[KDE 4] Adding Simple Service Menu Items

[lilrofl]

Adding a service menu item to the right click menu in KDE 4 is not quite the same as it was in prior versions, and the new method is not as strongly documented as one might like if... they where looking to do such a thing.

I'll preface this with; I was tired of double clicking a newly written script and having it open up in kwrite, rather then executing as planned... leading to a short pause while I opened a terminal to chmod the misbehaver. After all the trouble I thought I'd share my findings... even though I'm pretty sure most of you use Gnome

As with KDE 3.x the menu item consist of two parts, one to define it's location and what will activate it, the other to define what it will do. Both parts are fairly straight forward, but I'll explain the variable parts in case it's the first time you've looked at one.

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[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
Encoding=UTF-8
X-KDE-ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin
MimeType=text/plain;text/x-python;application/x-sh
Name=Chmod
Actions=MakeExe

[Desktop Action MakeExe]
Name=Make File Executable
Exec=chmod +x %F
Icon=kformula

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X-KDE-ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin

This defines that this .desktop file is a plug-in for Konqueror, specifically a service menu item.

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MimeType=

This defines the file types that the service will be applied to using your file associations list. My list was located in

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/etc/mime.types

You can have as many mime types as you would like here, just separate each new type with a semi-colon. You can see that I added function for plain text, python files and shell scripts.

You could add function for all file types with

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application/octet-string

or just a category of types using wildcards such as

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text/*

or

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image/*

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Actions=

This points to the action of your menu item. You can have multiple values here pointing to different actions, but the format for all actions reletivly the same so I'll just say that you would separate multiple values with commas.

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[Desktop Actions MakeExe]

Begins the code off my menu item, matched to the

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Actions=

of the revious section... I should point out this is case sensitive, but you probablyknew that.

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Name=

How your menu item will appear in your service menu

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Exec=

The single command function of your menu item, using %variables listed below.

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%f A single file name
%F Multiple selected files, use this for programs that know how to act on multiple files simultaneously.
%u A single URL
%U Multiple URLs
%d A single directory containing the file represented by %f
%D A list of the same directory containing an entry for all selected files representing %F
%n filename without an associated path
%N Multiple files without paths
%k A file represented by a URL

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Icon=

Gives the item an associated icon.

For single variable commands like this you don't need any associated shell script to install the menu item, simple copy them into KDEs service directory... but where might that be?

run the following code to locate your service directory

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kde4-config --path services

pick the appropriate location and copy you file there as <filename>.desktop

You may have to restart x for your menu to take effect... but I didn't experience that.

It should be noted that there are plenty of service menu add-ons available from

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http://kde-look.org/

some are nice and useful, but none of them catered to the little convenience I was looking for

Original form of the code (for KDE 3.x) can be found in O'Reilly's Linux Desktop Hacks; #40, modifications credited to a few hours on Google (you might be surprised how much misinformation is out there), and a few hours in bash working out the kinks

[maboroshi]

WOW Nice man!

I use Gnome but KDE is looking more tempting because I am not a fan of Gnome 3

Anyway nice tutorial man!

*cheers

Maboroshi

[lonewolf]

Thanks I will give it a try. I still use both KDE and Gnome on my operating systems.

[ayu]

I agree with Mabs, that KDE is looking a bit more tempting now that Gnome 3 is shit ^^

Nice tut!

[lilrofl]

I gravitate toward KDE largely for its native Qt4 support, and superkaramba... it makes sense with all the python love.

Not that these things can't be ported over... but we like what we like and KDE4 has yet to do me wrong... also some of my shell scripts don't work for shite on Gnome

On a different note, LXDE is not bad if you favor a minimalistic approach to a desktop environment.