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Toolbar Statusbar Content Area Dialogs Keys Mouse Drag and Drop printable version (ps)/(pdf) |
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Icon Style Guide |
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Basics
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Scope of this document
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This document attempts to specify the look-and-feel for KDE applications. The goal is to provide some rules-of-thumb for developers to create their applications interface so that KDE software will have a consistent look-and-feel.
The guidelines in this style guide are only suggestions - they are not set in stone. It is the application designer's duty to create a decent interface. Following rules will not do that, but common sense will.
These guidelines are aimed at a typical application consisting of a menubar, toolbar, working area and statusbar. Not every application necessarily needs to have all these components, but if your application does, then the components should work as described here. Please note that not every component described must be present in your application.
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The KNotes program consists solely of a working area. Its interface is such that it resembles the well-known paper Post-It notes of 3M. Although it doesn't have a menubar or toolbar, the rest of its interface (e.g. dialogs, use of mouse) should still follow these guidelines.
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Conventions in this document
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The recommendations in this style guide that are in normal text have been agreed upon by the KDE Team.
Items marked like the following paragraph have not been agreed upon yet and are still open for discussion:
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This is an example of an item we couldn't agree upon. To stay compatible with other desktops, an application should crash when the user moves the mouse. |
Items marked like the following paragraph are an example only and are meant to clarify a prior statement. If an example conflicts in some point with any statement made in this style guide, the statement is authorative. Please send a bugreport to bugs@kde.org if you notice such a conflict so that we can update the example.
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This is an example of an example.
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This style guide specifies what a KDE program should look like and how it should behave. It does not specify how you should write your program (the implementation). However, because KDE offers very convenient ways to obtain the described behaviour, we will often provide a suggestion to make developers aware of the possibilities. The suggestion will be marked as an implementation note, as the example below shows:
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Example of an implementation note. |
