KDE Plasma is a set of graphical shells developed by KDE for Unix-like operating systems. With the KDE brand repositioning in 2009, Plasma 4.4 succeeded KDE 4.3 . Currently, it has four workspace variants: one for desktop PCs and laptops (Plasma Desktop), one for TVs ( Plasma Bigscreen ), one for smartphones ( Plasma Mobile ), and another for embedded and touch-enabled devices ( Plasma Nano ). Plasma Desktop, in its default configuration, resembles KDesktop from K Desktop Environment 3 and Microsoft Windows XP ; however, extensive configurability allows radical departures from the default layout.
63-450: Its technology is a fundamental rewrite of several desktop interaction programs included in previous KDE desktop environments for Unix-like systems, focusing on eye candy and special graphical effects. Plasma replaces the previous KDesktop shell, Kicker taskbar and SuperKaramba widget engine used in the K Desktop Environment 3 series with a unified system of widgets that can be configured and replaced with alternative designs. Since
126-515: A rebranding of the KDE project components on 24 November 2009. Motivated by the perceived shift in objectives, the rebranding focused on emphasizing both the community of software creators and the various tools supplied by the KDE, rather than just the desktop environment. What was previously known as KDE 4 was split into KDE Plasma Workspaces , KDE Applications , and KDE Platform (now KDE Frameworks ) bundled as KDE Software Compilation 4 . Since 2009,
189-523: A brief pause to redraw themselves. The Kross scripting framework allows developers to write widgets in a variety of programming languages in addition to C++ . KRunner is a versatile tool for several functions. It replaces the dialog box "Run Command" from K Desktop Environment 3 , and also inherits from the application launcher feature, expanding the possibilities through a modular plug. KRunner stores previously entered commands and searches, accessible via an auto-complete feature. KRunner can be shown on
252-518: A feather sessions) and social program. BOFs meet to discuss specific sub-projects or issues. The first conference that the KDE community held was KDE One, in Arnsberg , Germany, in 1997 to discuss the first KDE release. Initially, each conference was numbered after the release, and not regular held. Since 2003 the conferences were held once a year. And they were named Akademy since 2004. The yearly Akademy conference gives Akademy Awards , are awards that
315-538: A few applications were being released. On 12 July 1998 the first version of the desktop environment, called KDE 1.0, was released. The original GPL licensed version of this toolkit only existed for platforms which used the X11 display server, but with the release of Qt 4, LGPL licensed versions are available for more platforms. This allowed KDE software based on Qt 4 or newer versions to theoretically be distributed to Microsoft Windows and OS X. The KDE Marketing Team announced
378-448: A formal vote, but through discussions. The developers also organize alongside topical teams. For example, the KDE Edu team develops free educational software. While these teams work mostly independent and do not all follow a common release schedule. Each team has its own messaging channels, both on IRC and on the mailing lists. A KDE Patron is an individual or organization supporting
441-455: A gadget for any need. The API allowed developers to create widgets (web plugin , portlet , webpart) to run in users' iGoogle pages or other web pages quickly and easily. Users had the ability to add a gadget to their iGoogle portal, or have it coded into their own website, by specifying a URL (this could be done indirectly via the gadget registry). Users will appear in the registry if the gadget has been submitted to iGoogle). iGoogle Gadget
504-861: A half years KDE adopts FSFE's Fiduciary Licence Agreement. Using that, KDE developers can – on a voluntary basis – assign their copyrights to KDE e.V. In September 2009, KDE e.V. and FSFE moved into shared offices in Berlin. Several companies actively contribute to KDE, like Collabora , Erfrakon, Intevation GmbH, Kolab Konsortium, Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB (KDAB), Blue Systems , and KO GmbH. Nokia used Calligra Suite as base for their Office Viewer application for Maemo / MeeGo . They have also been contracting KO GmbH to bring MS Office 2007 file format filters to Calligra. Nokia also employed several KDE developers directly – either to use KDE software for MeeGo (e.g. KCal ) or as sponsorship. The software development and consulting companies Intevation GmbH of Germany and
567-630: A licensee of the Open Invention Network . Many Linux distributions and other free operating systems are involved in the development and distribution of the software, and are therefore also active in the KDE community. These include commercial distributors such as SUSE / Novell or Red Hat but also government-funded non-commercial organizations such as the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey with its Linux distribution Pardus. In October 2018, Red Hat declared that KDE Plasma
