>&ksplash; is a nice splash screen that shows the progress of an application that is loading. Please report any problems or feature requests to the &kde; mailing lists. The principal features of &ksplash;: </para>
<simplelist>
<member
>Themeable</member>
<member
>Uses plugins to be completely customisable</member>
<member
>Can be used by any application that uses DCOP</member>
</simplelist>
<para
>This handbook will show you how to create themes for use with plugins that are already available. If none of the plugins available satisfy your tastes, you can learn how to customise the appearance of &ksplash; completely by writing a plugin in C++. </para>
</chapter>
<chapter id="using-themes">
<title
>Using themes</title>
<para
>To use themes from <ulink url="http://www.kde-look.org"
> to make them available to all users of your system.</para>
<para
>You can also use the <guilabel
>Splash Screen</guilabel
> module under <guilabel
>Appearance</guilabel
> in the &kde; control centre to do this automatically.</para>
<sect1 id="using-kcontrol-module">
<title
>Using the &kcontrol; Module</title>
<para
>This module allows you to install, test and remove &ksplash; themes.</para>
<para
>Down the side of the module is a list of currently available &ksplash; themes. As you select one, a preview will display in the main part of the window. When you have selected the one you wish to use, press <guibutton
>OK</guibutton
> or <guibutton
>Apply</guibutton
>. Press <guibutton
>Cancel</guibutton
> to exit the module without making changes, and <guibutton
>Defaults</guibutton
> to restore the system default splash screen.</para>
<para
>To install new modules, press <guibutton
>Add...</guibutton
>, and find the theme on your computer. You do not have to unpack theme files, you can safely select the compressed theme file. Installing a theme does not make it the theme in use until you select it in the list and press either <guibutton
>OK</guibutton
> or <guibutton
>Apply</guibutton
>.</para>
<para
>Although you can see a preview of the splash screen, you may like to see how it looks in real use, for instance to see what the animation looks like. You can test themes by selecting them in the list and clicking the <guibutton
>Test</guibutton
> button.</para>
<para
>You can also remove themes you no longer wish to use, by selecting them and pressing the <guibutton
>Remove</guibutton
> button. Note that your user account may not have the right to remove themes installed system-wide. It is also recommended you do not uninstall the <guilabel
>Default</guilabel
> splash screen.</para>
</sect1>
</chapter>
<chapter id="themes">
<title
>How to make themes for &ksplash;</title>
<sect1 id="themes-general">
<title
>General</title>
<para
>Making your own themes for &ksplash; is easy. After you have finished your themes you can post them on the <ulink url="http://www.kde-look.org"
>KDE-Look</ulink
> so that others can use it.</para>
<sect2 id="theme-syntax">
<title
>Identifying your theme</title>
<para
>Let us create a theme called <literal
>MyCoolTheme</literal
>. For the theme to be recognised by &ksplash;, it should be stored in a folder called <filename class="directory"
>MyCoolTheme</filename
> under <filename class="directory"
>~/.kde/apps/ksplash/Themes/</filename
>. It should have a file called <filename
>Theme.rc</filename
>, containing the settings of the theme. You can specify large numbers of special things to theme, change the plugin engine to use, and so on. You do not have to use all the settings available; usually, the settings have an acceptable default value. The basic syntax for entries in the <filename
>Theme.rc</filename
> file is <literal
>[option] = [value]</literal
> You can find the definitions of the various options in the following sections.</para>
<example>
<title
>Simple <filename
>Theme.rc</filename
> file</title>
<programlisting
>[KSplash Theme: MyCoolTheme]
