Katapult"> ]> The &katapult; Handbook Richard A. Johnson
nixternal@ubuntu.com
2005 Martin Meredith &FDLNotice; 2006-11-17 1.00.00 &katapult; is an application specially designed to provide quick and easy access to applications, bookmarks, music and more. KDE extragear Katapult application launcher
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/trinity/ 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;