630-558: A new version of the KDE SC (twice a year). KDE also participates in other conferences that revolve around free software. IGoogle iGoogle (formerly Google Personalized Homepage ) was a customizable Ajax -based start page or personal web portal launched by Google in May 2005. It was discontinued on November 1, 2013, because the company believed the need for it had eroded over time. As of October 17, 2007 , Google had made
693-490: A platform to create and share open source textbooks. The idea is to have a massive library of textbooks for anyone and everyone to use and create. Its roots lie in the University of Milan , where a group of physics majors wanted to share notes and then decided that it was for everyone and not just their internal group of friends. They have become an official KDE project with several universities backing it. Developing KDE software
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#1732851831991756-509: A separate visualization for the more confined taskbar. Plasma separates components into "data engine" and their visualization counterparts. This is intended to reduce the total programming effort when there are multiple possible visualizations of given data; and to make it easier for the data engine and the workspaces to be written independently. The scalable nature of the Plasma widgets allows for them to be resized and rotated to any size, with only
819-406: Is an Argentinian event focused on KDE. It gives talks and workshops. The purposes of the event are to: spread the free software movement among the population of Argentina, bringing to it the KDE community and environment developed by it; know and strengthen KDE-AR; and generally bring the community together to have fun. The event is free. A Release party is a party, which celebrates the release of
882-421: Is built using Qt 5 and KDE Frameworks 5 , predominantly plasma-framework . It improves support for HiDPI displays and ships a convergable graphical shell , which can adjust itself according to the device in use. 5.0 also includes a new default theme, dubbed Breeze. Qt 5's QtQuick 2 uses a hardware-accelerated OpenGL ( ES ) scene graph (canvas) to compose and render graphics on the screen, which allows for
945-474: Is obtained by spelling a word which originally begins with C or Q differently, for example Konsole and Kaffeine , while some others prefix a commonly used word with a K , for instance KGet . However, the trend is not to have a K in the name at all, such as with Stage , Spectacle, Discover and Dolphin . On 23 June 2005, chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation announced that the KDE community and
1008-713: Is on a large scale, both thematically and geographically. Akademy-BR and Akademy-es are local community events. Akademy is the annual world summit, held each summer at varying venues in Europe. The primary goals of Akademy are to act as a community building event, to communicate the achievements of community, and to provide a platform for collaboration with community and industry partners. Secondary goals are to engage local people, and to provide space for getting together to write code. KDE e.V. assist with procedures, advice and organization. Akademy including conference, KDE e.V. general assembly, marathon coding sessions, BOFs ( birds of
1071-471: Is primarily a volunteer effort, although various companies, such as Novell , Nokia , or Blue Systems employ or employed developers to work on various parts of the project. Since a large number of individuals contribute to KDE in various ways (e.g. code, translation, artwork), organization of such a project is complex. A mentor program helps beginners to get started with developing and communicating within KDE projects and communities. Communication within
1134-495: Is set by the KDE Core Team . These are developers who have made significant contributions within KDE over a long period of time. This team communicates using the kde-core-devel mailing list , which is publicly archived and readable, but joining requires approval. KDE does not have a single central leader who can veto important decisions. Instead, the KDE core team consists of several dozens of contributors who make decisions not by
1197-572: Is the part of Google Gadgets API. Gadgets were rendered as an iframe . Security constraints will be present, preventing users from damaging the portal and other gadgets. Users communicate with other gadgets via a remote call to a common third party server. Google also allows all users to create a special gadget that does not require the use of the Gadgets API. The gadgets are designed to be shared with friends and family. The special gadgets must be created using an online wizard and must belong to one of
