On Tue, 26 Jul 2005, Mark Nelson wrote:

> I want to change a couple of the KDE helper applications that are used
> to view certain types of file.  For example our users want to use gv
> instead of the standard kde postscript viewer.  I know how to do this
> for an individual account, what I need to do is to change the system
> default. I have looked and looked but can't find out how to do it.
> 
> Any ideas

For SL30x (at least) the 2 most plausable places to try are:

  mailcap ie /etc/mailcap

  /usr/share/config/ in particular profilerc seems to mention pdf files 
  though not much else...

In SL30x Gnome/KDE configs share much of the basic config, it seems that 
both are implementing the opendesktop standards though each have their 
own bugs in parsing (say) the .desktop files etc.

The directories /usr/share/applications/ /usr/share/desktop-menu-files/
are where the definitions of apps and menus go, though the panel/kicker
are configured in different sets of files.

As a hack we configure the Gnome panel etc by tweaking files under:

  /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/schemas/apps/panel/default_profiles/medium

as in the following script fragments:

# where Gnome defaults seem to live
GCONF=/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/schemas/apps/panel/default_profiles/medium

# copy over general config
$RSYNC general.gconf.xml $GCONF/general/%gconf.xml

# and the launchers we fiddle/create
MEDO=$GCONF/objects
for i in editor email terminal web_browser wordprocessor xmotd; do 
  if [ ! -d $MEDO/${i}_launcher ]; then
    mkdir -p $MEDO/${i}_launcher
  fi
  $RSYNC ${i}.gconf.xml $MEDO/${i}_launcher/%gconf.xml
done

 but the KDE Kicker/desktop configs are stored in /usr/share/config/

# copy over kde kickerrc/kdesktoprc config (not finished being edited!)
$RSYNC kickerrc.sl /usr/share/config/kickerrc
$RSYNC kdesktoprc.sl /usr/share/config/kdesktoprc

We also sync over files to configure apps and menus etc:

# copy .desktop files to where they are expected to live
$RSYNC *.desktop /usr/share/applications/

# make a link for the DAMTP menu since KDE seems to expect it
$RSYNC *.directory /usr/share/desktop-menu-files/

# now handle the desktop tweaks
cd desktop_tweaks
# put them into where SL expects them (overwriting any of their tweak 
files)
$RSYNC *.xml *.sl /usr/share/config/

# copy over kde kickerrc/kdesktoprc config (not finished being edited!)
$RSYNC kickerrc.sl /usr/share/config/kickerrc
$RSYNC kdesktoprc.sl /usr/share/config/kdesktoprc

 However, note that KDE doesn't pick up changes to the menus etc until 
/usr/bin/desktop-create-kmenu is run which re-generates the 
/var/lib/menu/kde/ entries which KDE actually seems to look at).

Of course things may be very different in SL4x though I hope not or I'll 
have to re-work even more scripts for that...

 -- Jon