# The &kcontrolcenter;

Michael
McBride

    mpmcbride7@yahoo.com

&FDLNotice;
2002-02-02
3.00.00

This documentation describes &kde;'s control center.

KDE
kcontrol
configuration
settings
module

## The &kcontrolcenter;

The &kcontrolcenter; (from now on referred to simply as the control center) provides you with a centralized and convenient way to configure all of your &kde; settings.

The control center is made up of multiple modules. Each module is a separate application, but the control center organizes all of these programs into a convenient location.

Each control center module can be executed individually

See section entitled Running individual control center modules for more information.

The control center groups the configuration modules into categories, so they are easy to locate. Within each category, the control center shows all the modules in a list, so it is easier to find the right configuration module.

## Using The &kcontrolcenter;

This next section details the use of the control center itself. For information on individual modules, please see Control Center Modules

### Starting the &kcontrol;

The &kcontrolcenter; can be started 3 ways:

1. By selecting K Button Control Center from the &kde; Panel.

2. By pressing &Alt;F2.

   This will bring up a dialog box. Type ``kcontrol``, and click Run.

3. You can type `kcontrol &` at any command prompt.

All three of these methods are equivalent, and produce the same result.

### The &kcontrolcenter; Screen

When you start the control center, you are presented with a window, which can be divided into 3 functional parts.

Screenshot
Screenshot

The &kde; Control Center Screen

Across the top is a menubar. The menubar will provide you with quick access to most of &kcontrolcenter;'s features. The menus are detailed in The &kde; Control Center Menus.

Along the left hand side, is a column. This is a where you choose which module to configure.

The main panel shows you some system information.

In this example, we are running &kde; 3.3.91, we started &kcontrolcenter; as user canllaith, the computer is named abacus, it is a &Linux; system running the 2.6.7 kernel, on a Pentium.

### The &kcontrol; Menus

This next section gives you a brief description of what each menu item does.

#### File Menu

The File menu has a single entry.

&Ctrl;Q File Quit

  Closes the control center.

#### View Menu

These options determine how the module selection looks and behaves.

View Mode

  Determines whether to use Tree view, or Icon view for your modules.

  With Tree view, each submenu appears as an indented list.

  With Icon view, when you click on a category, the categories disappear and are replaced with the module list. You then use the up button to return to the categories.

View Icon size

  Using this option, you can choose Small, Medium, or Large icons to select your modules.

  This menu item only controls the icon size if you are in Icon View. If you choose Tree View, the Small icon size will be used, no matter what size was previously selected in Icon View.

#### Settings Menu

The Settings menu has a single entry, File Configure Shortcuts. From here you can map keyboard shortcuts to the other menu options.

#### Help Menu

&help.menu.documentation;

### Exiting The &kde; Control Center

You can exit the control center one of three ways:

- Select File Quit from the menu bar.

- Type &Ctrl;Q on the keyboard.

- Click on the Close button on the frame surrounding the control center.

### Running Individual Modules

You can run individual modules without running kcontrol using the command `kcmshell` from &konsole;. Type ``kcmshell``--list`` to see a list of the availible &kcontrolcenter; modules. You can also access individual &kcontrol; modules through adding the Preferences button to either &kicker; or the &kmenu; through their respective configuration dialogs.

## The &kcontrol; Modules

In order to make it as easy as possible, the &kcontrol; has organized similar options into groups. Each group is called a module. When you click on the name of a module in the left window, you will be presented with the options of the module on the right.

Each module will have some or all of the following buttons:

Help

  This button will give you help specific to the current module. The button will show you a short summary help page in the left window. At the bottom of that window, you can click on a link to get more detailed help.

Defaults

  This button will restore this module to its default values. You must click OK to save the options.

Apply

  Clicking this button will save all changes to &kde;. If you have changed anything, clicking Apply will cause the changes to take effect.

Reset

  This button will Reset the module to the previous settings.

You must save the options of the current module using Apply before you can change to a different module.

If you try to change without saving your options, you will be asked if you want to save your changes, or discard them.

## Credits and License

&kcontrol;

Program copyright 1997-2001 The &kcontrolcenter; Developers

Contributors:

- Matthias Hoelzer-Kluepfel hoelzer@kde.org

- Matthias Elter elter@kde.org

Documentation copyright 2000 Michael McBride mpmcbride7@yahoo.com

Contributors:

- Paul Campbell paul@taniwha.com

- Helge Deller deller@kde.org

- Mark Donohoe

- Pat Dowler

- Duncan Haldane duncan@kde.org

- Steffen Hansen stefh@mip.ou.dk.

- Matthias Hoelzer-Kluepfel hoelzer@kde.org

- Martin Jones mjones@kde.org

- Jost Schenck jost@schenck.de

- Jonathan Singer jsinger@leeta.net

- Thomas Tanghus tanghus@earthling.net

- Krishna Tateneni tateneni@pluto.njcc.com>

- Ellis Whitehead ewhitehe@uni-freiburg.de

&underFDL; &underGPL;