I found that the reason adding $MYAPP/share to KDEDIRS doesn't work as expected under SUSE is that KDEDIRS is unset in SUSE's modified version of the startkde script (/opt/kde3/bin/startkde), which, of course, is executed after a user's .profile is read. Changing KDEDIRS after KDE is already started has no effect. If I undo SUSE's change to the startkde script, everything works as documented for KDEDIRS. Why does SUSE modify KDE's startkde script in this way? Makes no sense to me. Any thoughts appreciated. Thanks! TAK