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| {{Note|Part of this tutorial apply only to KDE3. Specially the dcop-part.}}
| | #REDIRECT [[Development/Tutorials/Creating Dolphin Service Menus]] |
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| ''The ability to select mimetype-specific actions from a KDE file manager's context menu is an often requested feature. The pleasant surprise is that this is already possible. The even more pleasant surprise is that you don't need to be a software developer to create new actions. This article details step-by-step how to quickly and easily add new actions to KDE file manager context menus.''
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| === Introduction ===
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| In KDE-speak a "servicemenu" is a special entry that appears in a context menu (or other context-based interface) for a file (or for directory), depending on the type of files that are selected.
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| For example, if you have the KDE file archive utility Ark installed you will see a menu entry to "Extract here..." whenever you right click on a file archive. The option to "Extract here..." is a servicemenu.
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| Creating new servicemenus is very simple, requiring nothing more than an idea and a text editor. You don't have to be a programmer or a KDE wizard to make them. In this tutorial we will be creating a set of actions that allows us to set an image as our desktop wallpaper just by right clicking on it and selecting "Use As Wallpaper". By the end of this tutorial you should be able to create your own servicemenus with ease.
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| === Where the Servicemenus Locate ===
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| Servicemenus are defined using {{path|.desktop}} files, which are the same kind of files that are used
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| to create entries in the K Menu or on the KDE desktop. These servicemenu files are found in
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| {{path|$KDEHOME/share/services/ServiceMenus}}, the directory KDE was installed to
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| or any directory listed in the $KDEDIRS environment variable.
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| In the case of my home machine that means that servicemenu files can be found
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| in the following places:
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| {{path|/opt/kde4/share/services/ServiceMenus/}}
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| {{path|/usr/share/services/ServiceMenus/}}
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| {{path|/home/aaron/.kde4/share/kde4/services/ServiceMenus/}}
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| {{tip|$KDEHOME defaults to ~/.kde when it isn't set or defined. You can find all the services directories by running <syntaxhighlight lang="text">kde4-config --path services</syntaxhighlight> from a Konsole window.}}
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| === The Start of Servicemenu ===
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| We will begin creating our wallpaper servicemenu by choosing a name for the file:
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| {{path|setAsWallpaper.desktop}} sounds good. The only thing that really matters with regards to the name is that it
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| is unique and that it ends with {{path|.desktop}}. Next we'll open up the file in a text editor. The
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| first thing we will put in the file is the "Desktop Entry" section:
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">
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| [Desktop Entry] | |
| Type=Service
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| ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin
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| MimeType=image/png;image/jpeg;
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| Actions=setAsWallpaper
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| </syntaxhighlight>
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| Every servicemenu file ''must'' have these four lines. Let's examine each of these lines one at a time.
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">
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| [Desktop Entry] | |
| </syntaxhighlight>
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| KDE configuration files, including .desktop files, seperate the individual settings into sections. A section starts
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| with a heading made up of letters, numbers and spaces in between square brackets on a line
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| by itself. This first line means that all the options that follow, up until the next heading,
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| belong to the "Desktop Entry" group.
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">
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| Type=Service
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| ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin
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| MimeType=image/png;image/jpeg;
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| </syntaxhighlight>
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| The first line indicates that this .desktop file is of type Service; this is necessary since the default type is Application (i.e. something with an Exec line). Service is anything else, like plugins.
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| The ServiceTypes entry refers to the type of plugin that this desktop file defines, and specifies that it is actually a Konqueror service menu.
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| The MimeType line defines the type of file for which this servicemenu applies. You can define more than one mimetype by providing a list seperated by semicolons (but no spaces). In this case our servicemenu will show up when we select PNG or JPEG images. The File Associations control panel is a good place to look for mimetype definitions.
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| {{Tip|To create a servicemenu for directories use the <syntaxhighlight lang="text">inode/directory</syntaxhighlight> mimetype. To create a servicemenu for all files, use the base <syntaxhighlight lang="text">application/octet-stream</syntaxhighlight> mimetype.}}
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| You can also specify an entire group of mimetypes using "typeglobs". To make our servicemenu apply not only to PNGs and JPEGs but to all images we would simply change the ServiceTypes entry to be:
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">
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| ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin
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| MimeType=image/*;
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| </syntaxhighlight>
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| Now when we right click on ''any'' image file in Konqueror we can select it as our background.
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">
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| Actions=setAsWallpaper
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| </syntaxhighlight>
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| The Actions entry defines the actions we will create in our servicemenu. As with the ServiceTypes, you can define more than one action by using a semicolon separated list. Each of the actions listed will get a section of its own defining what that action does. In fact, that's our very next step.
