System tray icons

[Guest]

Hello there,

I've used gnome for a very very long time now and have recently switched to kde with the 4.2 release as it seemed to be a) pretty at last and b) finally reasonably stable. I have a couple of niggles however.

Is there a way to change the system tray icon size independently of the other icon size's in the panel? I ask this because the icons don't seem to fit properly in the system tray :s

Also, I tried setting up my synaptics touchpad to disable tap clicking using this guide https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticsTouchpad. Noticing that that the kde tool was outdated I tried the 'Xubuntu and others' method, yet this package was not in the repos... however I found the gnome package, and it seemed to work, but when restarting it would appear that my settings were not saved :s any idea how to fix this? EDIT: duh, I didnt run it as su, I'll try this now and restart

Another issue I have is the ability to setup custom key bindings... now I would assume this would be quite a basic feature of a wm, however I can't for the life of me find anyway of doing this, without installing yet more software.

Now onto a an annoying problem rather than a niggle. I've googled around a lot about an error message appearing when trying to enable desktop effects, and there seems to be a lot of people having this trouble. I have experienced this problem, however with me it seems to be intermittent... If I dont change any settings, i can simply log in, then log out, then back in again and the desktop effects won't work... its rather puzzling. I also dont want to switch to compiz, as nice as it is, I like the idea of kwin being more integral in kde.

Another feature I find missing is the zoomable icons in the panel. Now, its been a while since I used KDE (about 5/6 years) but im sure you could make the panel icons zoom when hovered over? I miss this also it'd be nice if you could make some of the icons stand proud of the panel, like (i hate to say this) Windows Vistas start menu button.

Apart from the the lack of QT Firefox, and the endless attempts to make GTK root applications use my gtk-oxygen theme (Could use KDE style in GTK apps, but they get confused, bless) im pleased with my overall KDE4 experience. I think I prefer KDE's native apps over Gnomes.

But anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated. Sorry about ranting a little
Cheers
Dan

[Guest]

Re: System tray icons

Nope, configuring the touchpad as su didnt work either

[jankushka]

Re: System tray icons

Is there a way to change the system tray icon size independently of the other icon size's in the panel? I ask this because the icons don't seem to fit properly in the system tray :s

nope.
system tray was troublesome up to kde4.1.4.
upgrading to kde4.2 fixed it for me.
it works a lot better now.

Also, I tried setting up my synaptics touchpad to disable tap clicking...

touchfreeze is the applet you're looking for.
it sits in the system tray once you start it.
to exploit it you'll need to add the following line

<merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">On</merge>

in /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty/11-x11-synaptics.fdi
with

kdesudo your_preferred_gui_text_editor /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/20thirdparty/11-x11-synaptics.fdi

and the restarting the x server (e.g. with ctrl-alt-backspace)

i put it right below this one (towards the beginning of the file)

<merge key="input.x11_driver" type="string">synaptics</merge>

Another issue I have is the ability to setup custom key bindings... now I would assume this would be quite a basic feature of a wm, however I can't for the life of me find anyway of doing this, without installing yet more software.

kmenu -> system settings -> keyboard&mouse
look for "standard keyboard shortcuts" and/or "global keyboard shortcuts".
"global keyboard shortcuts" offers applications' specific shortcuts.

Now onto a an annoying problem rather than a niggle. I've googled around a lot about an error message appearing when trying to enable desktop effects, and there seems to be a lot of people having this trouble. I have experienced this problem, however with me it seems to be intermittent... If I dont change any settings, i can simply log in, then log out, then back in again and the desktop effects won't work... its rather puzzling. I also dont want to switch to compiz, as nice as it is, I like the idea of kwin being more integral in kde.

don't know, sorry.
i use kde exactly because i can disable all that useless crap.

Another feature I find missing is the zoomable icons in the panel. Now, its been a while since I used KDE (about 5/6 years) but im sure you could make the panel icons zoom when hovered over?

i don't remember kde having the apple style icons zoom in the main panel.
you get a pop up if you want, and that's there as it used to.

I miss this also it'd be nice if you could make some of the icons stand proud of the panel, like (i hate to say this) Windows Vistas start menu button.

the launcher is a widget like any other.
you can shorten your main panel, add the launcher widget as an independent object and make it as big as you like.

I think I prefer KDE's native apps over Gnomes.

me too.

hth
cheers

[dibl]

Re: System tray icons

Kinda on topic, I think ...

I'm not sure whether to blame KDE 4.2, plasma, Compiz, or Nvidia for this one, but when I boot Kubuntu 8.10/KDE 4.2, and I point my mouse cursor at one of the half-dozen icons of frequently-used packages that are parked on the panel, a funny thing happens. The mouse pointer may be on gimp, but the highlight is on Firefox, two icons east of gimp, and if I click, Firefox will launch. Sometimes the shift is two icons, and other times it is only one icon, and sometimes it actually launches the package that the cursor is over. Over time and usage, like after I use VMWare and then close it back down, sometimes the alignment issue seems to disappear. I've not ever seen it get worse, but this situation has persisted since I upgraded to 4.2, so I thought it is worth sharing in case anyone else is seeing it.

If it was really important, I guess I'd turn off Compiz and set it to use the "nv" driver -- I have a suspicion it is related to those things, rather than KDE .... :P

But I'm pretty lazy ...