proxy servers is optional, but has the benefit or advantage of giving you faster access to data on the internet.
If you are uncertain whether or not you need to use a proxy server to connect to the internet, please consult with your internet service provider's setup guide or your system administrator.
If you have selected to use a proxy, you have several methods to configure the settings for it.
- Automatically detected script file
Select this option if you want the proxy setup configuration script file to be automatically detected and downloaded.
This option only differs from the next choice in that it does not require you to supply the location of the configuration script file. Instead, it will be automatically downloaded using “Web Access Protocol Discovery” (WAPD).
Note
If you have a problem using this setup, please consult the FAQ section at http://www.konqueror.org for more information.
- Specified script file
Select this option if your proxy support is provided through a script file located at a specific address. You can then enter the address in the location text box, or use the folder icon to browse to it.
- Preset environment variables
Some systems are setup with $HTTP_PROXY to allow graphical as well as non-graphical applications to share the same proxy configuration information.
If you know this applies to you, select this option and click on the Setup... button to provide the environment variable names used to set the address of the proxy server(s).
- Manually specified settings
Select this option, and click on the Setup... to manually setup the location of the proxy servers to be used.
If you choose this option, another dialog will pop up.
The complete addressing information for the proxy includes both the internet address and a port number. You should enter these into the relevant text boxes. The arrow button copies the information from the HTTP line to the FTP line, in order to help save some typing.
If there are hosts which you can connect to without going through the proxy server, you can press Add to add the names of these hosts, separated by in the text box labeled No Proxy For:. For example, hosts that are on your local network can probably be contacted directly.
You can also choose Only use proxy for entries in this list.
Check this box to reverse the use of the exception list, i.e. the proxy servers will only be used when the requested URL matches one of the addresses listed here.
This features is useful if all you need is a proxy to access a few specific sites, for example, an internal intranet. If you have more complex requirements you might want to use a configuration script.
Here you can choose between two types of authentication, if your proxy requires it. You can have Prompt as needed, the default, in which case Konqueror will only ask for a username or password if it needs to.
The other option is Automatic login. Select this option if you have already set up a login entry for your proxy server in the $KDEDIR/share/config/kionetrc file.
This section written by:
Krishna Tateneni <tateneni@pluto.njcc.com>.
Minor update by Mike McBride <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Another update by Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>
Stylesheets
CSS style sheets affect the way web pages appear. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets.
KDE can use it's own stylesheet, based on simple defaults and the color scheme you are using for your desktop. KDE can also use a stylesheet that you have written yourself. Finally, you can specify a stylesheet in this module. The options presented in this module are tuned for accessibility purposes, especially for people with reduced vision.
Your choices here affect every KDE application that renders html with KDE's own renderer, which is called khtml. These include KMail, KHelpcenter and of course Konqueror. Choices here don't affect other browsers such as Netscape®.
The module has two pages, General, where you can choose which stylesheet to use, and Customize where you can design an accessibility stylesheet.
This page contains the following options:
- Use default stylesheet
KDE will use the default stylesheet. Some of the colors will default to those defined in your chosen color scheme. Most settings are easily overridden by the page you are viewing.
- Use user-defined stylesheet
KDE will use a stylesheet that you have written yourself. You can use the browse button to locate the stylesheet on your system. CSS iles traditionally have a .css extension, but this is not required.
- Use accessibility stylesheet defined in "Customize"-tab
Use the settings defined in the Customize tab. Enabling this option will enable the options on the Customize page.
Here you can set up a user stylesheet. The options available are only a subset of the instructions you can add in a stylesheet, and they are geared towards people with reduced vision, to allow users to create a stylesheet that makes web pages and the KDE help files more readable.
The options on this page are disabled unless you chose Use accessibility stylesheet defined in "Customize"-tab on the previous page.
- Base family
Choose a font family to use for body text.
- Use same family for all text
If you enable this, then the same font family will be used for all text, regardless of the settings on the page you are viewing. This is useful for pages which have used a decorative or hard to read font for headlines.
- Base Font Size
This is the default size for text on the page. Many web sites set their font sizes relative to this default, using ‘larger’ or ‘+1’ to make the text bigger, and ‘smaller’ or ‘-1’ to make the text smaller.
Many people design their web pages on platforms where the ordinary default text size is too large for the average user to read, so it is very common to come across web pages that have forced the font smaller in this way.
This setting will allow you to set the default font to a comfortable size, so that the relative sizes are also enlarged enough to be comfortable.
