Nové Hrady talk proposal Josef Spillner 25.05.2003 The dynamic desktop ------------------- Many KDE applications are extensible in form of plugins, additional texts or images or audio files, or other means. Up to now each application has to define an own way on how to access these additional files. This ranges from requiring the user to download contents over predefined download sites (like kde-look.org) to embedded mechanisms as used in KOrganizer. In 2002, a project named KDEShare was proposed, and an initial implementation was started, which worked essentially but had some design issues, and since some timing issues were involved as well the development on it stopped. Yet it clearly shows that a unified way of updating contents is needed: * many applications, like those in kde-edu, come with a default set of data but offer additional sets (sounds, vocabulary files) * some applications rely on fixed host names for their updates, yet a fault tolerant transport is needed, which could be ensured using meta servers embedded in a general resource framework This talk is intended to regain interest in the topic, and to present specific development goals. Application-specific integration is presented using KParts, application invocation and DCOP calls. The collaboration with a typical 3rd party KDE project is shown as well.