Name = MyCoolTheme
Description = A nice theme using XpLike engine
Version = 1.0
Author = Real Name <realmail@mail.com>
## Use the XpLike engine for this theme.
Engine = XpLike
Show Icon = false
Welcome Text = Loading KDE
</programlisting>
</example>
<para
>After specifying the name, the description and the author of the theme, you should first choose a theme engine (also known as a plugin). Then, you can customise various features of the theme engine by assigning key-value pairs as in the example file above.</para>
<para
>It is important that the name of the directory under which the theme files are stored (<filename class="directory"
>~/.kde/apps/ksplash/Themes/MyCoolTheme</filename
> in our case) and the identifier (<literal
>[KSplash Theme: MyCoolTheme] </literal
> in our case) of the theme in the <filename
>Theme.rc</filename
> file are identical. Otherwise, &ksplash; will not recognise the theme. </para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="theme-files">
<title
>Background files</title>
<para
>When &ksplash; starts, it tries to find a background image for your current screen resolution, if the theme engine uses one. The background image file should be named in the following format: <filename
>Background-<replaceable
>WWWxHHH</replaceable
>.png</filename
>.</para>
<para
>For example, you might use a file called <filename
>Background-1024x768</filename
>. If the background image for your screen resolution cannot be found, it tries to resize the original <filename
>Background.png</filename
> or the file specified in <filename
>Theme.rc</filename
> to suit the current resolution. Resizing on-the-fly will certainly take some time, so you should provide background images for at least the following sizes: 1280x1024, 1024x768 and 800x600.</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="theme-engines">
<title
>Options for Theme Engines</title>
<sect2 id="standard-themes">
<title
>Standard Theme</title>
<table>
<title
>Standard Theme Options</title>
<tgroup cols="3">
<tbody>
<row>
<entry
>Name</entry>
<entry
>Argument</entry>
<entry
>Explanation</entry>
</row>
<!-- Statusbar -->
<row>
<entry
>Statusbar Position</entry>
<entry
>[top/bottom]</entry>
<entry
>Toggles the position of the statusbar on the screen. Default is bottom.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Statusbar Visible</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Indicates whether the statusbar should be shown. Default is true.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Progress Visible</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Indicates whether loading progress should be shown. Default is true.</entry>
</row>
<!-- Fonts -->
<row>
<entry
>Statusbar Font</entry>
<entry
>[fontname]</entry>
<entry
>The font used in statusbar. Default is Helvetica.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Statusbar Font Size</entry>
<entry
>[size]</entry>
<entry
>The font size for the statusbar. Default is 16.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Statusbar Font Bold</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Indicates whether the statusbar font should be bold. Default is true.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Statusbar Font Italic</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Indicates whether the statusbar font should be italic. Default is false.</entry>
</row>
<!-- Misc. things -->
<row>
<entry
>Statusbar Foreground</entry>
<entry
>[color]</entry>
<entry
>The foreground colour of statusbar. Default is white.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Statusbar Background</entry>
<entry
>[color]</entry>
<entry
>The background colour of statusbar. Default is black.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Statusbar Icon</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Indicates whether the statusbar should have an icon.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Icons Visible</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Indicates whether icons should be visible. Default is true.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Icons Jumping</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Indicates whether icons should be jumping. Default is true.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Icon Position</entry>
<entry
>[0-3,10-13]</entry>
<entry
>Position where the icons are shown. Default is bottom-left.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Splash Screen</entry>
<entry
>[name]</entry>
<entry
>Changes the splash screen image that is shown.</entry>
</row>
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</table>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="redmond-themes">
<title
>Redmond theme</title>
<table>
<title
>Redmond theme options</title>
<tgroup cols="3">
<tbody>
<row>
<entry
>Name</entry>
<entry
>Argument</entry>
<entry
>Explanation</entry>
</row>
<!-- Main elements -->
<row>
<entry
>Background Image</entry>
<entry
>[filename]</entry>
<entry
>User defined background image to use.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>User Icon</entry>
<entry
>[Iconname]</entry>
<entry
>Name of standard icon to show for user. Default is <constant
>go</constant
>.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Welcome Text</entry>
<entry
>[text]</entry>
<entry
>Text shown in splash screen. Default is "Welcome".</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Username Text</entry>
<entry
>[text]</entry>
<entry
>Text shown instead of user's real name.</entry>
</row>
<!-- Positioning elements -->
<row>
<entry
>Welcome Text Position</entry>
<entry
>[x,y]</entry>
<entry
>Position on the screen where the Welcome Text is shown.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Username Text Position</entry>
<entry
>[x,y]</entry>
<entry
>Position on the screen where the username is shown.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Action Text Position</entry>
<entry
>[x,y]</entry>
<entry
>Position on the screen where the current action is shown.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Icon Position</entry>
<entry
>[x,y]</entry>
<entry
>Position on the screen where the user icon is shown.</entry>
</row>
<!-- Show to show.. -->
<row>
<entry
