kmix_plugin
 
The kmix plugin supports three macros. These are: KMIX_VOLUP, KMIX_VOLDOWN, KMIX_MUTE.  
These macros follow the EAK_ style macros in that they support options.
 
KMIX_MUTE This is the default form of the macro. If used in this form it will mute the first mixer to a volume of 0.
KMIX_MUTE(X) Here X is a kmix mixer. You can get a list of mixers that are supported by running: dcop kmix
KMIX_MUTE(device,device2,device3,...) Here deviceX is a string name of a mixer device (e.g. "Mixer0" to mute.) This allows you to mute more than one mixer at a time.
For the KMIX_VOLUP and KMIX_VOLDOWN macros. Each have the following forms.
KMIX_VOLUP or KMIX_VOLDOWN Increment or decrement the default mixer by an increment of 5. KMIX_VOLUP(X) or KMIX_VOLDOWN(X) Increment or decrement the default kmix mixer by a value of X.
KMIX_VOLUP(X,device,X2,device2,X3,device3,...) or KMIX_VOLDOWN(X,device,X2,device2,X3,device3,...) X is the volume to adjust the following device by.

[14:23][jcp@phoenix]
[~] > dcop kmix
qt
KDebug
MainApplication-Interface
Mixer0
Mixer1
kmix
kmix-mainwindow#1

WebBack = KMIX_VOLDOWN(4,Mixer0)
WebForward = KMIX_VOLUP(4,Mixer0)

dcop kmix Mixer0 setVolume x y

dcop kmix Mixer0 setMasterVolume x

dcop kmix Mixer0 masterVolume

read INC; VOL_CUR=`dcop kmix Mixer0 masterVolume`; VOL=`expr $VOL_CUR + $INC`; dcop kmix Mixer0 setMasterVolume $VOL

Globally-available mouse gestures — KHotKeys
 
Mouse gestures, used in Opera for navigation and available in other applications and platforms, are widely praised as a quick and intuitive way of executing specific commands. With version 2 of KHotKeys, KDE received its own integrated and highly-flexible solution as well. With flexibility comes obstacles, as making effective use of mouse gestures is difficult since none are activated by default, and the type of users who might profit the most of mouse gestures might not be able to set up them to begin with.
 
KHotKeys in general is a manager for globally-available shortcuts, either keyboard commands or mouse gestures. It can execute custom commands on the CLI, type custom strings of keyboard input, as well as send DCOP commands to specific applications. Mouse gestures are represented on a 3x3 fields grid (looking like and named after the common number pad), recording the order in which those fields are crossed with the mouse. Such a small grid obviously will not be able to represent rounded shapes, so to reduce potential misinterpretations of mouse gestures round shapes should generally be avoided.
 
Let us look at creating a mouse gesture for the widely used shortcut Ctrl+N. The gesture should have the shape of an N and the key sequence should be input to the currently focused application. To achieve this we first start KHotKeys by typing khotkey in KDE's MiniCLI, which is accessible using the shortcut Alt+F2. Now we are confronted with a two-pane interface. On the left there is the list of actions and on the right are the settings for each of them. First we create a new action by pressing the respective button. The newly appearing General tab allows us to set a custom name for our action, and from Action type we select Gesture -> Keyboard Input (simple) which fits our purpose perfectly. Now on the Gestures tab we press the Edit... button and "paint" our N shaped gesture three times into the draw area. As soon as this has been correctly done, the shape can be saved and the respective grid order appears as number on the Gestures tab (in our case it should be 1475369). Now we can add our keyboard input on the Keyboard Input Setting tab, simply typing Ctrl+N into the Keyboard input, pressing Apply and the action is set up. The keyboard input format is currently a special one, e.g. if you want a gesture to write "Hello" you will need to write Shift+H:E:L:L:O for it to appear correctly.
 
Considering these rather high entrance barriers we hope that people will start sharing their mouse gestures schemes, allowing others to make use of its potential as well without having to dive into all the technical information necessary to set them up (the KHotKeys configuration file, which can easily be imported by anyone, is located at ~/.kde/share/config/khotkeysrc). Similarly a user-friendly wizard and more mouse gestures included by default in future KDE versions may be helpful (the latter appears to be happening for KDE 3.2.1). A couple of mouse gesture collections (including ones similar to Opera and Mozilla style gestures) are available for download already.