KDE Platform 4 was a collection of

libraries A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

and

software framework In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software, providing generic functionality, can be selectively changed by additional user-written code, thus providing application-specific software. It provides a standard ...

s by

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...

that served as technological foundation for

KDE Software Compilation 4 KDE Software Compilation 4 (KDE SC 4) was the only series of the so-called KDE Software Compilation (short: KDE SC), first released in January 2008 and the last release being 4.14.3 released in November 2014. It was the follow-up to K Desktop En ...

distributed under the

GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their ow ...

(LGPL). KDE Platform 4 was the successor to KDElibs and the predecessor of

KDE Frameworks KDE Frameworks is a collection of libraries and software frameworks readily available to any Qt-based software stacks or applications on multiple operating systems. Featuring frequently needed functionality solutions like hardware integration, fi ...

. KDE Platform 4 is the only version of KDE Platform, and in 2013 it was replaced by

KDE Frameworks 5 KDE Frameworks is a collection of libraries and software frameworks readily available to any Qt-based software stacks or applications on multiple operating systems. Featuring frequently needed functionality solutions like hardware integration, f ...

Technologies

* User Interface ** Plasma – desktop and panel widget engine **

KHTML KHTML is a browser engine developed by the KDE project. It is the default engine of the Konqueror browser, but it has not been actively worked on since 2016. Moreover, KHTML will be discontinued for KDE Frameworks 6. Built on the KParts framew ...

– HTML rendering engine **

KIO KIO (KDE Input/Output) is a system library incorporated into KDE Frameworks 5 and KDE Software Compilation 4. It provides access to files, web sites and other resources through a single consistent API. Applications, such as Konqueror and Dol ...

– extensible network-transparent file access **

KParts KDE Frameworks is a collection of libraries and software frameworks readily available to any Qt-based software stacks or applications on multiple operating systems. Featuring frequently needed functionality solutions like hardware integration, fi ...

– lightweight in-process graphical component framework **

Sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...

– spell checker **

XMLGUI XMLGUI is a KDE framework for designing the user interface of an application using XML, using the idea of actions. In this framework, the programmer designs various actions that their application can implement, with several actions defined for t ...

– allows defining UI elements such as menus and toolbars via

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...

files **

Goya Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and e ...

* Hardware and Multimedia **

Phonon In physics, a phonon is a collective excitation in a periodic, elastic arrangement of atoms or molecules in condensed matter, specifically in solids and some liquids. A type of quasiparticle, a phonon is an excited state in the quantum mechanical ...

– multimedia framework **

Solid Solid is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being liquid, gas, and plasma). The molecules in a solid are closely packed together and contain the least amount of kinetic energy. A solid is characterized by structural r ...

– device integration framework * Services **

NEPOMUK Nepomuk (; german: Pomuk) is a town in Plzeň-South District in the Plzeň Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 3,700 inhabitants. It is known as the birthplace of Saint John of Nepomuk, who was born here around 1340 and whose statue can be ...

KNewStuff KDE Frameworks is a collection of libraries and software frameworks readily available to any Qt-based software stacks or applications on multiple operating systems. Featuring frequently needed functionality solutions like hardware integration, fi ...

– KDE's "Hot New Stuff" classes ** Policykit-KDE * Communication **

Akonadi Akonadi is a storage service for personal information management (PIM) data and metadata named after the oracle goddess of justice in Ghana. It is one of the “pillars” (core technologies) behind the KDE SC 4 project, although it is designed to ...

* Games **

Gluon A gluon ( ) is an elementary particle that acts as the exchange particle (or gauge boson) for the strong force between quarks. It is analogous to the exchange of photons in the electromagnetic force between two charged particles. Gluons bind q ...

** KGGZ * Other **

ThreadWeaver ThreadWeaver is a system library initially developed for KDE Software Compilation 4 and later refactored for KDE Frameworks 5. ThreadWeaver allows developers to easily take advantage of multi-core processors and multithreading. In ThreadWeaver th ...

– library to use multiprocessor systems more effectively **

Kiosk Historically, a kiosk () was a small garden pavilion open on some or all sides common in Persia, the Indian subcontinent, and in the Ottoman Empire from the 13th century onward. Today, several examples of this type of kiosk still exist in an ...

– allows disabling features within KDE to create a more controlled environment ** Kross ** KConfig XT **

WebDAV WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents ''directly'' in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for conc ...