>Show Welcome Text</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Toggles showing of welcome text. Default is true.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Show Welcome Shadow</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Toggles showing of welcome text's shadow. Default is true.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Show Username</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Toggles showing of username. Default is true.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Show Action</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Toggles showing of action currently being performed. Default is true.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Show Icon</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Indicates whether icon should be shown. Default is true</entry>
>Assign the minimum size for icons. Default is 16.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Icon Size Maximum</entry>
<entry
>[size]</entry>
<entry
>Assign the maximum size for icons. Default is 64.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Optimised Icon Rendering</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Optimise icon rendering. Default is true.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Progress Bar Visible</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Default is true.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Progress Bar Position</entry>
<entry
>[top/bottom]</entry>
<entry
>Toggles whether statusbar should be in bottom or top. Default is bottom.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Icons Jumping</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Indicates whether icons should be jumping. Default is false.</entry>
</row>
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</table>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="mac-classic-themes">
<title
>MacClassic Theme</title>
<table>
<title
>MacClassic Theme Options</title>
<tgroup cols="3">
<tbody>
<row>
<entry
>Name</entry>
<entry
>Argument</entry>
<entry
>Explanation</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Icon Position</entry>
<entry
>[0-3,10-13]</entry>
<entry
>Position of the icons on the screen. Default is bottom left.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Icons Jumping</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Indicates whether icons should be jumping. Default is false.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Icons Visible</entry>
<entry
>[true/false]</entry>
<entry
>Indicates whether icons should be visible. Default is true.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Splash Screen</entry>
<entry
>[name]</entry>
<entry
>Changes the splash screen image that is shown.</entry>
</row>
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</table>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="themes-2k">
<title
>2k theme</title>
<table>
<title
>2k theme options</title>
<tgroup cols="3">
<tbody>
<row>
<entry
>Name</entry>
<entry
>Argument</entry>
<entry
>Explanation</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Title Background Colour</entry>
<entry
>[color]</entry>
<entry
>The background colour of title. Default is dark blue.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Title Foreground Colour</entry>
<entry
>[color]</entry>
<entry
>The foreground colour of title. Default is white.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Status Text Colour</entry>
<entry
>[color]</entry>
<entry
>The colour of status texts. Default is the same as Title Background Colour.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Rotator Colour 1</entry>
<entry
>[color]</entry>
<entry
>Defines the colour of rotator 1. Default is dark blue.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Rotator Colour 2</entry>
<entry
>[color]</entry>
<entry
>Defines the colour of rotator 2. Default is cyan.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Rotator Speed</entry>
<entry
>[value]</entry>
<entry
>Defines the speed of the rotator. Default is 30.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Window Title</entry>
<entry
>[text]</entry>
<entry
>Specifies the title text of the window.</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry
>Logo File</entry>
<entry
>[filename]</entry>
<entry
>Defines the logo used.</entry>
</row>
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</table>
</sect2>
</sect1>
</chapter>
<chapter id="from-other-applications">
<title
>Using &ksplash; From Within Your Own Application</title>
<para
>In this chapter, we describe a simple method for using &ksplash; as the splash screen for your &kde; application. If you do not develop applications for &kde;, you can skip this chapter.</para>
<sect1 id="basic-other-reqs">
<title
>Basic Requirements</title>
<para
>Your &kde; application must be &DCOP;-aware. &DCOP; is the &kde; technology used to communicate between applications. If you use the standard <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org"
>&kde; application framework</ulink
>, this is taken care of automatically. For information about &DCOP; and related &kde; technologies, please visit the <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org"
>&kde; developers' corner</ulink
>.</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="other-using">
<title
>Starting &ksplash;</title>
<para
>Before your application starts its computation intensive work, or before it starts loading plugins, &etc;, invoke &ksplash; as follows:</para>
if (kapp->startServiceByDesktopName("ksplash", args, &error, &KSplashName, &pid))
{
KMessageBox::sorry(0, error, "Unable to invoke KSplash");
// Some error processing here.
}
</programlisting>
<para
>We will assume that there is only one instance of &ksplash; running. Other cases are slightly more complex. Please see the &DCOP; documentation for further details.</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="show-messages">
<title
>Showing messages</title>
<para
>Before you show any messages, you need to set up the number of steps you will show. For example, the &kde; startup procedure uses 7 steps.</para>
<programlisting
>QByteArray data;
QDataStream arg(data,IO_WriteOnly);
arg << someNumber;
if (!(c->send(KSplashName, "KSplashIface", "setStartupItemCount(int)", data))
// Some error processing here.
