KFM and KPanel use a common way of managing applications. For every
application one should have at least one file in the directory tree
$KDEDIR/apps
. This tree is the same that makes up the KPanel
start menu. The files in this directory tree are KConfig files. Using them you
can do several things
Lets have a look at an example:
[KDE Desktop Entry] Type=Application Exec=netscape %u Icon=netscape3.xpm TerminalOptions= Path= Terminal=0 BinaryPattern=netscape;Netscape; Comment=Netscape Internet Browser [Binding] Protocols=file;ftp;http; Extensions=HTML;
The first line is a must. The second one tells us about the type of this
file. The third one tells us how to start the application. You may place the
variables %u %f %n %d
in this line and the line may consist of
several commands separated by ';'
like your shell does. The
variables may appear several times in the string. They have the following
meaning
%u
%f
%d
%n
Icon
tells the which icon to use. This is the icon that you
will see in KFM as representation for this file and in KPanel if you put this
file on the panel. If you mention a binary pattern then the binary itself will
get this icon in KFM. Pattern
means that all files matching this
pattern will get the icon. The icon must reside in
$KDEDIR/lib/pics
. TerminalOptions
may be any option
that your terminal program understands. Path
is the path in which
to execute the binary, the so called working directory. Setting Terminal to
some value differnt from 0 you can tell KFM to start the binary in an terminal
window. With Comment
you can give some explanation about the
application. If the user has the mouse over the application if KFM he will get
this comment in the right corner of the status bar.
Using the Binding entry is optional. You can tell here which protcols your
application understands. Separate the protocols with ';'
and make
shure that you terminate the line with ';'
. After doing so you
must tell KFM which kind of documents your application can understand.
Document formats are described elsewhere in their special files. You must know
the filename that describes the document, strip off the ".kdelnk
"
and you have a valid entry for this line. Our example application only
understands documents of type HTML. You can enter some exclusive specials
here. ALLFILES
binds the application to all files with the
required protocol. ALL
binds it to all files and directories and
ALLDIRS
binds it to all directories.
Note that it does not matter for KFM where in the directory tree it finds
the application file. And it does not matter where in the
filetypes
directory tree the referenced document type is. Never
use path names in the Extensions
line.
Read the section about file types to learn how a pattern may look like.
Torben Weis weis@kde.org, weis@stud.uni-frankfurt.de