Development/Architecture/KDE4/Plasma

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Plasma is the name of the new desktop planned to replace KDesktop in KDE4. You can think it is a union of SuperKaramba and KDesktop. But it's more. It's a whole concept of functionality and beauty.

It's implementation is based on the Qt Graphics View Framework introduced in Qt 4.2.

From a developer point of view there are some classes in libplasma who play central roles.

Corona: extends QGraphicsScene and provides functionality for adding applets and karamba themes.
Widget: extends QGraphicsItem and works as simple elements in the desktop. There are some built-in in libplasma as icons or buttons.
Applet: extends Widget and implements sophisticated functionality as rss display, a clock or system monitoring.
DataEngine: The common use of a DataEngine is to provide data to a applet for display. This allows a user interface elements to show all sorts of data.

Further reading