Technologies superseded in KDE Platform 4

aRts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...

–

sound server A sound server is software that manages the use of and access to audio devices (usually a sound card). It commonly runs as a background process. Sound server in an operating system In a Unix-like operating system, a sound server mixes differe ...

(replaced with

) * DCOP –

inter-process communication In computer science, inter-process communication or interprocess communication (IPC) refers specifically to the mechanisms an operating system provides to allow the processes to manage shared data. Typically, applications can use IPC, categor ...

system (replaced with

D-Bus In computing, D-Bus (short for "Desktop Bus") is a message-oriented middleware mechanism that allows communication between multiple processes running concurrently on the same machine. D-Bus was developed as part of the freedesktop.org project, ...

)

KParts

KParts is the

component Circuit Component may refer to: •Are devices that perform functions when they are connected in a circuit. In engineering, science, and technology Generic systems *System components, an entity with discrete structure, such as an assemb ...

framework for the KDE Plasma

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphic ...

. An individual component is called a KPart. KParts are analogous to

Bonobo The bonobo (; ''Pan paniscus''), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee, is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus '' Pan,'' the other being the comm ...

components in

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its character ...

and

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. ...

controls in Microsoft's Component Object Model.

Konsole Konsole is a free and open-source terminal emulator graphical application which is part of KDE Applications and ships with the KDE desktop environment. Konsole was originally written by Lars Doelle. It ls licensed under the GPL-2.0-or-later and t ...

is available as a KPart and is used in applications like

Konqueror Konqueror is a free and open-source web browser and file manager that provides web access and file-viewer functionality for file systems (such as local files, files on a remote FTP server and files in a disk image). It forms a core part of ...

and

Kate Kate name may refer to: People and fictional characters * Kate (given name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or nickname * Gyula Káté (born 1982), Hungarian amateur boxer * Lauren Kate (born 1981), American aut ...

. Example uses of KParts: *

uses the

Okular Okular is a multiplatform document viewer developed by the KDE community and based on Qt and KDE Frameworks libraries. It is distributed as part of the KDE Applications bundle. Its origins are from KPDF and it replaces KPDF, KGhostView, KFax, ...

part to display documents *

uses the

Dragon Player Dragon Player is a simple media player for the KDE desktop environment. It is the renamed continuation of a video player for KDE 3 called Codeine, which was originally created and developed by Max Howell, and is now developed by Ian Monroe und ...

part to play multimedia *

Kontact Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite developed by KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It offers a number of inter-changeable graphical UIs (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, ...

embeds

kdepim Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite developed by KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It offers a number of inter-changeable graphical UIs (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, ...

applications *

and other editors use the katepart editor component * Several applications use the

KPart to embed a terminal

Solid

Solid is a device integration framework for KDE Platform 4 and its successor,

. It functions on similar principles to KDE's multimedia pillar

; rather than managing hardware on its own, it makes existing solutions accessible through a single API. The current solution uses

udev udev (userspace ) is a device manager for the Linux kernel. As the successor of devfsd and hotplug, udev primarily manages device nodes in the directory. At the same time, udev also handles all user space events raised when hardware devices a ...

NetworkManager NetworkManager is a daemon that sits on top of libudev and other Linux kernel interfaces (and a couple of other daemons) and provides a high-level interface for the configuration of the network interfaces. Rationale NetworkManager is a softwar ...

and

BlueZ A Bluetooth stack is software that is an implementation of the Bluetooth protocol stack. Bluetooth stacks can be roughly divided into two distinct categories: # ''General-purpose'' implementations that are written with emphasis on feature-rich ...

(the official

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which in ...

Bluetooth stack). However, any and all parts can be replaced without breaking the application, making applications using Solid extremely flexible and portable. Work is underway to build a Solid backend for the

Windows Windows is a group of several Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, W ...

port of KDE based on

Windows Management Instrumentation Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) consists of a set of extensions to the Windows Driver Model that provides an operating system interface through which instrumented components provide information and notification. WMI is Microsoft's impl ...

References

External links

TechBase
documentation for KDE developers
KDE Projects
overview of all projects within git.kde.org
KDE quick Git source code browser

KDE Bug Tracking System

KDE tutorial first program
{{KDE Application programming interfaces Articles with example C++ code Computing platforms Free computer libraries KDE software Unix windowing system-related software X-based libraries