The KDE Community has announced that KDE Frameworks 5.5.0 has been unveiled and the new release comes with a lot of interesting changes and fixes, just like all the previous versions.

Users know what the KDE Software Compilation or KDE SC is, but that is changing. The KDE project has been separated into KDE Frameworks, KDE Plasma, and KDE Applications. This would technically allow developers to make much faster releases. Parts of the KDE world would become available immediately and devs won't have to wait on other people that are working on different components to deliver.

It's a good idea, at least in theory, but the full implementation of this new concept hasn't been finished yet. There is no major distro out there that implements all the latest KDE packages, like the new Plasma desktop, and it will take a few more months until that happens.

Some OS developers will certainly have a problem with the disparity between the various parts of KDE, but they will probably just need some time to adjust. In the meantime, new versions of the KDE components are being made available.

KDE Frameworks 5.5.0 is mostly about fixes

This is not really a visible part of the KDE project and it's mostly about stuff that runs under the hood, like libraries. On the other hand, this is where many of the interesting changes are being made, so it's a good idea to pay attention to what the latest modifications really bring.

"The KDE Frameworks build on the Qt framework, providing everything from simple utility classes (such as those in KCoreAddons) to integrated solutions for common requirements of desktop applications (such as KNewStuff, for fetching downloadable add-on content in an application, or the powerful KIO multi-protocol file access framework)."

"KDE today announces the release of KDE Frameworks 5.5.0. KDE Frameworks are 60 addon libraries to Qt which provide a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms. This release is part of a series of planned monthly releases making improvements available to developers in a quick and predictable manner," reads in the original announcement.

The developers have explained that the KEmailAddress class for email validation has been added, PageUp and PageDown actions now work properly, the notifications have been improved, the Plasma Framework now compiles with Qt 5.2.0, and numerous other fixes have been implemented.

You also have to keep in mind that KDE Frameworks 5.5.0 is a sophisticated piece of software and you really need to know what you are doing if you decide to compile it. You can download the source packages for KDE Frameworks 5.5.0 from Softpedia.