1260-431: Is the successor of Plasma 4 and was first released on 15 July 2014. It includes a new default theme, known as "Breeze", as well as increased convergence across different devices. The graphical interface was fully migrated to QML , which uses OpenGL for hardware acceleration, which resulted in better performance and reduced power consumption. Plasma Mobile is a Plasma 5 variant for Linux-based smartphones. KDE Plasma 5
1323-700: The KDE trademark and the corresponding logo. It also accepts donations on behalf of the KDE community, helps to run the servers, assists in organizing and financing conferences and meetings, but does not influence software development directly. In many countries, KDE has local branches. These are either informal organizations (KDE India) or like the KDE e.V., given a legal form (KDE France). The local organizations host and maintain regional websites, and organize local events, such as tradeshows, contributor meetings and social community meetings. KDE has community identity guidelines (CIG) for definitions and recommendations which help
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#17328518319911386-530: The Plasma Desktop , KDE Frameworks , and a range of applications such as Kate , digiKam , and Krita . Some KDE applications are cross-platform and can run on Unix and Unix-like operating systems, Microsoft Windows , and Android . KDE was founded in 1996 by Matthias Ettrich , a student at the University of Tübingen . At the time, he was troubled by certain aspects of the Unix desktop. Among his concerns
1449-468: The University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in La Jolla, US. The schedule included presentations, BoFs, hackathons and a day trip. It started with a short introduction by Jeff Mitchell, who was the principal organizer of the conference, talked a bit of history about Camp KDE and some statistics about the KDE community. With around 70 participants, the talks of the event were relatively well attended. On 1/19,
1512-462: The Desktop in earlier KDE releases. They are bundled as the default environment with a number of free software operating systems , such as Chakra , Kubuntu , Mageia (DVD version), openSUSE , or TrueOS . From KDE SC 4.0 to KDE SC 4.2, the default theme, " Oxygen ", was characterized by dark tones. In KDE SC 4.3, it was replaced by the new "Air" theme, which predominates in transparency and white as
1575-451: The KDE community by donating at least 5000 Euro (depending on the company's size) to the KDE e.V. As of February 2024, there are nine such patrons: Blue Systems , Canonical Ltd. , Google , GnuPG , Kubuntu Focus, Slimbook, SUSE , The Qt Company , and TUXEDO Computers . The KDE community's mascot is a green dragon named Konqi. Konqi's appearance was officially redesigned with the coming of Plasma 5 , with Tyson Tan 's entry (seen in
1638-410: The KDE community gives to KDE contributors. Their purpose is to recognize outstanding contribution to KDE. There are three awards, best application, best non-application and jury's award. As always the winners are chosen by the winners from the previous year. First winners received a framed picture of Konqi signed by all attending KDE developers. Camp KDE is another annual contributor's conference of
1701-552: The KDE community that help bring their project to fruition. conf.kde.in was the first KDE and Qt conference in India. The conference, organized by KDE India, was held at R.V. College of Engineering in Bangalore, India. The first three days of the event had talks, tutorials, and interactive sessions. The last two days were a focused code sprint. The conference was opened by its main organizer, Pradeepto Bhattacharya. Over 300 people were at
1764-509: The KDE community. The event provides a regional opportunity for contributors and enthusiasts to gather and share their experiences. It is free to all participants. It is intended to ensure that KDE in the world is not simply seen as being Euro-centric. The KDE e.V. helps travel and accommodation subsidies for presenters, BoF leaders, organizers or core contributor. It is held in the North America since 2009. In January 2008, KDE 4.0 Release Event
1827-524: The Swedish KDAB use Qt and KDE software – especially Kontact and Akonadi for Kolab – for their services and products, therefore both employ KDE developers. KDE participates in freedesktop.org , an effort to standardize Unix desktop interoperability. In 2009 and 2011, GNOME and KDE co-hosted their conferences Akademy and GUADEC under the Desktop Summit label. In December 2010 KDE e.V. became
1890-717: The UK and worldwide, as many people unhappy with the new layout imposed on US users had switched to the UK Google site where the workarounds still worked. Within hours, the most frequently asked question on the help forum was how to restore the old layout, and there was a large number of feature suggestions to the same effect on the Google product ideas page. Other solutions had come to the fore, which require adds-ons, greasemonkey scripts or bookmarklets . On October 14, 2011, Google announced through its official blog that with its new focus on Google+ ,
