| Konquer the Web with Quanta!

FAQ

## Quanta Plus FAQ

- 1. What is Quanta+?
- 2. How do I install Quanta+?

- 2.1 Quanta+ binary packages?
- 2.2 Quanta+ source code.
- 2.3 Compiling Quanta+
- 2.4 I get error X when running configure
- 2.5 I get error X when compiling

- 3. How do I do X? or Can Quanta+ do X?
  - 3.1 How can I open/edit a file on a remote server?
  - 3.2 Can I run program X from Quanta+?
- 4. Are there any docs for Quanta?
- 5. How can I help Quanta+ development?
- 6. Where is Quanta+ going from here?

Top

## 1. What is Quanta+?

From http://quanta.sourceforge.net/:
Quanta Plus is a web development tool for the K Desktop Environment. Quanta is designed for quick web development and is rapidly becoming a mature editor with a number of great features.
Our objective remains to create the very best web development tool anywhere. We realize that we will need many more people active to accomplish this so we are in the process of developing enhancements geared toward making it easy for web developers to customize, extend and enhance Quanta. Then we will be asking you, the web developers, to contribute your feature enhancements. We will organize these so that Quanta web developers can find just the resources, extensions and custom plugins they need to be the most kick butt developers ever!
Doesn't it just bring a tear to your eyes?

Top

## 2. How do I install Quanta+?

2.1 Quanta+ binary packages?

Several Linux vendors ship Quanta+ packages. Unfortunately, these may not include the latest fixes/features that are in Quanta+. If your system uses rpm (RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, and some othere), you can download a binary daily snapshot of the cvs tree from http://www.linux-easy.com/daily/ (thanks to Bernhard Rosenkraenzer for his efforts.

Top
2.2 Quanta+ source code
There are two versions of the Quanta+ source code currently.
1) The 2.0.1 formal release which is available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/quanta/.
2) The cvs tree which is available from anoncvs.kde.org.
For 1 it's just a download, etc. For 2, if you've never used cvs, try the following commands:
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.kde.org:/home/kde login
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.kde.org:/home/kde co quanta
When prompted for a password, just hit enter. This will create a directory called quanta as a subdirectory of the current working directory.
Top
2.3 Compiling Quanta+
Ok. Assumption is made that you have the knowledge and ability to find and install any missing libraries that you may encounter. Basically, you need the headers from kde, qt and gcc. If you don't know what I'm talking about, try the steps below and if it doesn't work find yourself a Linux geek that can help.
Ok. Type the following in and see what you get:
test `echo $KDEDIR` && echo "yes" || echo "noKDE"
test `echo $QTDIR` && echo "yes" || echo "noQT"
If you don't get two yes answers, you need to find the location of the one that failed and export it to your current shell environment.
Then it's as simple as:
make -f Makefile.cvs (only necessary if you're doing from cvs, but a good idea anyway)
./configure
make
make install (run as root)
Top
2.4 I get error X when running configure
Please read 2.3 carefully again and make certain that you have exported the $KDEDIR and $QTDIR environment variables. This is the most likely cause. Aside from that, you're probably missing something very important and configure will tell you what it needs.
Top
2.5 I get error X when compiling
Please read 2.3 and make certain that wahatever libraries make is looking for are installed on your machine. How and where to get these libraries is beyond the scope of this faq.
Top

## 3. How do I do X? or Can Quanta+ do X?

3.1. How can I open/edit a file on a remote server?
Quanta+ uses kio for it's file operations.
To whit, an email from our benefactor:
Try this. Open the file open dialog... you can do this in the file name, but it's even cooler if you use the directory dropdown up top on the dialog.
Enter this
ftp://user@mydomain.com
and hit enter. It will prompt you for a password after which it will fill the file dialog with the avialable files and folders on the site location. You and now navigate your site like you were looking at your local directory, open and save files on line.
Two additional facts here. First if you are using projects you can set your project preview option to directly preview from the site and then see PHP files with data live as they would behave on site. Second, this is made possible by KDE's kio slaves. So any functional kio slave you have installed brings this same functionality. Try kio_fish for secure file access as well as other slaves for Samba, scp and other protocols.
--
Eric Laffoon
That should about cover it.
Top
3.2. Can I run program X from Quanta+?
Yes!!! Quanta will run almost anything you want as an action.
More from our benefactor:
Does Quanta Shell? Hey, we're open source! Quanta has shelled since around version 1.0.1. You can run virtually any program you can run from the command line with Quanta with a wide variety of options.
To run HTMLtidy do the following:
1) on the menu go to Settings>Configure Actions.
2) In the dialog click New button and give it a name and icon
3) Select the script tab and put tidy -i in the script line
4) Select either selected text or current document for input
5) Select your output such as "Replace current document"
6) On the error tab select "Message window"
7) Close the dialog and select Settings>Configure Toolbars
8) Place the new action on the toolbar of your choice
Now you can run tidy and if there are errors and you have the message window
open it will give you errors. If you have kaptain installed
(http://kaptain.sourceforge.net) you can even set parameters for each run.
Enjoy!
--
Eric Laffoon
Top

## 4. Are there any docs for Quanta?

Not really. I'm working on it though. This FAQ is the first step. Wanna help?
Top

## 5. How can I help Quanta+ development?

I thought you'd never ask!! ;-)

From Eric:
We would be remiss not to point out that Quanta is being built with volunteer effort. Many people feel they cannot contribute to the open source cause for one reason or another. Probably the greatest being a feeling they do not have the skills. This documentation is writting in HTML... so if you can do that you can help. What is the open source cause? It is giving back to the community to grow something bigger than we could on our own, but it is also a shining hope for those people around the world where getting software for free is not an option, it is the option.
We believe in the cause!
If you would like to help out contact Eric Laffoon (sequitur@kde.org).

Top

## 6. Where is Quanta+ going from here?

From http://quanta.sourceforge.net/:
We have released Quanta 2.0 and are now in preparation for KDE 3. Some fatures will be added to the KDE 2 version but a great many more will show up in the KDE 3 version. We have a press release for Quanta 2.0 that we hope will answer many of the questions we have been getting.
Our objective remains to create the very best web development tool anywhere. We realize that we will need many more people active to accomplish this so we are in the process of developing enhancements geared toward making it easy for web developers to customize, extend and enhance Quanta. Then we will be asking you, the web developers, to contribute your feature enhancements. We will organize these so that Quanta web developers can find just the resources, extensions and custom plugins they need to be the most kick butt developers ever!
Continue