Development/Tutorials

Tutorials are the fastest way of finding out what KDE will do for you, and how to do it. Here is a list of currently available tutorials for KDE4. Material for KDE3 and KDE2 is available on the bottom of this page.

Getting started

Introduction To KDE 4 Programming: Are you interested in writing applications with KDE 4? This tutorial series is aimed at those completely new to KDE programming.

Porting Your Application: Help Porting Applications from Qt3/KDE3 to Qt4/KDE4

Introduction to CMake (Simplified Chinese version): How to use the CMake build system used by KDE4.

Common Programming Mistakes: Various common mistakes made while developing Qt and KDE applications and how to avoid them.

Using Qt Designer to build user interfaces: How to create UI files with designer, and how to integrate them into a KDE program.

Using Command-line Options: Processing and accessing command-line arguments the easy way with KDE's command line arguments classes.

Testing And Debugging

Debugging your application: Tips, tools and techniques to apply when debugging your KDE application

Writing Unittests for Qt4 and KDE4 with QTestLib (Original link): Tutorial by Brad Hards that describes how to write unit tests using the QTestLib framework. It is presented as an example based tutorial, and is still under development.

Semi-automatic ways to detect code errors: Techniques you can use to detect errors in KDE code

Managing Configuration Data With KConfig

Introduction To KConfig: An overview of the KConfig classes and how to use them in your application code

Using KConfig XT: Tutorial on how to efficiently use the KConfig XT framework.

Localization

Introduction To Unicode: An introduction to what Unicode is as well as how to handle Unicode data in KDE applications.

Writing Applications With Localization In Mind: This tutorial covers what localization is, why it's important and how to ensure your application is ready to be localized. A must read for all application developers.

Avoiding Common Localization Pitfalls: There are several common mistakes that prevent applications from being properly localized. Find out what they are and how to easily avoid them in this tutorial.

Building KDE's Localization Module: Building and installing language support from KDE's localization (l10n) module is a good idea for those working on applications in the main KDE repository. Doing so will allow you to test your application in another language and spot problem areas. Learn how to do just that in this tutorial.

Incorporating i18n Into the Build System: Once your application is ready to be localized, the next step is to ensure that translation files are built automatically and kept up to date. This tutorial covers the necessary CMakeFiles.txt additions as well the process of distributing the resulting message catalogs with your application.

Common i18n Challenges and Solutions: This tutorial covers challenges that you may eventually run into such as translating handbooks and other data that exists outside of the source code, merging and handling obsolete .po files, dealing with freezes, coding in languages other than English and creating independent releases of or moving applications between KDE modules.

Documentation

API Documentation: This tutorial explains how to document your APIs properly.

Application Automation and Scripting

D-Bus

Introduction to D-Bus: A straight-forward introduction to the core concepts in D-Bus from an application developer's perspective, this tutorial covers what D-Bus is and how it can be used by applications.
Accessing D-Bus Interfaces: A step-by-step guide to calling D-Bus methods and connecting to D-Bus signals using QtDBus.
Intermediate D-Bus: Tips to make use of QtDBus when faced with problematic real-world interfaces.
Creating D-Bus Interfaces: Learn how to expose functionality in your application by creating and using custom D-Bus interfaces. Covers generating the XML descriptions, instantiating interfaces at run time and setting up the build system with CMake.
D-Bus Autostart Services: Turn your application into a D-Bus autostart service with this tutorial. This D-Bus feature, also known as "D-Bus service activation", will ensure that even when your application isn't running that D-Bus calls made to it will work by relying on the D-Bus daemon itself to start your app if and when needed.
Porting from DCOP to D-Bus: Port your applications from DCOP to D-Bus with this handy guide.

Konqueror

Creating Konqueror Service Menus: This tutorial shows you how to create mimetype-specific actions in Konqueror's context menu (aka "servicemenus").

Kross

Kross Tutorial: This tutorial explains how to integrate the Kross scripting framework into an application.

KOffice

Creating KOffice Flake Plugins: This tutorial shows you how you can build a plugin for KOffice applications to allow you embed content in ODF documents using Flake.

KWord Scripting: This tutorial shows how to script KWord with Python, Ruby or JavaScript using Kross.

KSpread Scripting: This tutorial shows how to script KSpread with Python, Ruby or JavaScript using Kross.

Krita Scripting: This tutorial shows how to script Krita with Python, Ruby or JavaScript using Kross.

SuperKaramba

SuperKaramba Tutorial: This tutorial provides an overview of scripting within SuperKaramba.

Search and Metadata

Strigi

Writing file analyzers: File analyzers extract data from files to display in the file dialogs and file managers. The data gathered this way is also used to search for files. KDE4 allows the use of multiple analyzers per file type. This tutorial describes how you can write new analyzers.

Nepomuk-KDE

KMetaData first steps: KMetaData is the KDE library which provides easy access to metadata in the Nepomuk-KDE system. Learn how to make your application create and read metadata using the KMetaData system.

Hardware Awareness (Solid)

Introduction to Solid: An introduction to using the Solid hardware discovery and interaction system in KDE applications.

Accessing Network Information: How to use the Solid system to get information about the network

Multimedia (Phonon)

Phonon: How to start with the multimedia API

Printing

Hello World: Introduction to the KDE printing system

TODO Print Dialog: Using the KDE print dialog

Get Hot New Stuff

Introduction to Get Hot New Stuff: An introduction to the developer-friendly network update system that allows KDE applications to fetch new application data at runtime in a user friendly manner.

KNewStuff Secure (Original Link): Tutorial showing how to share resources in a secured way (KDE 3.4 and later). By András Mantia <[email protected]>.

Rapid Application Development

Python

101 Introduction to signals and slots: A simple introduction to Qt's signal and slot architecture.

Ruby

KDE Ruby Korundum tutorial: A ruby version of Antonio Larrosa Jiménez's KDE tutorial by Richard Dale. See the Ruby Developers Corner for Qt tutorials and other info.

Qt4 Ruby Tutorial: Trolltech's fabulous introductory tutorial to Qt, translated to Ruby.

Shell

Shell Scripting with KDE dialogs (Original Link) (German version): Tutorial by Brad Hards that describes how to use KDE dialogs in shell scripts with kdialog. It is presented as an example based tutorial.

KDE2 and KDE3 Materials

KDE3 Tutorials: These tutorials cover topics related to KDE3.

KDE2 Tutorials: These tutorials cover topics related to KDE2.