Don't forget you can also have Konqueror enforce a minimum size, so that text is never too small to read. Set that under Web Browsing, in the Konqueror Browser module.
- Use same size for all elements
If you enable this option, then all text will be rendered at your specified font size, regardless of the instructions the page contains. Relative font sizes as discussed earlier, and even specific instructions that text should be rendered at a certain size will be overridden here.
- Black on White
Many people with reduced vision find black text on a white screen gives the most contrast, and is easiest to read. If this applies to you, you can set this here.
- White on Black
Many other people with reduced vision find the opposite to be true, that white text on a black screen is easier to read.
- Custom
Still other people find that pure black and white, in either order, is difficult to read. You can set custom colors here for both the Background and the Foreground.
- Use same color for all text
Many web sites use a different, often contrasting color for headings or other flourishes. If this interferes with your ability to read the content, you can enable this checkbox to have KDE use the colors you have set above for all text.
- Suppress images
If you don't want to view images, you can turn this off here.
- Suppress background images
One major problem for reduced vision users is that background images don't give sufficient contrast to allow them to read the text. You can disable background images here, independently of your choice above to view all images.
The Preview allows you to see the effect of your changes. A window will pop up, showing how several types of headings will appear with your stylesheet, and a sentence in the default body text.
This should allow you to fine tune your stylesheet until you have something that you can comfortably read.
Happy surfing!
This section written by Lauri Watts <lauri@kde.org>
User Agent
When Konqueror connects to a web site to retrieve information, some basic identifying information is sent to the web site in the form of a ‘User Agent’ header.
Because of minor differences in the way that different web browsers function, web sites that rely too much on a single browser may sometimes not display as intended when viewed using another browser. Some web sites are smart enough to examine the contents of the user agent header and incorporate this information in the HTML code so that the content is displayed correctly regardless of the browser used.
However, you may find that some web sites refuse to function correctly unless you are using a browser recognized as ‘proper’ by that site. In these cases, you may find it necessary to fool the web site by having Konqueror report itself to be another browser by means of the user agent header.
In this module of the KDE Control Center, you can configure the type of browser that Konqueror will report itself to be. You can control this information by web site. Usually, the list box that is labeled Configured useragent bindings: will be empty, so that Konqueror will always use its default useragent string.
To configure a new agent binding, press the New... button. Type the name of the server or a domain in the text box at the top of the dialog that pops up, which is labeled When connecting to the following site.
Note that you can not use the wildcard character * in this text box. However, the string kde.org will match all hosts in the domain kde.org..
After typing the name of the server, type in the identifying string in the next combo box, which is labeled Use the following identity, or choose a string from the list. If you don't choose a string from the list, you will need to know what a valid string from the browser looks like. For example, you could type Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0).
In the field labeled Alias (description) you can enter a descriptive name for the configured binding, e.g. Netscape Navigator 4.75 on Linux for the useragent string Mozilla/4.75 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.14 i686).
You can click on an existing entry in the Configured agent bindings list, and then modify the contents of the text boxes, followed by clicking Change.
The Delete button can be used to delete the selected entry in the list of configured agent bindings. The Delete All will remove all the configured user agent strings. Click the Apply to take your changes in effect.
You can use the checkboxes at the top of the screen to build a user agent that is uniquely yours, by choosing your own combination of operating system name and version, platform, processor type, and language.
In all cases, the user agent that is being sent by default is displayed in bold text at the top of the page.
This section written by:
Krishna Tateneni <tateneni@pluto.njcc.com>.
Updated by Jost Schenck <jost@schenck.de>.
Credits and License
KControl
Program copyright 1997-2001 The KDE Control Center Developers
Contributors:
Matthias Hoelzer-Kluepfel <hoelzer@kde.org>
Matthias Elter <elter@kde.org>
Documentation copyright 2000 Michael McBride© <mpmcbride7@yahoo.com>
Contributors:
Paul Campbell <paul@taniwha.com>
Helge Deller <helge.deller@ruhruni-bochum.de>
Mark Donohoe
Pat Dowler
Duncan Haldane <duncan@kde.org>
Steffen Hansen <stefh@mip.ou.dk>.
Matthias Hoelzer-Kluepfel <hoelzer@kde.org>
Martin Jones <mjones@kde.org>
Jost Schenck <jost@schenck.de>
Jonathan Singer <jsinger@leeta.net>
Thomas Tanghus <tanghus@earthling.net>
Krishna Tateneni <tateneni@pluto.njcc.com>>
Ellis Whitehead <ewhitehe@uni-freiburg.de>
This documentation is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
This program is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.