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| === Creating an Action ===
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| So far we have defined one action in our servicemenu file: setAsWallpaper. Now we need to define what that action looks like and what it actually does. We begin by adding a new heading to the end of our file:
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">
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| [Desktop Action setAsWallpaper]
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| </syntaxhighlight>
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| Note that it contains the setAsWallpaper action name. It is important to note that these files are case sensitive, so we need to watch the capitalization here. Now that we have a section for our action, let's give our action a name that the user will see.
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">
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| Name=Set As Background Image
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| </syntaxhighlight>
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| To translate the name, we add another <tt>Name</tt> entry followed by the language code. For instance, the Finnish translation for the "Set As Background Image" service is provided by an entry that looks like this:
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">
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| Name[fi]=Aseta taustakuvaksi
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| </syntaxhighlight>
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| Next let's add an icon:
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">
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| Icon=background
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| </syntaxhighlight>
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| Notice that we didn't include the .png file extension, but just referred to the icon by name. If we had left this line out our action would still work, it just wouldn't look as fancy. Now that we've achieved fancyness, let's finish up by making it useful:
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">
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| Exec=dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface setWallpaper %u 6
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| </syntaxhighlight>
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| The Exec line defines what is run when the user selects the action from the menu. We can put any command we want there. The magic in this line is the "%u" which gets replaced with the URL of the image file before the command is run. If our command can accept more than one file at a time we can use "%U" instead.
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| There are [http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/latest/ar01s06.html other special %values] but %u and %U are probably the most useful for servicemenus.
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| Our file now looks like this:
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">
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| [Desktop Entry]
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| ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin
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| MimeType=image/*;
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| Actions=setAsWallpaper
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| [Desktop Action setAsWallpaper]
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| Name=Use As Wallpaper
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| Icon=background
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| Exec=dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface setWallpaper %U 6
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| </syntaxhighlight>
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| If we save it and open up Konqueror, when we right click on a PNG, JPEG or GIF image we should now have a "Set as background" item in the menu. Try it out!
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| {{Tip|If you have a complex task that requires more than one command (for example if we wanted to copy the image file somewhere first and then use dcop to set it as the background) use a shell:<br/>
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| Exec<nowiki>=</nowiki>/bin/sh -c ";<YOUR COMMANDS HERE>"}}
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| === And Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Broadcast... ===
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| Back from the land of DCOP, we have produced a working servicemenu. Now what? We improve it, of course!
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| Our current servicemenu scales the image to the size of the desktop and sets it as the wallpaper. But this isn't appropriate for wallpaper tiles which not be scaled but should be, well, ''tiled''. So let's add an action for tiles.
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| First we'll need to change the Actions line to say something like this:
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="text">
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| Actions=setAsWallpaper;tileAsWallpaper;
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| </syntaxhighlight>
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| Note the use of semicolons rather than commas in that line. Next, we'll add a new action section to the end of the file that looks something like this:
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">
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| [Desktop Action tileAsWallpaper]
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| Name=Use As Wallpaper Tile
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| Icon=background
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| Exec=dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface setWallpaper %U 2
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| </syntaxhighlight>
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| Note that "tileAsWallpaper" appears in the action section's heading. This is what tells Konqueror which action it is. In addition, we have a slightly different Name and a very slightly different Exec line. Now when we right click on an image we have another option, this time to tile the image across our desktop. We didn't even have to restart Konqueror, since it automatically rereads the file when it changes!
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| KDE's desktop offers several background image options, of which Scale and Tile are just two. Of course if we start adding all those various background options, and then add those to all the other servicemenus that a typical KDE installation has it's easy to see how the Action menu can quickly get out of hand. Starting with KDE 3.2 we can create submenus for our servicemenus by adding a line like the following to the <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">[Desktop Entry]</syntaxhighlight> group of the .desktop file:
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">
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| X-KDE-Submenu=Set As Background
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| </syntaxhighlight>
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| This will create a submenu called "Set As Background" and put all of the servicemenu's actions into it.
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| Our servicemenu .desktop file now looks like this:
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| <syntaxhighlight lang="ini">
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| [Desktop Entry]
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| ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin
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| MimeType=image/*;
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| Actions=setAsWallpaper;tileAsWallpaper;
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| X-KDE-Submenu=Use As Wallpaper
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| [Desktop Action setAsWallpaper]
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| Name=Scaled
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| Icon=background
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| Exec=dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface setWallpaper %U 6
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| [Desktop Action tileAsWallpaper]
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| Name=Tiled
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| Icon=background
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| Exec=dcop kdesktop KBackgroundIface setWallpaper %U 2
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| </syntaxhighlight>
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