&Mark.Donohoe;
&Martin.R.Jones;
&Mike.McBride;
John
Knight

    anarchist_tomato@herzeleid.net

Conversion to British English
2003-09-28
3.2
KDE
KControl
background
wallpaper

## Background

The Background module allows you to configure colours or wallpapers for your desktop background.

It is comprised of four areas:

1. Desktop selection area

2. The background Preview Monitor

3. An area for determining the background colour

4. An area for selecting background images

Selecting the desktop

  The drop down box labelled Setting for desktop: is used to select the desktop you want to configure. You can select any of the desktops individually, or you can select All Desktops and the changes you make will be applied to all desktops.

Preview Monitor

  This is a preview window. It will give you a sense of what to expect with each change.

Background

  This section allows you to load a wallpaper on top of the colour gradient chosen in the section below.

  There are three choices available here:

  No Picture

    No picture background will be shown. The colour and pattern choices below will still take effect.

  Picture

    A single picture will be used as the background for the selected desktops.

    How this picture is positioned and scaled can be fine tuned below.

  Slide show

    &kde; allows you to have an automatic slide show of wallpaper images. To enable this option, press the Setup... button. In the resulting dialogue you may choose any image or folder of images available on your computer, using the Add... button to navigate your file system. Remove will remove the currently selected entry from the list.

    You may choose the length of time any image is displayed in the Change picture after: box, and you may choose Show pictures in random order if you don't want them displayed in the order they are listed.

    Displaying wallpaper requires that the image be kept in memory. If you are low on memory, using a small, tiled image or none at all is recommended.

    Scaling or centreing a small image still requires an image the size of your display to be maintained in memory.

Options
  Centred

    The image will be centred on the screen without changing the size of the image. The background colours will be present anywhere the image does not cover.

  Tiled

    The image will be duplicated until it fills the entire desktop. The first image will be placed in the upper left corner of the screen, and duplicated downward and to the right.

  Centre Tiled

    The image will be duplicated until it fills the entire desktop. The first image will be placed in the centre of the screen, and duplicated upward, downward to the right, and to the left.

  Centred Maxpect

    The image will be placed in the centre of the screen. It will be scaled to fit the desktop, but it will not change the aspect ratio of the original image. This will provide you with an image that is not distorted.

  Tiled Maxpect

    The image will be placed in the corner of the screen. It will be scaled to fit the desktop, but it will not change the aspect ratio of the original image. This will provide you with an image that is not distorted. If there is any space over, the image will be duplicated to fill it.

  Scaled

    The image will be scaled to fit the desktop. It will be stretched to fit to all four corners. This may distort the image.

  Centred Auto fit

    If the picture fits the desktop size, this mode works like the centred option. If the picture is larger than the desktop then it is scaled down to fit while keeping the aspect ratio.

  Colours:

    The first drop down box allows you to choose the type of colour, gradient, or pattern to display under (or in place of) wallpaper.

    If you are going to be using a picture as a wallpaper, you can skip this section of the dialogue box.

    However, if your chosen wallpaper does not cover the entire desktop, the chosen colours will still show in the remaining space.

    Single Colour

      By choosing this mode, you select one colour using the first colour bar, and the entire background is covered with this one colour.

    Horizontal Gradient

      By choosing this mode, you select two colours (using both colour buttons). &kde; will then start with the colour selected by Primary Colour on the left edge of the screen, and slowly transform into the colour selected by Blend Colour by the time it gets to the right edge of the screen.

    Vertical Gradient

      By choosing this mode, you select two colours (using both colour buttons). &kde; will then start with the colour selected by Primary Colour on the top edge of the screen, and slowly transform into the colour selected by Blend Colour as it moves to the bottom of the screen.

    Pyramid Gradient

      By choosing this mode, you select two colours (using both colour buttons). &kde; will then start with the colour selected by Primary Colour in each corner of the screen, and slowly transform into the colour selected by Blend Colour as it moves to the centre of the screen.

    Pipecross Gradient

      By choosing this mode, you select two colours (using both colour buttons). &kde; will then start with the colour selected by Primary Colour in each corner of the screen, and slowly transform into the colour selected by Blend Colour as it moves to the centre of the screen. The shape of this gradient is different than the pyramid gradient.

    Elliptic Gradient

      By choosing this mode, you select two colours (using both colour buttons). &kde; will then start with the colour selected by Blend Colour in the centre of the screen, and slowly transform into the colour selected by Primary Colour as it moves to the edges, in an elliptical pattern.

    Pattern

      The rest of the list are the names of various patterns or textures you can choose.

      Click on OK, and &kde; will render the pattern you selected using the two colours you selected. For more on patterns, see the section Adding, Removing and Modifying Patterns.

      Select the primary colour with the first colour bar. If you have chosen a pattern that requires two colours to be set the secondary colour can be set by pressing the appropriate button.

  Blending:

    The drop down box labelled Blending: contains the options to make a smooth transition (blend) from the wallpaper as it changes to the background.

    1. A drop down box allows you to select the blending mode. Many of the modes are similar to blending modes for background colours. Select your mode from the list, and the preview window shows you what it will look like.

    2. The Balance slider adjusts the blending. The results can be seen in the preview window.

    3. The Reverse roles can reverse the role of the picture and the background for some types of blending.

### Advanced options

Located below the preview monitor is a button labeled Advanced Options....

To use an external program to determine and change the background of &kde;, simply select Use the following program for drawing the background. Available &kde; programs are listed, select one to enable it. To modify your choice, for example to change the refresh times, you may press the Modify... button.

To add a third party application (&eg; XEarth you may use the Add... button. A dialogue will open allowing you to choose your application, and fill in other data about it. You may remove any entries from this list by selecting it and pressing the Remove button.

Using third party external programs to modify or change the background is beyond the scope of this document, see their respective documentation for the format of command-line switches and other configuration information.

Also in this section you may choose to set the colour of text that is used for icons on the desktop. If you find icon text difficult to read against a wallpaper or pattern, you can choose a solid colour to show beneath text, or enable a shadow under the text to enhance its appearance.

Finally you can set the Size of the background cache:. The default (2048 KB) is usually a safe choice.

### Adding, Removing and Modifying Patterns

A pattern is a picture file which &kde; uses as a template to draw your background. The picture file provides the shapes, but &kde; provides the colours. &kde; is packaged with several patterns, and you also can add new patterns.

To add a new pattern that is available to every user on your computer, simply place the file in `$`KDEDIR`/share/apps/kdesktop/patterns/`

Copy a `.desktop` file from this folder, and name it the same as your new pattern image file. Modify the contents to suit your new pattern.

To add a new pattern for a single user, add the files to `$`KDEHOME`/share/apps/kdesktop/patterns/`

For best results, the pattern should be a grayscale PNG file.