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.
Getting started
- Using Subversion with KDE
- A quick KDE-specific introduction how to work with KDE's version control system
- Coding with Qt and KDE
- Two tutorials introducing KDE and Qt brought to you by KDE-Women.
- KDE 3.0 Tutorial
- An excellent tutorial by KDE developer Antonio Larrosa Jiménez leading you from nothing to a fairly full featured web browser. Highly recommended for KDE 3.0 developers.
- A KDE tutorial, KHello
- A KDE 2 programming tutorial by Daniel Marjamäki. This tutorial introduces the KDE APIs using a graphical version of the world famous 'hello world' program. This document is also available in single download as a gzipped tar file.
- Programming Tutorial for KDE 4
- You are interested in writing applications for KDE 4? Here you get at tutorial which leads you from the beginners stuff to the advanced techniques.
Components and Plugins
- Creating KParts Component
- Tutorial on IBM DeveloperWorks, by David Faure shows developers how to create KParts components, under KDE 2 and KDE 3.
- KParts demonstration
- Tutorial by at kde dot org Philippe Fremy demonstrating the use of KParts in KDE applications, including KOffice. Applies mostly to KDE 2.x.
- KDE User Interface Tutorial (XML GUI)
- Tutorial by KDE developer Kurt Granroth showing how to convert an existing KDE application to use the new XML based user interface builder.
- GUI building with KDE
- An introduction to creating a basic KDE application. This tutorial is now somewhat out of date, there are better ways of doing things than the ones described here.
- (Somewhat dated, and the XML GUI Tutorial above is a better read now.)
- Embedded Components Tutorial
- Tutorial by KDE developer Kurt Granroth showing how to convert an existing KDE application into a component suitable for embedding in Konqueror.
- Writing Plugins For KDE Applications
- This tutorial aims to demonstrate how easy it is to write plugins for KDE 2 using KParts.
- Developing a Plugin Structure for a KDE Applications
- This tutorial will take you through all the steps needed to write a plugin structure, plus plugins for your KDE application.
- Providing file meta-data support with KFile plugins
- Tutorial by Brad Hards that describes how to write a meta-data plugin for your favourite file format. It is presented as an example based tutorial.
DCOP and other automation Tutorials
- Creating a DCOP Interface
- This tutorial shows you how to create a DCOP interface to a KDE application.
- KDE Automation writeup
- Document by Olaf Zanger showing an overview of the scripting capabilities in KDE 2.x. Includes usage of "dcop", "kdcop", scripting languages, xmlrpc, and a FAQ.
- Connect KDE applications using DCOP
- IBM DeveloperWorks tutorial, shows how to use kdcop and dcop with several examples such as instantly messaging a contact in kopete when he comes online, and also how to create a simple DCOP-aware application.
Other tutorials
- KIO Tutorial (German version)
- Tutorial by KDE developers Carsten Pfeiffer and Stephan Kulow for the c't Magazine, giving an introduction into the KDE IO Architecture and an example KIO Slave.
- Using IOSlaves
- IOSlaves are the subprocesses KDE uses to fetch remote files without blocking the user interface. This document discusses how they work and how to use them.
- (Somewhat dated, but might still be useful).
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- Using and extending the KDE EDU Plot widget (docbook archive)
- This tutorial introduces Jason Harris' KPlotWidget that is part of the KDE EDU package. Contains information about defining your own widget in QT / KDevelop designer and about subclassing widgets and overriding member functions to extend functionality.
- Extending the KDE Panel
- This tutorial teaches you how to implement a simple panel applet using the panel applet API. It is a suitable task for an introduction to KDE programming.
- KDE-Python tutorial
- A python version of Daniel's KDE tutorial by Boudewijn Rempt.
- 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.
- Creating Konqueror Service Menus
- This tutorial shows you how to create mimetype-specific actions in Konqueror's context menu (aka "servicemenus")
- Using KConfig XT
- Tutorial on how to efficiently use the KConfig XT framework (available in KDE 3.2).
- Understanding KDE Kiosk mode
- Tutorial on how KDE's kiosk mode is implemented and how you can get started working with it.
- Shell Scripting with KDE dialogs (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.
- KWin decoration styles
- Tutorial on creating decoration plugins for the KWin window manager (KDE 3.2 and later).
- KNewStuffSecure: a secure way to share resources
- Tutorial showing how to share resources in a secured way (KDE 3.4 and later).
- Writing Unittests for Qt4 and KDE4 with QTestLib
- 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.