KOffice 1.1.1 Ships

Dre writes: "The KOffice team has announced the release of KOffice 1.1.1. It's mainly a performance, printing fixes (particularly in KWord) and stability release, but see the ChangeLog for the full scoop. Lots of binary packages are listed in the announcement this time. The dot is suggesting this might be the last KOffice release before KDE 3.0, which is almost on track for a late-February stable release (the first beta is being released this week)."

Comments

Powerpoint files?

[MiTEG]

This is great, but will the new version be able to open Powerpoint 2002 files? I don't think so. People are using Powerpoint 2000/02 files now, which are not compatible with Powerpoint 97. So you'll still have to fork over a bundle of money if you work on presentations with people who use M$ products. Current price for Powerpoint 2002: $93.95. Good deal!

Re:Powerpoint files?

[Anonymous Coward]

Historical guff: MS Excel killed Lotus 123 because it could open and save all versions of 123. 123 couldn't open Excel though - so it was a one way trip to MSville. Aww yeah.

While we're at it. I agree with you about how KWord will be judged regardless of the terms it sets for itself. #2718820 is also kinda ambiguous. It's not that if you don't use the latest features it will save as Powerpoint '97 - microsoft don't have their users in mind.

My experiences with KWord

[Eloquence]

I have tested the previous version of KWord and was quite impressed. Some have argued that KOffice merely duplicates Microsoft's efforts, but that is not true: Unlike MS Word, KWord uses a very simple and efficient frame concept, which makes it quite easy to create complex layouts. For example I was able to create a letter layout with two columns in a couple of minutes with no prior knowledge of the program.

You just draw frames where you want to have text and type in them (if you use frames, you can also use KWord without them like a normal word processor). You can connect frames so that text flows between them, and they are automatically extended to subsequent pages.

Things I haven't yet tested are data connectivity (which is essential for business stuff) and very large documents. But general writing functionality was quite impressive already. The biggest problem I had was printing: I didn't get the result to look like the preview. Reading the summary, I doubt this is fixed, but I'll be pleased to find out I'm wrong. Generally, KWord is on the right track.

A4 paper?

[innocent_white_lamb]

I must be missing something here.

I want to set Kword to default to "US letter" size paper, and it doesn't "take". Every time it comes up as A4 size.

Does anyone know how in the world one can change the default paper size?

Re:It's about time!

[iso]

I receive far too many documents in M$ Word format for work, and there is no choice but to use Word on Windows if I want to see it as the sender intended. When you're dealing with layouts of forms that have been printed and are in the field, you need to have the exact same form in front of your for data entry system design - and in many other fields it's exactly the same.

That's going to be extremely difficult--even Word has problems with exact positioning between versions. The root cause is that the DOC file format was never meant for layout data, and most of the layout is dependant on how Word decides to format the content.

This is why if layout is important, people need to use a layout-centric file format like PDF. Open source programmers need to decide on a file format for word processing, and if they're not going to use PDF (an open specification, albeit controlled by Adobe), then they should invent an alternative. XML is great for content, but like HTML and SGML there's really no layout data, which can be important for many documents. Perhaps some type of style-sheets over XML? I've been really impressed with PDF v1.3, but are there (more) open alternatives?

At any rate, the DOC format desperately needs to be replaced. Not only because it's viciously controlled by Microsoft, but also because it's simply an absolute garbage hack of a file format. Either that or DOC should only be used when layout isn't terribly important.

- j

Solution to the eternal document-format-problem

[claes]

This is maybe offtopic, but anyways...

We never will get rid of complaints that the newest free office suite can not read the newest MS Office file formats. This is quite natural, but what can be done about it?

I was thinking that maybe it is possible to write a Windows application that automates the task of converting documents by using Word itself. I don't know VB or VB for applications, but is this possible? Is it not true that scriptability is one of the major features of MS Office applications?

If this is technically possible, and Office licensing allows it, then companies could dedicate a server with this program and an Office installation to become a document-transformer. Lets say it reads .doc-files in a directory on the network and converts it do .rtf and writes it to another directory.

Then no MS Office installation is neccessary on the workstations, but converting documents to Koffice/StarOffice/whatever is still easy.

Ween the world off MSO

[MADCOWbeserk]

Personally I ask all my clients to avoid Microsoft Apps. I either send simple documents in simple formats (ie. RTF, word 95) or print to a PDF file.

As for powerpoint. I send a reply, stating I don't like powerpoint presentatations, please send me plain text and annotated images. Funny when you ask for that, most people skip the stupid clip art they love to put in PP.

KOffice is perfect for me, but them I refuse mst MSO documents. Nonetheless judged on it merits it works great and does everything I ask of it.

Re:KWord can be a good rival to Framemaker /Publis

[zander]

It is certainly true that the frames concept of KWord is based on FM, but after working with it for quite a bit longer (even the newest version) I was thinking that FM sucks so bad I (as one of the autors of KWord) wanted to understand the nice things of FM and reimplement them the way I think they should work.

In the end this will mean a slower progress and probably a rewrite here and there (tables are being redone for the 1.2 release). Maybe you guys can post good bug reports about the little stuff that make an application look 'finished'. Not stuff like "I need this and that". But more like "Hee, this feature could also be done via drag and drop there and there" . You know; the small things we develoipers tend to overlook..

Re:It's about time!

[Hanno]

I use Microsoft's Word Viewer to view and print the documents coming in, but refuse to use a full-blown Word installation to create them. So far, no problems, although you do do get some funny looks from clients when you tell them that (and why) you don't use Word on your office PC.