1953-782: The Wikimedia Foundation have begun efforts towards cooperation. Fruits of that cooperation are MediaWiki syntax highlighting in Kate and accessing Misplaced Pages content within KDE applications, such as Amarok and Marble . On 4 April 2008, the KDE e.V. and Wikimedia Deutschland opened shared offices in Frankfurt . In May 2006, KDE e.V. became an Associate Member of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). On 22 August 2008, KDE e.V. and FSFE jointly announced that after working with FSFE's Freedom Task Force for one and
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2016-415: The ability to interact socially on iGoogle would be disabled on January 15, 2012, and the mobile version of iGoogle would be shut down on July 31, 2012. On July 3, 2012, Google announced on its blog that several of its services, including iGoogle, would be retired due to "the unforeseen evolution of web and mobile apps and the erosion of the need for the site." iGoogle was retired on November 1, 2013, with
2079-468: The base color. New themes for Plasma can be chosen and installed through software like Discover or online at store.kde.org. With the release of KDE SC 4.11 on 14 August 2013, Plasma 4 was placed into a feature freeze and turned into a long-term stable package until August 2015. On 15 July 2014 Plasma 4's successor, Plasma 5, was released. Plasma features containments , which are essentially applets that contain other applets. Two examples of containments are
2142-502: The community takes place via mailing lists, IRC, blogs, forums, news announcements, wikis and conferences. The community has a Code of Conduct for acceptable behavior within the community. Currently the KDE community uses the Git version control system. The KDE GitLab Instance (named Invent) gives an overview of all projects hosted by KDE's Git repository system. Phabricator is used for task management. On 20 July 2009, KDE announced that
2205-501: The community to establish a unique, characteristic, and appealing design. The KDE official logo displays the white trademarked K-Gear shape on a blue square with mitred corners. Copying of the KDE Logo is subject to the LGPL. Some local community logos are derivations of the official logo. Many KDE applications have a K in the name, mostly as an initial letter. The K in many KDE applications
2268-438: The desktop background and the taskbar. A containment can be anything the developer wants: an image (either raster graphics or an SVG image), animation, or even OpenGL . Images are most commonly used, but with Plasma the user could set any applet as the desktop background without losing functionality of the applet. This also allows for applets to be dragged between the desktop and the taskbar (two separate containments), and have
2331-484: The desktop via the keyboard combination Alt + F2 or by selecting "Run Command ..." in the desktop menu. These functions are handled by the plugin: This is a list of widgets that the current release version of Plasma supports. Not all widgets are supported by default in all Linux distributions ; some may require different packages or even a recompilation of Plasma. Previous Plasma Workspaces releases also supported Edje gadgets and E17 modules. Support for those
2394-480: The end of the iGoogle URL. On June 4, 2009, this workaround was eliminated. Within days, another workaround was discovered. Changing the URL ending to "?hl=all" would again restore the original tab layout, with some missing links across the top of the home page, including "Maps" and "more". This workaround was again eliminated on November 18, 2009. This led to an immediate resurrection of the controversy over user choice, both in
2457-469: The following types: Some of the developer-made gadgets include: There is a "You might also like" gadget where you can look at similar gadgets to ones you already have. With iGoogle, users could select unique themes for their Google homepages; some themes were designed by Google itself and others by third parties. On July 8, 2008, Google announced the beginning of a testing period for a new version of iGoogle which altered some features, including replacing
2520-505: The images) winning the redesign competition on the KDE Forums. Katie is a female dragon. She was presented in 2010 and is appointed as a mascot for the KDE women's community. Other dragons with different colors and professions were added to Konqi as part of the Tyson Tan redesign concept. Each dragon has a pair of letter-shaped antlers that reflect their role in the KDE community. Kandalf
2583-426: The main discussion thread, almost 600 users expressed dissatisfaction with the new version and with the inability to opt out. On October 16, 2008, Google announced the release of a new version of iGoogle and retired its older format. The release did not initially include the persistent chat widget . It did include the left navigation in place of tabs as well as a change to widget controls, however. The stated purpose
