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# What is the Trinity Desktop Environment?

## What is the Trinity Desktop Environment?

&tde; is a desktop environment. In other words, &tde; is a collection of programs, technologies and documentation that attempt to make life easier for computer users. &tde; is targeted at &UNIX; workstations. &tde; features network transparency and a contemporary work flow philosophy.

Historically, the Trinity Desktop Environment is a fork of the K Desktop Environment version 3.5, originally written by the KDE Team, a world-wide network of software engineers committed to Free Software development. This group's major goal in free software development is to provide high quality software that empowers the user with easy control of his computer's resources.

The &tde; developers continue the tradition of KDE 3.5.

&tde; seeks to fill the need for an easy to use desktop for &UNIX; workstations, similar to the desktop environments found under &MacOS; or &Windows;. &tde; meets the requirement of users for an easy to use work environment. Tools used to reach this goal are: enhanced inter-application communication, component reuse, generalized drag and drop, uniform look and feel and many more. Thus, &tde; offers much more than the traditional &UNIX; window managers.

Stability, scalability and openness are qualities which have made &UNIX; the undisputed choice for the information technology professional for many years. &tde; builds on top of this excellent base framework and brings new, much needed qualities: usability, user friendliness and beauty! &tde; remains as a forefront player in bringing these qualities to &UNIX; systems, which constituted for years, the premier platform for server computers and scientific institutions, but wasn't very attractive for desktop users.

Without Unix the Internet would not exist, or at least would have a vastly different form. Unix has not, until recent years, addressed the needs of the average computer user. This fact is particularly unfortunate, since a number of implementations of &UNIX; systems (&Linux;, FreeBSD, NetBSD, &etc;) are freely available on the Internet, all of which are of exceptional quality and stability.

## &tde; The Desktop Environment

In combination with a free implementation of &UNIX; systems, &tde; provides to the world an open and completely free desktop computing platform either at home or at work.

This platform is available to anyone free of charge including its source code for anyone to modify.

While there will always be room for improvement we believe we provide a viable alternative to some of the more commonly found and commercial operating systems/desktops combinations available today. It is our hope that the combination of &UNIX; systems and &tde; will finally bring the same open, reliable, stable, and monopoly free computing to the average computer user that scientists and computing professionals world-wide have enjoyed for years.

## &tde; The Application Development Framework

&tde; focuses on the user's needs, but it's obvious that this focus is more easily achieved by also giving developers the best tools. &tde; code contains, and comes with, some of the best development technologies of the modern computing age.

Authoring applications under &UNIX;/X11 systems used to be an extremely tedious and labor intensive process. &tde; developers recognize the fact that a computing platform is only as good as the number of first class applications available to the users of that particular platform.

&tde; includes technologies such as &DCOP; and KParts, created to offer a component document model and technology. Together with the complete &tde; libraries programming interface, &DCOP;/KParts are set in direct competition with other similar technologies like &Microsoft; MFC/COM/ActiveX technologies. The excellent quality and the high level of refinement of &tde;'s application programming interface (API) enables developers to focus on original and interesting issues and avoid reinventing the wheel.

## &tde; The Office Application Suite

In its current form, &tde; provides, apart from the essential desktop component applications, a suite of office programs known as &koffice;.

&koffice; is based on the &tde; &DCOP;/KParts technologies. It contains: a word processor with desktop publishing capabilities (&kword;), a spreadsheet application (&kspread;) and accompanying charting program (&kchart;), a presentation program (&kpresenter;) and a vector drawing program (&karbon14;). Tying things together is the KOffice Workspace, an integrated shell to ease the use of the &koffice; components in conjunction with each other. Additional components include an email client, a news reader, and a powerful PIM (Personal Information Manager - an organizer).