[tde-users] how to suppress icons in systray ?

Thanks for the suggestions about changing the paths in my home folder. Funny, but it's been so long since I did it that I completely forgot it was in the Trinity Control Center. I knew it had to be simple, because last time I thought about it was at least 15 years ago, when I was a total n00b. So here's another issue that suddenly reappears: Whenever I open some programs, an icon automatically pops up in the systray. I can kill these, of course, by running pkill ksystraycmd, but after I do this a few times within, say ten minutes, I get tired of it. Now, I don't mean to kill those icons that I actually want and use; for example, smplayer puts an icon in the systray, and it is actually useful. But when I first start the program, a second icon is generated, too, a sort of ghost icon that serves no real function. This is the bugaboo that I want to suppress, so that it is not generated in the first place. Since I reinstalled my OS, I also inadvertently changed some of my paths, and I believe that this might be a similar issue, because now some apps are generating icons for the systray, apps that never generated icons there before now. This is annoying, as my systray gets cluttered with stuff I don't use; and furthermore, I get duplicates on top of duplicates on top of yet more duplicates. It's one thing to have smplayer's icon, as well as the ghost icon; I kill it, doesn't come back until the next time. But now when I open text files, I get a new icon for each new text file, so that I end up with a dozen useless icons taking up space. I did check TCC under these programs, and this isn't the same thing, where you see a box to tick off for "Place in system tray"; these ghost icons are something else. Any help or suggestions are welcome. Bill