Capplets
The control-center is used by GNOME to customize the user's desktop
environment. It consists of a window with a list of Control Applets, or
"capplets" available to the user. These capplets configure parts of the
GNOME environment. As an example, configuring the screen saver,
background color, mime-type handling and mouse properties are all
handled there. GNOME comes with a number of default capplets, but has
an easily extendable system.
Generally, only things that are modified by the user for his environment
are appropriate for inclusion in the control-center. As an example,
configuring a Joystick would be good capplet, while configuring the
system's NFS export table is not. In addition, applications should
restrict their configuration options to a GNOME property box, instead of
allowing external configuration. Finally, if you are setting something
up for the first time, a Druid might be better used.
Writing a capplet is quite straightforward. You can substitute a
CappletWidget for GtkWindow as your top-level widget, and it will take
care of embedding itself. All interaction with the control-center is
handled for you, as are any necessary invocations. The control-center
itself will prevent more then one capplet running simultaneously. The
only tricky part of writing a capplet is handling the try/revert code
correctly.
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