In commit 0ab8ac0a I pushed a nominal change to the starttde script. The change is intended to force run the r14-xdg-update script even if the kdeglobals key has already been set from a previous run of the r14-xdg-update script. Hopefully this helps users avoid the turmoil I experienced.
I presume only GIT users are affected. Any 3.5.13.x users will not have yet run the r14-xdg-update script because they have not updated anything.
There might be more rc file changes that need to be added to the r14-xdg-update script. I browsed the respective renaming etherpad, but I don't use every single app or feature and there is no way for me to know all possible changes. The only way is to watch for anomalies and unexpected behavior.
Darrell