Using Plugins
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Using Plugins

Mathieu Kooiman

What is a Plugin?

Quanta Plus is able to load plugins, which are KParts. The KPart framework is another very powerfull framework of KDE. A KPart is a relatively small, reusable container of functionality. It allows KDE developers to easily build on the work of other programmers. One example of this is Quanta Plus itself. The editor Quanta Plus uses is the Kate KPart. The Kate KPart already had a bunch of functionality that Quanta Plus needed, like syntax highlighting. Integrating it into Quanta Plus allowed the Quanta Plus developers to focus on what Quanta Plus should be able to do, rather than facing the many problems that developing a new editor KPart/component from scratch would bring.

The plugins Quanta Plus loads might have nothing to do with Quanta Plus itself. This makes it a very powerful plugin system. You can benefit from extra functionality and need not to wait until someone integrates it into Quanta Plus! The plugins can be loaded into a number of GUI elements. More on this below.

Understanding the Edit Plugin Dialog

To install a Plugin or KPart we will work from the Plugins->Edit menu. This will bring up the following dialog:


The Edit Plugin dialog.


This dialog lets you manage all defined plugins and lets you add new ones. We will describe each GUI element in here:

Search paths

Here you can fill in a search path. When adding a plugin without a Location, Quanta Plus will search these paths to find the plugin.

Add

This will bring up a dialog which allows you to add a new plugin.

Configure

This will allow you to change the settings of a particular plugin.

Remove

Removes the currently selected plugin.

Refresh

Refreshes the dialog's contents.

Read the section called “Configuring Plugins” to learn more about plugins.

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