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2646-467: The main workspace UI of Plasma Active and was shipped as 1.0 in October 2011. Plasma Active has been succeeded by Plasma Mobile starting with Plasma 5. Plasma Mobile was targeted at smartphones and small tablet devices that are mainly used via touch input . It was originally expected to be released in 2011 along with Plasma Active 1.0 but development focus shifted towards Contour . A new version with
2709-482: The most common text and bitmap-based subtitle formats, video previewing, audio waveform, speech recognition, timings synchronization, subtitle translation, OCR and Javascript macros/scripting. Subtitle Composer is free software released under the GNU General Public License . WikiToLearn , abbreviated WTL, is one of KDE's newer endeavors. It is a wiki (based on MediaWiki , like Misplaced Pages) that provides
2772-445: The name KDE no longer stands for K Desktop Environment , but for the community that produces the software. The KDE community maintains multiple free-software projects. The project formerly referred to as KDE (or KDE SC (Software Compilation) ) nowadays consists of three parts: KDE neon is a software repository that uses Ubuntu LTS as a core. It aims to provide the users with rapidly updated Qt and KDE software, while updating
2835-570: The offloading of computationally expensive graphics rendering tasks onto the GPU , freeing up resources on the system's main CPU . KDE Plasma 5 uses the X Window System and Wayland . Support for Wayland was prepared in the compositor and planned for a later release. It was made initially available in the 5.4 release. Stable support for a basic Wayland session was provided in the 5.5 release (December 2015). Support for NVIDIA proprietary driver for Plasma on Wayland
2898-511: The one millionth commit has been made to its Subversion repository. On 11 October 2009, Cornelius Schumacher , a main developer within KDE, wrote about the estimated cost (using the COCOMO model with SLOCCount) to develop KDE software package with 4,273,291 LoC , which would be about US$ 175,364,716. This estimation does not include Qt, Calligra Suite , Amarok , digiKam , and other applications that are not part of KDE core. The overall direction
2961-580: The opening talks. The Lighting of the Auspicious Lamp ceremony was performed to open the conference. The first session was by Lydia Pintscher, who spoke on "So much to do – so little time". At the event, the return of Project Neon was announced on March 11, 2011, with the project providing nightly builds of the KDE Software Compilation. Closing the conference was keynote speaker and old-time KDE developer Sirtaj. Día KDE (KDE Day)
3024-486: The release of Plasma 5, Plasma Netbook's functionality was merged into Plasma itself. Plasma Active was a workspace for devices with touchscreens. It shipped with several applications such as Kontact Touch and a document viewer based on Calligra Suite . "Contour" was the name of an interface for tablet devices. Its development was started in April 2011 by basysKom. Replacing an earlier tablet prototype, Contour has then become
3087-606: The rest of the OS components from the Ubuntu repositories at the normal pace. KDE maintains that it is not a "KDE distribution", but rather an up-to-date archive of KDE and Qt packages. Subtitle Composer is an open-source subtitle editor for the Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems, based on Qt and KDE Frameworks . The project became part of KDE starting in December 2019. It supports
3150-503: The same name but based on KDE Frameworks 5 has been announced on 25 July 2015. Plasma Bigscreen for TVs and set-top boxes incl. voice interaction. Plasma Nano is a minimal shell for embedded and touch-enabled devices, like IoT or automotive. KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software . As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include
3213-497: The service available in many localized versions in 42 languages, and in over 70 country domain-names. In February 2007, 7.1 million people used iGoogle. In April 2008, 20% of all visits to Google's homepage used iGoogle. iGoogle gadgets interacted with the user and used the Google Gadgets API . Some gadgets for Google Desktop could also be used within iGoogle. The Google Gadgets API was public and allowed anyone to develop
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#17328518319913276-560: The social event was a tour of a local brewery. Camp KDE 2011 was held at Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco, US. It was co-located with the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. The schedule included presentations, hackathons and a party at Noisebridge . The conference opened with an introduction by Celeste Lyn Paul . Season of KDE is an outreach program hosted by the KDE community. Students are appointed mentors from
