<chapter id="chp-plugins">
  <title>Plugins</title>
  <para>KimDaBa shares a plugin system with a number of other image
applications, among these Digikam and Gwenview. The plugin system is named
<literal>KIPI</literal>, which is short for KDE Image Plugin
Interface. See <ulink url="http://extragear.kde.org/apps/kipi.php">KIPI Homepage</ulink></para>

<para>The plugins are available from the menu bar, under the item
<literal>Plugins</literal>. The plugins will and can not be described in
this manual, as the plugins are not part of KimDaBa, but shipped
separately. Most plugins do, however have a help page available from the
plugin itself.</para>

<para><emphasis>Warning: As the plugins are shared between a
number of applications, certain plugins might be very little tested with
KimDaBa, you should therefore always try out new plugins with the demo
database before you try them on
your own images<footnote><para>You start KimDaBa with the demo setup either from the shell by executing <literal>kimdaba
-demo</literal>, or from the Help menu.</para></footnote> (Don't say I didn't warn you!).</emphasis></para>

<para>The application behind KIPI are very different, this means that some
plugins are not always working the KimDaBa way, but after all, this is the
price for sharing the functionality between the applications.</para>

<para>The most important difference between KimDaBa and the other
applications using KIPI, is that the other applications order the images in
albums, where an album simply is a directory. KimDaBa do not have this
concept; nevertheless, for certain plugins to function, KimDaBa behaves
towards the plugin system as if it did.</para>

<para>KimDaBa does this by defining <emphasis>the current album</emphasis>
to be the current view - that is, all the images the browser currently offers to display.</para>

<para>In addition to the current album, KimDaBa must also be able to give a list of all albums; 
KimDaBa defines this list in the following way:</para>

<itemizedlist>
  <listitem><para>When KimDaBa's browser displays the content of a
    category, say all Persons, then each item in this category will look like
    an album to the plugin.</para></listitem> 
  <listitem><para>Otherwise, the
    category you specify for <literal>Category for virtual albums</literal>
in the options dialog, will be used; e.g. if you specify
    Persons with this option, then KimDaBa will act as if you had just chosen
    to display persons and then invoke the plugin which needs to know about
    all albums.</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>

<para>Some plugins might be redundant to features implemented in KimDaBa,
and in that case you may not want to see them at all in the Plugin
menu. For that, you may go to the options dialog, and specify which plugins
should be shown at all.</para>
  </chapter>


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