Need some help with look and feel please???

Beginner

Thursday, August 26th 2004, 7:52pm

Hi I know this might sound trivial, but can anyone tell me how to re add actions to the right click action menu in KDE 3.3? Since upgrading to KDE 3.3 a bunch of my actions selections in this menu are now missing and I'm finding it hard to live without them. (there are a few things that I downloaded from KDE-APS.org that specifically depend on this. Reinstalling these applications has not worked. Can anyone suggest what I can do to get them back?

Also is there some way to set the degree of zooming of icons on my task bar. I have my desktop set at quite a high resolution (1280x1024) and this makes it difficult to see a lot of the icons I have there. The default zooming level is barely helpful for this. I have it at this reolution as there are several applications that don't render correctly at reolutions less than this.

It would certainly be cool if there was a way to set my icon and text size preference globally, both accross my desktop and through all my applications in only a few clicks.

This may not happen, but it would be nice.

Any input at all would be appreciated.

Edit:

While I'm at it I might as well go for broke I guess. One thing that has always depressed me about KDe is all the grey everywhere, particularly in the K menu and what Windows users would possibly refer to as the taskbar. (the long bar at the bottom of the screen). I sthere any way I can edit a file somewhere to inject a little colour into these? I'm not looking to have very hard solid colours, but some nice pastel shades of blue and green and so on would be very nice.

If so how can I tell what colour values are avaiable?

Any input would be appreciated.

GJ

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raid517

Beginner

Posts: 15

2

Friday, August 27th 2004, 1:44pm

OK I've pretty much resolved everything, except how to add actions to my actions menu and how to increase the level of icon zooming on my taskbar.

If any of you guys can offer any input on this it would be very much appreciated.

30+ views and no replies is a lot. Did I mess up somewhere with any of the questions I asked?

If so i appologise in advance.

GJ

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cmbofh

Intermediate

Posts: 539

3

Friday, August 27th 2004, 3:00pm

Quoted

Original von raid517

OK I've pretty much resolved everything,
except how to add actions to my actions menu [...]

See http://developer.kde.org/documentation/tutorials/dot/servicemenus.html

Is that what you need?

About the icon zoom factor: No idea.

Quoted

Original von raid517

30+ views and no replies is a lot. Did I mess up somewhere with any of the questions I asked?

Well, there is more than one possible reason for not getting an answer, for example that no one who happens to read your posting knows an answer. In my experience this forum is not as frequented as other ones I know (those are about general IT topics so that's not too surprising). So it may sometimes take days before someone who knows an answer (and is willing to write it up and has the time to do so at that moment) comes along.

Personally I prefer separate postings for each question instead of several unrelated questions together but I don't think this is the reason you didn't get an answer until now.

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raid517

Beginner

Posts: 15

4

Friday, August 27th 2004, 3:31pm

Lol, I was just there less than two minutes ago!

To be honest I can't tell if that is what I need or not. It may well be, but as a non programmer I got somewhat lost in all of the jargon.

It certainly seems like a very complex way to do something that you might think is esentially very simple. I got as far as following how to add an action to make make an image become the desktop background, but got lost in the detail of how to interprit this into recovering my lost actions with ark. (And also Kb3 - as previously whenever I clicked on a bin or ISO I was offered an option in the acions menu to burn a CD to disk. Which all in all was very useful).

It would be extremely cool if someone could buld a database of common or useful actions based on the .dektop file format described in the article that users could just download and install at their ease, but I have no clue why the kde developers or anyone else have never considered this.

What I find surprising is that the guy who wrote that article claims what he is doing is 'very simple'.

I think perhaps from a software writers perspective it is very simple, but from a novices perspective it may not be. Indeed I am not certain that it is entirely reasonable to expect a novice to search for and find this somewhat obsure guide and then to follow it, simply to gain (or in my case regain) a few essentially simple actions.

But then that is just my view. And as you pointed out, not many people are listening to my view atm.

Do you perhaps know of a more active forum where I might stand a better chance of obtaining some advice on these issues?

Maybe this isn't the right place after all. I guess I found the name and imagined the forum would be full of real KDE gurus.

Oh well. Thanks for the input.

GJ

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cmbofh

Intermediate

Posts: 539

5

Friday, August 27th 2004, 3:58pm

Quoted

Original von raid517

To be honest I can't tell if that is what I need or not. It may well be, but as a non programmer I got somewhat lost in all of the jargon.

