# The &katapult; Handbook

## Introduction

&katapult; is a &kde; application that provides you with faster and easier access to your applications, bookmarks, and more. It is plugin-based and can launch anything it has a plugin for. Its plugin-driven appearance is completely customizable. &katapult; was inspired by Quicksilver for OS X, and it is written in C++.

## Using &katapult;

### Starting &katapult;

&katapult;, if not started automatically upon booting into &kde;, can simply be started by Alt F2 . When the run dialog box opens, type `katapult` and press Enter. If &katapult; started successfully, you will receive a pop-up message with instructions on how to use the launcher. Here's a screenshot of the &katapult; start-up message Screenshot

### Launching &katapult;

To launch &katapult;, simply press Alt Space . This will pop up the &katapult; launcher, allowing you to type in the name of the application you wish to launch. Here's a screenshot of the &katapult; launcher Screenshot

### More &katapult; features

&katapult; allows access to the following:

- All applications listed in KMenu

- Entire Amarok playlist

- All of you bookmarks (Automatic Mozilla import, or manual import of file)

- Use &katapult; as a calculator

- Use &katapult; to see if you are spelling a word correctly

- Easy access to all of your documents in the home directory

## Command Reference

### The main &katapult; window

When the main &katapult; window opens, simply start typing the application you want to start, and then press Enter to launch that application. Example, to start &konqueror;, you would do: Alt Space Then start typing &konqueror; Once you have typed in at least `konq`, you will notice the Konqueror title and icon appear in the main window. Once you see this, simply press Enter, and &konqueror; will now open. Here's a screenshot of &katapult; starting &konqueror; Screenshot

#### Configuration Dialog

In normal cases &katapult; shows up in the system tray. Simply right click and choose Configure. This will allow you to change &katapult;'s default behavior and appearance.

If &katapult; does not show up in the system tray, simply press Alt Space . Once &katapult; launches, then press Ctrl C . From here you have the options to:

- Configure Global Shortcuts... - This will allow you to change the Alt Space shortcut to one you decide to use.

- Configure Shortcuts... - This will allow you to change all shortcuts involved with the &katapult; launcher

- Configure Katapult... - This will allow you to to change each individual catalog as well as &katapult; itself to suit your needs.

- About Katapult - This will open the about dialog displaying information about &katapult;, the &katapult; authors, and the &katapult; license agreement.

- Quit - This will shut down &katapult;.

## Creating a Catalog (Plugin)

### Introduction

#### Purpose

This section of the documentation is intended for those people looking to develop catalogs (plugins) for &katapult;. It will approach this as a walk-through for creating a text display catalog.

#### Assumptions

It is assumed that you are running &kde; 3.5 or greater. Additionally, KDevelop will be the primary coding environment.

#### Overview

What you will be doing is actually something simple: you are making a library for KDE. This library defines a "Service" that is provided for &katapult; and can therefor be used and called by &katapult;. All of your code will be compiled and then combined into a library (.lo, .so) by KDevelop. It will be added into the $KDE_LIBS/kde3/ directory, and a .desktop "service definition" file will be placed in $KDE/share/services/ so that &katapult; can load your plugin.

### Catalog Structure

#### Common Directory

##### libkatapult.la

- ActionRegistry

- KatapultAction - events

- KatapultItem - the text that is entered

##### libkatapultcatalog.la

- CachedCatalog

- KatapultCatalog

- Match

##### libkatapultdisplay.la

- ImageDisplay

- ImageDisplaySettings

- KatapultDisplay

#### Plugin Catalog Structure

This is where your catalog's directory will go. The format is <name>catalog, where <name> is replaced by your catalog's name. You may want to copy over some of the files from one of the standard catalogs into your new directory so that you have a starting point or something to play with.

## Credits and License

&katapult;

Program copyright 2005, the Katapult Development Team dev@thekatapult.org.uk

Developers:

- Martin Meredith mez@thekatapult.org.uk

- Bastian Holst oculus@thekatapult.org.uk

- Tobi Vollegregt tobi@thekatapult.org.uk

Contributors:

- Richard Johnson nixternal@ubuntu.com

- Jean-Remy Falleri jr.falleri@gmail.com

- Lee Olson clearbeast@gmail.com

- Jonathan Riddell jr@jriddell.org

Original Author:

- Joe Ferris jferris@optimistictech.com

Documentation Copyright © 2006, Richard Johnson nixternal@ubuntu.com

&underFDL; &underGPL;

## Installation

### How to obtain &katapult;

#### KDE Subversion

&install.intro.documentation;

#### Distribution & Source Packages

Available distribution packages and source packages can be obtained through http://wiki.thekatapult.org.uk/Download.

### Requirements

- &kde; 3.4.x and above

- gcc 3.3 or higher

### Compilation and Installation

#### Source Package Instructions Only

Note the following instructions are for the source package only. If you are installing a distribution package, please follow the instructions for that distribution.

#### Extracting the source

Open a terminal (&konsole;), and navigate to the directory in which you saved the source. Once there, type `tar -zxf katapult_<version>.orig.tar.gz`, and then press Enter.

#### Compiling

At the command prompt, in the terminal (&konsole;), type `./configure` and then press Enter. When that finishes, at the command prompt, type `make` and press Enter.

#### Installing

At the command prompt, in the terminal (&konsole;), type `sudo make install` and press Enter. If you are asked for a password, enter you username's password and press Enter.

&documentation.index;