To Set Preferences for Individual Panels and Panel Objects

To set the preferences for a panel and the objects on a panel, perform the following steps:

1. Log in to a session with a test user account.

2. Configure the panels as required.

3. Use the --dump option with the gconftool-2 command line tool to generate a file that contains an XML description of your panel configuration. The --dump option generates a list that contains all preference keys in a GConf repository directory that you specify.

   For example, the following command creates an XML description of the default panel configuration in a file called my-panel-setup.entries:

   # gconftool-2 --dump /apps/panel/profiles/default > my-panel-setup.entries

4. Open the my-panel-setup.entries file in a text editor, and modify the file as required.

   For example, you might want to change the location of the desktop entry files. The following is an excerpt from a file generated with the --dump option:

   <entry>
         <key>objects/object_16/launcher_location</key>
         <schema_key>/schemas/apps/panel/objects/launcher_location</schema_key>
         <value>
           <string>hadjaha-00adce02f7.desktop</string>
         </value>
       </entry>

   In the sample above, you might want to change the reference to hadjaha-00adce02f7.desktop to another desktop entry file that is available globally.

   When you generate a panel configuration with the --dump option, the positions of the panel objects are absolute positions. You might want to change the positions of panel objects from absolute positions to relative positions. The object at the extreme left of a panel has a position value of 0. The next object has a position value of 1, and so on. If you want object positions to be relative to the right side of the panel, set the value of the right_stick key to true.

5. Use the --load option with the gconftool-2 command line tool to set the values of the default configuration source to the values in the my-panel-setup.entries file. For example, the following command sets the values of the keys in the default configuration source to the values of the corresponding keys in my-panel-setup.entries:

   # gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults --load my-panel-setup.entries

6. Log out of the test user account.