&Mark.Donohoe;
&Martin.R.Jones;
&Mike.McBride;
2005-01-18
3.4
KDE
KControl
background
wallpaper

## Background

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

It is comprised of four areas:

1. Desktop selection area

2. An area for selecting background images

3. The background Preview Monitor

4. An area for determining the background color

Selecting the desktop

  The drop down box labeled 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 color gradient chosen in the section below.

  There are three choices available here:

  No Picture

    No picture background will be shown. The color 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 dialog 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 centering a small image still requires an image the size of your display to be maintained in memory.

Options

  ### Position:

  Centered

    The image will be centered on the screen without changing the size of the image. The background colors 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.

  Center Tiled

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

  Centered Maxpect

    The image will be placed in the center 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.

  Centered Auto fit

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

  Scale and Crop

    Magnify the picture without distorting it until it fills both the width and height of the desktop (cropping the picture if necessary), and then center it on the desktop.

  Colors:

    The first drop down box allows you to choose the type of color, 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 dialog box.

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

    Single Color

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

    Horizontal Gradient

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

    Vertical Gradient

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

    Pyramid Gradient

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

    Pipecross Gradient

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

    Elliptic Gradient

      By choosing this mode, you select two colors (using both color buttons). &kde; will then start with the color selected by Blend Color in the center of the screen, and slowly transform into the color selected by Primary Color 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 colors you selected. For more on patterns, see the section Adding, Removing and Modifying Patterns.

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

  Blending:

    The drop down box labeled 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 colors. 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 immediately 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 dialog 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 color 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 color to show beneath text, or enable a shadow under the text to enhance its appearance.

It is possible to set how many lines of text will be shown beneath each icon with the Lines for icon text: If the text is longer than can be shown in the configured number of lines, it will be truncated. You can also set a value for the Width for icon text: option. The value is in pixels, and the default is Auto, which is a default calculated based on the current font.

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

### Adding, Removing and Modifying Wallpapers and Patterns

There is a button under the preview monitor labelled Get New Wallpapers that helps you fetch new wallpaper images from a selection of popular images from the KDE-Look website. You can of course select any image you have available to use as wallpaper, and it may be stored in any location on your hard drive. To have a wallpaper show up in the list automatically for all users, you should save it to the `$`KDEDIR`/share/wallpapers` folder.

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 colors. &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.