Discovery: kcmshell4

I just discovered the command line tool kcmshell4. This would appear to be a configuration utility for KDE4 that goes beyond that provided by its ¨System Settings" graphical tool. Or perhaps the two are related somehow, I don´t know.

In any case, if you type ¨kcmshell 4 --list¨ at the command line, you get a quite extensive list of what look to be more advanced configuration options.

Hmm....¨kcmshell4 standard_actions" brought up the configuration window that appears by going to K->System Settings->Keyboard & Mouse->Standard Keyboard Shortcuts¨. I´m guessing kcmshell4 is the configuration utility and System Settings is the front-end.

I found this out because I was trying to use a utility called Kxkb, but it wasn´t coming up when I called it by name. The Kxkb help page said that you could access Kxkb using the command ¨kcmshell4 keyboard_layout¨ from the terminal, which did work for me, and led me to discover this useful-looking little tool.

Curious that there are configuration options that don´t (yet) appear in the graphical frontend to the configurator thingy. I wonder what all those other options do?

I also wonder if the Kxkb functionality will fix the problem I´m having with the apostrophe key. I don´t know for sure, but I think I´m on the right track (I´m assuming a Dell Inspiron 1525 doesn´t necessarily use the default 104-key pc keyboard layout. I also have a sneaking suspicion that the option to change the keyboard layout was more visible in GNOME than it was in KDE, but this exercise is about discovery, not taking the easy path).