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

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

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

<para>The applications using KIPI are very different from each other, this means that some
plugins are not always working the &kphotoalbum; way, but after all, this is the
price for sharing the functionality between the applications.</para>

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

<para>&kphotoalbum; 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, &kphotoalbum; must also be able to give a list of all albums; 
&kphotoalbum; defines this list in the following way:</para>

<itemizedlist>
  <listitem><para>When &kphotoalbum;'s browser displays the content of a
    category, say people, then each item in this category will look like
    an album to the plugin.</para></listitem> 
  <listitem><para>Otherwise, the
    category you specify for <guilabel>Category for virtual albums</guilabel>
in the options dialog, will be used; e.g. if you specify
    People with this option, then &kphotoalbum; will act as if you had just chosen
    to display people 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 &kphotoalbum;,
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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