> Good to know.  Please look in the generated
> tdecore/tde-config.cpp file and see if a reference to applications/kde is in there.

Here is what I see that could be suspect:

...
    if (args->isSet("libsuffix"))
    {
        TQString tmp(KDELIBSUFF);
        tmp.remove('"');
        printResult(expandvars(tmp.local8Bit()));
        return 0;
    }
...
    type = args->getOption("install");
    if (!type.isEmpty())
    {
        const char *installprefixes[] = {
...
            "data",   "@kde_datadir@",
...
            "xdgdata-apps", "@xdg_appsdir@",
            "xdgdata-dirs", "@xdg_directorydir@",
...

I think I see where you are going with this: that apps call tde-config internally to determine where to find files. Possibly then the hard-coding is with tde-config, or, tde-config is not being built correctly to detect the changes I make in the respective automake/cmake files. Is there a way I can check the build logs to confirm how tde-config is built?

Darrell