</programlisting>
<para
>Whenever you want to display a message with or without an icon, use</para>
>That's it! You don't need anything more to take advantage of all that &ksplash; has to offer you.</para>
</sect1>
</chapter>
<!-- FIXME: Better to leave this out until it's written, or the translators -->
<!-- will have to still translate it ... -->
<chapter id="wrplugins">
<title
>Writing new &ksplash; plugins</title>
<para
>Writing new &ksplash; plugins is not difficult. In this chapter, we will write a simple plugin that will emulate the splash screen of a well known operating system. This tutorial assumes that you know the basics of C++, and a little bit of KDE/Qt programming.</para>
<sect1 id="basic-requirements">
<title
>Basic Requirements</title>
<para
>We will create a plugin called <literal
>2k</literal
>. The plugin name is used in various places, and is important that you consistently use it so that the plugin is recognised by &ksplash;. &ksplash; plugins are actually dynamically loadable libraries with the following naming convention: </para>
<simplelist>
<member
>The library should be named as <filename
>ksplash+lowercasethemename</filename
>. For our theme, it will be <filename
>ksplash2k</filename
>.</member>
<member
>It should have a corresponding desktop file which is named as <filename
>ksplash+lowercasethemename.desktop</filename
>. For our theme, it will be <filename
>ksplash2k.desktop</filename
>. </member>
<member
>Finally, the object that is returned by the library should be a class which is named <literal
>Theme+themename</literal
>. For our example, it will be <literal
>Theme2k</literal
>.</member>
</simplelist>
<para
>Do not worry about it if you don't understand all of the above. We will consider each of those points in detail later. The other very important detail is that the plugin class should be derived from <literal
>ThemeEngine</literal
>. </para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="skeleton">
<title
>Building the skeleton framework</title>
<para
>We will use the &kde; application framework which will take care of building the plugin and will provide us with platform independence without any work on our part. To do that, make sure you have the <filename
> to produce an application named "2k". It will create a toplevel folder which contains generic files such as AUTHORS, &etc;. We are most interested in the subfolder called <filename class="directory"
>2k</filename
>. Go into that subfolder and delete all the files there. Now we have the skeleton we require. </para>
<para
>The next step is to create a <filename
>.desktop</filename
> file which, when installed, will tell &ksplash; that our plugin is available. Consistent with the naming conventions laid out in <link linkend="basic-requirements"
>the preceding section</link
>, create a file called <filename
>ksplash2k.desktop</filename
> in that folder. It should contain the following lines: </para>
<programlisting
><literal>
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Type=Service
Comment=KSplash Plugin
Name=KSplash2k
ServiceTypes=KSplash/Plugin
X-KDE-Library=ksplash2k
X-KSplash-Default=true
X-KSplash-PluginName=2k
X-KSplash-ObjectName=Theme2k
</literal
>
</programlisting>
<para
>The <literal
>Encoding</literal
>, <literal
>Type</literal
>, <literal
>Comment</literal
> and <literal
>ServiceTypes</literal
> are the same for all plugins. The plugin name and the library name follow the conventions noted earlier. The entry <literal
>X-KSplash-Default</literal
> takes a boolean value which determines whether it is shown in the control panel configuration module by default. Except for some very rare cases, it should be <constant
>true</constant
>. </para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="headerfile">
<title
>Declaration of plugin class</title>
<para
>Now that we have the preliminary work done, let us get into the actual fun part - creating a class that will provide the behaviour we want. While we are free to make this class do almost anything we want it to do, there are a few restrictions.</para>
<orderedlist>
<listitem
><para
>Plugin classes must inherit the <constant
>ThemeEngine</constant
> class.</para
></listitem>
<listitem
><para
>Plugin classes must be named according to the rule: <classname
>Theme+PluginName</classname
>.</para
></listitem>
<listitem
><para
>Plugin classes should provide a <literal
>static</literal
> function called <function
>names</function
> that returns a list of names by which it can be invoked.</para
></listitem>
<listitem
><para
>If the plugin can be configured in the control centre module, it should provide a <literal
>ThemeEngineConfig</literal
>-based class for the configuration.</para
></listitem>
<listitem
><para
>Plugin classes must override at least one of the virtual functions <function
> method. For the moment, do not worry about the <classname
>RotWidget</classname
> class. It is a small widget that provides some eye candy for the user. Our plugin is very simple and does not display any icons or show a progressbar. If you would like to display icons, override the <function
>slotSetPixmap</function
> function. Similar functions exist for setting the progressbar range (<function
>slotUpdateSteps</function
>) and incrementing(<function
>slotUpdateProgress</function
>) the current step. </para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="Implementation">
<title
>Implementation of the plugin</title>
<para
>We will examine only the relevant parts of the implementation. For a listing of the whole implementation, please see the appendix. The first thing we will do is to get the library requirement out of the way:</para>
>Since we like our users, we provide sensible defaults for parameters that are not present in the theme file. Note that we should always set our group to "KSplash Theme: themename" to remain compatible with future theme specifications. The <function
>initUI()</function
> method is not very interesting, as it merely builds up the widgets. Please see the appendix for details. </para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="compilingfile">
<title
>Compiling the plugin</title>
<para
>Since we decided to use the &kde; framework for compiling the plugin, we need to create a <filename
> files for &kde;, please see the &kde; developers' <ulink url="http://developer.kde.org/documentation/other/makefile_am_howto.html"
>website</ulink
>. The only thing of note is that we provide a default theme based on this plugin, and provide a preview image for it. As a matter of courtesy to your users, you should provide an example <filename
>Theme.rc</filename
> file illustrating the use of the various options.</para>
>In order to successfully use &ksplash;, you need &kde; version 3.2 or higher. Some themes may require specific plugins. If a theme does not work, please contact the theme author to find out where to obtain the appropriate plugin.</para>
