Kpart
A kpart is a KDE concept that allows file viewing capability to be plugged into Konqueror and other programs.
Konqueror uses kparts to display everything from directories to movies. The list of file types that can be displayed in Konqueror is not finite, and new kparts are being written all the time.
Some people find this a very elegent way to work, because using the same browser for all their files provides a consistant interface. A good example is clicking a link to a pdf on the web. Since the web browser and pdf viewer are the same program the file is opened as smoothly as if were another page of html.
Some file types can be viewed with a choice of kparts. Html, for example, may be viewed as a graphical page or as markup code. In the Konqueror menu go to View->View Mode to switch the view. You can change the default view from the KDE file associations.
Besides content display kparts may also specify widgets, which Konqueror augments with the standard toolbar.
List of kparts
- Kparts have been written for many different file types. Here is a list of some of them, with the formats they support:
- khtml - W3C compliant html display engine
- kplayer - plays films, using MPlayer
- Quicktime, AVI, Mpeg
- QtVisionApplet (installed with qtvision)
- Catured TV, via V4L
- kGhostview
- kpdf
- Cuckooo - uses oPenOffIce to display many formats
- All OOo formats, MS Office formats, Corel Office etc
- Embeded advanced text editor
- Any text, with syntax highlighting for most computer languages
- Embeded VIM component
- Text, VIM style
- Cervista
- FS View Part - view of the filesystem in which files take up space (on screen) proportional to their size (in the filesystem)
- Files and directories
- Embedable image viewer - simple image viewer
- Image viewer part - fuller featured image viewer, with zooming etc
- jpeg, png, TIFF, gif, bitmap and others
- Netscape kpart (official name?)
- Any format for which there is a netscape plugin. Includes flash and Java applets.
If you use a format not listed here and understand object oriented programming, kparts are relatively simple to write. In most cases the real rendering work is done by another application and the interface side is mostly specified using XML.
External links
- http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials#Plugins_and_KParts - A good page on creating new kparts.
- http://artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~kendy/cuckooo/ - Cuckooo Home page