[PyKDE] KDE Panel Applets in Python

[Ricardo Javier Cardenes Medina]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2003 at 10:44:19AM -0700, Jim Bublitz wrote:
> 'parent' doesn't contain any useful info (for loading). 'configFile'
> contains the applet name (eg 'khelloworldapplet plus some garbage
> plus '_rc' for one of the example applets), but it forms the value
> of configFile from the lib name. If you name the lib
> "libXXXapplet.so" in the .desktop file, configFile ==
> XXXappletzzzzz_rc, even if the desktop file is "YYYapplet". The
> only possibility is if there's a way to specify an arbitrary name
> for the config file in the .desktop file, but I didn't find one.
> The way it looks, every applet needs a distinct lib name. 
> 
> There is one other possibility - create a single lib that puts
> "Python applet" in the Add | Applet menu. In the factory function
> for that lib (init) popup another menu that lists the available
> Python applets (ie - put the Python applets in
> share/apps/kicker/applets with the rest of the desktop files, then
> have the Python applet loader scan there for *.py files. Seems like
> that should work - I haven't given it much thought though.

Another one... It seems that Kicker relies on the .la file that comes
with every .so. If you don't have the .la, it won't even load the
applet. Given:

   libfooapplet.so
   libfooapplet.la
   libbarapplet.la -> libfooapplet.la

With libbarapplet.la being a link, and two .desktop files, one referring
to libfooapplet and other to libbarapplet.

That works. You could have one "libpykdegenericapplet.{so,la}"
installed, and have every Python applet provide one .desktop file, and
then link libThisPyKDEapplet.la to libpykdegenericapplet.la.

Not so clean (ye gods! it's a kludge), but works (and saves disk space) :-)