Plasma (KDE)

Infobox Software
name = Plasma



caption = Plasma in 4.1
developer = Aaron Seigo as project lead and [http://plasma.kde.org/cms/1031 others]
latest_release_version =
latest_release_date =
operating_system = Linux, Unix-like
genre = Widget engine, desktop
license = GNU Lesser General Public License
website = http://plasma.kde.org

Plasma, part of KDE 4, is a fundamental rewrite of several desktop interaction technologies included in the KDE desktop environment for Linux and other Unix-like systems. It most notably replaces the previous KDesktop shell, Kicker taskbar and SuperKaramba widget engine used in the KDE 3 series with a unified workspace for KDE 4. Plasma also provides a resolution-independent interface for KDE, making the desktop look identical almost regardless of screen size or resolution. Plasma's applets are collectively called "plasmoids", but range from informative widgets to mini-applications like calculators and dictionaries. An important feature of Plasma is that there is no longer a distinction between panels (like the taskbar), desktop icons, and widgets; they are created the same way.

Plasma separates components into "data engines" and their visualization counterparts. This is intended to reduce the total programming effort when there are multiple possible visualizations of given data; and to make it easier for the data engine and its visualizations to be written independently. The planned replacement for KMenu in later versions of KDE 4, called Raptor, will make extensive use of this.

Features

Plasma features "containments", essentially an applet that contains other applets. Two examples of containments are the desktop background and the taskbar. A containment can be anything the developer wants: an image (either raster graphics or an SVG image), animation, or even OpenGL. Images are most commonly used, but with Plasma the user could set any applet as the desktop background without losing functionality of the applet. This also allows for applets to be dragged between the desktop and the taskbar (two separate containments), and have a separate visualization for the more confined taskbar.

The scalable nature of the Plasma widgets allows for them to be resized and rotated to any size, with only a brief pause to redraw themselves. The Kross scripting framework will be used to allow developers to write widgets in a variety of programming languages in addition to C++ [ [http://www.linux.com/feature/114560 Linux.com :: KDE's Plasma is heating up ] ] . Widgets are aware of their size and can be made to show more or less data depending on their size.

Plasma can support other widgets. Support for SuperKaramba (the widget engine used in the KDE 3 series) has been added for legacy support. Support for Apple Dashboard and Opera browser widgets is expected in future releases of KDE 4 [ [http://commit-digest.org/issues/2007-07-22/ commit-digest.org - 22nd July 2007 ] ] .

Roadmap

Most of the planned improvements to Plasma involve taking advantage of new features in Qt 4.4, including widget on canvas and the Qt port of Webkit for easy HTML/CSS rendering within widgets. Other goals are to have more complete documentation, improve existing widgets, replacing redundant code, and others.

References

External links

* [http://plasma.kde.org/ Plasma home page]
* [http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma Plasma developer wiki]
* [http://www.linux.com/feature/114560 Linux.com Plasma article]
* [irc://irc.kde.org/plasma #plasma] IRC channel