3339-484: The split of the KDE Software Compilation into KDE Plasma Workspaces, KDE Frameworks and KDE Applications , each subproject can develop at its own pace. Plasma 5 is on its own release schedule, with feature releases every four months, and bugfix releases in the intervening months. Plasma 4 was released as part of KDE Software Compilation 4 and replaced Kicker , KDesktop , and SuperKaramba , which formed
3402-401: The tabs with left navigation, adding chat functionality, and a canvas-view gadget for RSS . Users were selected for this test and notified when they logged in by a link to a brief description and further links to forums. On the forums, it was explained by Google staff that there was no opt-out, as a control for the test. Further, there was no information on how long the test would continue. On
3465-406: The wizard was the former mascot for the KDE community during its 1.x and 2.x versions. Kandalf's similarity to the character of Gandalf led to speculation that the mascot was switched to Konqi due to copyright infringement concerns, but this has never been confirmed by KDE. The financial and legal matters of KDE are handled by KDE e.V. , a German non-profit organization. Among others, it owns
3528-559: Was added in the 5.16 release (June 2019). KDE Plasma 6 is the sixth and current generation of the graphical workspaces environment made by KDE. It is the successor to Plasma 5 and was initially released on the 28th February 2024. Plasma 6 changes the default display server from X11 to Wayland, though the former is still available. Plasma Desktop is the main variant of KDE Plasma, targeted to desktop PCs and laptops. Plasma Netbook aims at netbooks and may also be used on tablet PCs . The first stable release shipped with KDE SC 4.4. With
3591-406: Was developed in 2008 but removed later, in 2010. Google Gadgets were also supported. After Google announced the discontinuation of its two services that utilize Gadgets – Google Desktop and iGoogle – KDE removed support for this widget engine in early 2013. Plasma 5 is the fifth generation of the graphical workspaces environment created by KDE primarily for Linux systems. Plasma 5
3654-801: Was held at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, US, to celebrate the release of KDE SC 4.0. The community realized that there was a strong demand for KDE events in the Americas, therefore Camp KDE was produced. Camp KDE 2009 was the premiere meeting of the KDE Americas, was held at the Travellers Beach Resort in Negril, Jamaica, sponsored by Google, Intel, iXsystem, KDE e.V. and Kitware. The event included 1–2 days of presentations, BoF meetings and hackathon sessions. Camp KDE 2010 took place at
3717-542: Was intended as a wordplay on the existing Common Desktop Environment , available for Unix systems . CDE was an X11-based user environment jointly developed by HP, IBM, and Sun through the X/Open consortium, with an interface and productivity tools based on the Motif graphical widget toolkit . It was supposed to be an intuitively easy-to-use desktop computer environment. The K was originally suggested to stand for " Kool ", but it
3780-514: Was no longer supported in future updates of Red Hat Enterprise Linux , though it continues to be part of Fedora. The announcement came shortly after the announcement of the business acquisition of Red Hat by IBM for close to US$ 43 billion. As a result, Fedora now makes KDE Plasma and other KDE software available also to Red Hat Enterprise Linux users through their Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) project. The two most important conferences of KDE are Akademy and Camp KDE . Each event
3843-416: Was quickly decided that the K should stand for nothing in particular. Therefore, the KDE initialism expanded to "K Desktop Environment" before it was dropped altogether in favor of simply KDE in a rebranding effort in 2009. In the beginning Matthias Ettrich chose to use Trolltech's Qt framework for the KDE project. Other programmers quickly started developing KDE/Qt applications, and by early 1997,
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#17328518319913906-404: Was that none of the applications looked or behaved alike. In his opinion, desktop applications of the time were too complicated for end users. In order to solve the issue, he proposed the creation of a desktop environment in which users could expect the applications to be consistent and easy to use. His initial Usenet post spurred significant interest, and the KDE project was born. The name KDE
3969-428: Was to prepare for OpenSocial , with the new canvas view stated as playing an important role in that. InformationWeek reported "a vocal group of users" as unhappy with the changes, pointing out that many users do not want change forced on them, and that this is a general problem with cloud software under a service provider's control. A workaround to restore the original tab layout was found by attaching "?gl=all" to
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