KST INSTALLATION

KST is a C++ application that uses graphic libraries from QT and KDE. The current version of KST (0.92) requires QT 3.1 (or higher) and KDE 3.1 (or higher). If these libraries are installed on your system (they should be if you have Mandrake 9.1 or RedHat 9.0) you may want to jump directly to the KDE repository where you'll find the latest stable version (tarball and RPMs). If you don't have these libraries and you want to install KST without going through the whole KDE installation please stick to this page. It is important to know that KST uses only a subset of KDE. In this page you'll find the instructions to install QT, KST and the few KDE packages needed to run KST.

Requirements
Before you start you may want to make sure that the following applications are installed on your system:

• Automake 1.5 and Autoconf 2.5
• a C++ compiler which supports exceptions, preferably gcc-2.95.x or gcc-3.2

Download
The following packages are the ones needed to run KST. They include QT, libpcre (regular-expression support in Javascript), the 3 main KDE packages and KST itself.

• qt-x11-free-3.1.2.tar.gz
  
• pcre-4.3.tar.gz
  
• arts-1.1.2.tar.gz
  
• kdelibs-3.1.2.tar.gz
  
• kdebase-3.1.2.tar.gz
  
• kst-0.92.tar.gz
  

Set environment variables
You have to set some new environment variables and update others. Unlike most compiled software, Qt is compiled in the place where it will stay instead of using a 'make install'. You need to set the QTDIR and KDEDIR to the locations where Qt and KDE will be installed, respectively. Also, append $QTDIR/bin and $KDEDIR/bin to your $PATH and $LD_LIBRARY_PATH. If you have a previous version of KDE on your system, KDEDIR may be already defined. Here is what I have at home:

setenv QTDIR /opt/Software/qt-x11-free-3.1.2
setenv KDEDIR /usr/local
setenv PATH $QTDIR/bin:$PATH
setenv PATH $KDEDIR/bin:$PATH
setenv MANPATH $QTDIR/doc/man:$MANPATH
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH $QTDIR/lib:$KDEDIR/lib

Install QT
Decompress the QT package in the directory specified by QTDIR and compile it.

gunzip qt-x11-free-3.1.2.tar.bz2
tar -xvf qt-x11-free-3.1.2.tar
cd $QTDIR
./configure -system-zlib -qt-gif -system-libpng \
-system-libjpeg -plugin-imgfmt-mng -thread -no-stl \
-no-xinerama -no-g++-exceptions
make

Install KDE packages and KST
Only a subset of the KDE packages is needed to run KST. The whole KDE can be found here. In order to use KST you must install pcre, arts, kdelibs, kdebase and kst (in that order) by going through the following steps for each package:

gunzip package.tar.gz
tar -xvf package.tar
cd package
./configure --prefix=$KDEDIR --disable-debug
make
make install

When you'll configure kdelibs, you might get the warning that 'libbz2' and 'cups' are not installed. These libraries are not needed by KST. You can go on.

Voila !
You should now be able to run KST. If you had to install other packages than the ones given here, please let me know : my mail.

KST TUTORIAL

To start using KST you might want to first have a look at the official KST page where you'll find tutorials and examples.

You might also want to download this tar-gz-file that is another example of a KST session. You can load the session with the command: "kst demo_college.kst"

KST BUG REPORT