It certainly seems like a very complex way to do something that you might think is esentially very simple. I got as far as following how to add an action to make make an image become the desktop background, but got lost in the detail of how to interprit this into recovering my lost actions with ark. (And also Kb3 - as previously whenever I clicked on a bin or ISO I was offered an option in the acions menu to burn a CD to disk. Which all in all was very useful).

So you lost some *standard* actions that were there in the regular installation of your KDE before went to 3.3? That sounds like a packaging bug to me. Did you search for a solution on the pages of your distributor?

As for the tutorial: IMHO it aims at the technically minded who wants to experiment and extend their system (me ;-)) but who cannot or doesn't want to get into programming, C++, etc. It's not intended for the novice user.

Quoted

Original von raid517

It would be extremely cool if someone could buld a database of common or useful actions based on the .dektop file format described in the article that users could just download and install at their ease, but I have no clue why the kde developers or anyone else have never considered this.

kde-apps.org offers some:
http://www.kde-apps.org/index.php?xcontentmode=287

Quoted

Original von raid517

What I find surprising is that the guy who wrote that article claims what he is doing is 'very simple'.

I think perhaps from a software writers perspective it is very simple, but from a novices perspective it may not be. Indeed I am not certain that it is entirely reasonable to expect a novice to search for and find this somewhat obsure guide and then to follow it, simply to gain (or in my case regain) a few essentially simple actions.

The task is simple for you if it's done for you by your packager. That seems to be your problem. It should not be your job to get back *standard* functionality.

Quoted

Original von raid517

Do you perhaps know of a more active forum where I might stand a better chance of obtaining some advice on these issues?

Maybe this isn't the right place after all. I guess I found the name and imagined the forum would be full of real KDE gurus.

This is *the* KDE forum. I don't think you can find a better one.
You could try the mailing lists, though. There's a user list at
http://www.kde.org/mailinglists/

But I would first check your distro's page.

Note:
One thing you could try is: Create a new user and check if he has the lost functionality. In that case the update didn't work and something's broken in your .kde directory.

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raid517

Beginner

Posts: 15

6

Friday, August 27th 2004, 4:21pm

Thanks for the helpful response. But the problem is that my packager might claim that the upgrade is unsupported, since I upgraded myself. Though I guess I could always try their forum (given that their forum is even less active than this - although this does seem somewhat more active now).

It's worth a stab I guess Possibly it is more of a KDE bug than a packager bug? Why would the KDE developers allow an update that destroyed some as you pointed out now quite standard functionality?

Does anyone perhaps have the action .desktop files that are responsible for controlling the behaviour of ark and of kb3 that I could simply download from somewhere, or maybe you could send me them?

My email address is raid517ATfairadsl.co.uk

I guess I'll report a bug to the KDE guys - because I think that is where this fault originates. Perhaps these files have been mistakenly omitted from KDE 3.3?

That is of course providing it's that simple - since as I don't even know what the files are called I can't confirm or not if I have them.

But the actions I had were at least the most commonly used actions employed by many users. Eg, extract here, create archive, send to (as in mail recipent and some other location) and burn CD with Kb3).

All quite convienient to have and very frustrating to live without.

I know the CL is always there, but I have a family too and they are somewhat dependant on these features. I do use the CL myself, but sometimes it is just simpler to right click.

But anyway, as I said, thanks for the helpful input.

Best regards,

GJ

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raid517

Beginner

Posts: 15

7

Friday, August 27th 2004, 4:30pm

Quoted

Note:
One thing you could try is: Create a new user and check if he has the lost functionality. In that case the update didn't work and something's broken in your .kde directory.

Well i don't think it's that drastic. Even root has lost this functinality. But to say the update hasn't worked may be stretching the point a little. It has worked. KDE is listed everywhere as being version 3.3, I have all of the new components as far as I can tell listed in the KDE changelog. The missing functionality might even by some be considered cosmetic - but you try telling my 14 year old daughter that she has to learn a whole new way to burn CDs and that sometimes she might have to use the CL to extract zip files she downloads and see if she still thinks you are sane or not.

Right now mine doesn't - and I have promised to fix it for her.

Unfortunately I have to work on that kind of practical level.

But I don't think that the upgrade has 'failed' so much as to consider it to be broken.

I'm sure it can be fixed. It is knowing how that is the issue.

GJ

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KDE-Forum.org

Need some help with look and feel please???

Need some help with look and feel please???

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