[PyKDE] KControl modules

[David Boddie]

Having been defeated by panel applets*, I've turned my attention towards
KDE Control Centre modules (Control Center for those in the US ;-) ).

A quickly assembled, poorly documented archive of an example module is
available from the following URL. I hope it builds and works correctly on
systems other than mine but all the usual disclaimers apply, particularly
those involving risks to your data. There may be problems with it that I
haven't yet encountered.

http://www.boddie.org.uk/david/Projects/Python/KDE/Software/kcontrol-python-14-08-2003.zip

Having unpacked this, building the support library should be a simple matter
of invoking a suitable shell, entering the KControl/Default directory and
typing

  python build.py build

Installation needs to be done as root, so we type

  su -c "python build.py install"

If all goes well, the module can then be located in the Desktop section of
the Control Centre. Alternatively, typing

  kcmshell defaultpython

should allow you to see it in standalone form. As you might expect,

  su -c "python build.py uninstall"

removes the module from its installed location.

As usual, having put something together, I couldn't think of an impressive
demonstration of its use so I hope that this is useful to someone out there.

Have fun,

David

* I can get one Python panel applet working properly on the panel. If there
  are two or more on the panel then everything appears to be fine until a
  panel restart occurs. Only then is it apparent that the interpreter is
  being shared across all applets and that it doesn't like to be invoked
  that way unless threading is enabled. Unfortunately, it seems that
  enabling Python threading conflicts with sip so, unless I can see a
  way to isolate instances of the interpreter, panel applets remain just
  out of reach. :-(