KDE Application Tutorials: Introduction

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### 1. Introduction

As KDE is currently becoming a standard for Unix System's desktops, more and more developers want to take advantage of the well-written API that the KDE project includes to create new applications that offer a GUI as well as an easy use of the classes provided with Qt/KDE. The KDevelop project therefore intends to provide an IDE which enables developers to create and extend their applications rapidly with the main focus on KDE. As beginners always have difficulties to get started, this handbook tries to explain certain aspects of application creation for KDE by describing how to create running applications with the sample code included with the Qt library by using the KDevelop IDE as well as creating KDE applications by examples.

Therefore, the next chapter will explain you how to create a project with KDevelop that is already a complete application; then we'll walk on to the Qt online documentation containing the sources for examples on how to use the Qt library.

This will give you a first understanding how the underlying Qt library functions and how to use the classes provided with it; Qt is the point where to get started as KDE is on top of the Qt library classes and KDE applications make a wide use of them.

Further, we'll cover on how to create a KDE application with KDevelop's application wizard. From the minimum framework provided, we will create a running example KDE application that makes use of the KDE libraries and will explain the different parts of a KDE application in detail.

The KDevelop Team wishes you success in learing about KDE and Qt with this handbook and hope it will enable you to become another programmer contributing to the KDE project.

### 1.1 What you should know already

This handbook requires a base knowledge about the C++ programming language as a minimum to understand the code examples and their functionality. Further, it is assumed that you have read The User Manual to KDevelop as well as The KDevelop Programming Handbook and know how the KDevelop IDE works in general and what generated projects are.

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