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Koffice 1.3 Released
perbert writes "On January 27th, the KDE Project released KOffice 1.3 for Linux and Unix operating systems. KOffice is a free set of office applications that integrate with the award winning KDE desktop. KOffice is a light-weight yet feature rich office solution and provides a variety of filters to interoperate with other popular office suites such as OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office."
I find KO to be more user friendly and less buggy than OO. Too bad it lacks the MS compatibilty of OO for Power Point
Get the build here
:)
Be sure to do: emerge koffice-1.3.ebuild digest
Then emerge it and enjoy
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And, don't forget that Ranger Rick is still working on porting KOffice to OS X. There are now binaries available and if you're going to download all the KDE-on-OSX packages, you may as well use the all-packages torrent.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
It's planned for KOffice 1.4 David Faure is part of the OASIS TC for the OO standard format.
I found a blog entry on a possible Aqua port, but it doesn't seem to be integrated into the builds yet.
Openoffice code has an interesting history. It was originally commercial staroffice code, and was later opened. It would take considerable time to decrypt the openoffice code and rewrite a neat implementation for KOffice. Obviously it is started, but still has work to go.
I think their plan is to use OpenOffice as a stopgap, while keeping the work on KOffice. If you want to know, I used to believe that they were being stupid and should throw their technological knowledge at OO, like everybody else... But after actually giving the latest KOffice a try (I like to try stuff for myself, just to know what I'm talking about), I changed my mind.
I've basically switched to KOffice for my daily use, in fact. It is -NOT- yet as featureful as OO. However, it is so fast, lightweight and efficient (I'm in love with it's layout model) that I'm finding it a somewhat better tool for most of my daily tasks.
I'm not sure they'll ever be able to really compete with such a large, commercially-backed (by Sun) app as OpenOffice, but I must admit I now find myself darn glad they're trying. It'd be quite unlikely, but I wouldn't put it above them to pull a Konqueror in that market as well. You never know.
In the meanwhile, it's damn nice to have a KOffice to show to non-geek people -- especially those who won't switch to OO because of its massive weight and slowness. And if they don't manage it, well at least one can hope the competition will prod OO into getting lighter and faster...
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Read Fred Brooks classic The Mythical Man-Month.
It takes 9 months to make a baby no matter how many women you assign to the task.
kOffice and OpenOffice.org are intentionally designed differently. In the long run which will work out better is hard to say. They are different, and you can't just grab parts of one design and slap it on the other without creating a mess worse than everyone going about doing their own thing.
Found the information a while back on dot.kde.org (can't find the link though, sorry).
The thing is that OO's input filters apparently load files directly into its memory structures, without an intermediate API. This makes it highly difficult for other projects to use them directly. So the best they can do is peek and poke at OO's code, try to understand what it does and why, and then use it in their own filter -- which they actually export as a library (libwv2) so that other projects can make use of it.
I -WISH- OO would have been more modular though. Would have saved loads of time...
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
I believe that, supposedly, MS Blahblahblah97 and MS Blahblahblah2000 are effectively the same format. I would have sworn that I'd seen "MS Word 97/2000","MS Excel 97/2000" and so forth as options in some menus. (Even MS Office 2000 itself, perhaps?)
Granted that I wouldn't really be surprised if there WERE differences, but I hadn't heard that there were.
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Word Processor comparison:
Word Processors can be divided into 3 groups. Frame and style based word processors are the easiest to use, and the only acceptable methods for large documents. Some word processors include this architecture. Many fall behind, and are nothing more than a glorified typewriter with spell check and editing.
Frame and style based word processors:
Lotus Amipro (NeXT late 80s, Windows circa 1993):
Originally designed for NeXT, along with Lotus Improv as part of an office suite. This is probably the best word processor ever. It is based on frames and styles, and the user interface is esentially three parts: edit text, layout frames, edit styles. Few menus, a bunch of buttons. Surprisingly simple, easy to use, and powerful (comparable to Adobe FrameMaker). Very small, very fast. Puts everything since it to shame.
Annoyances: None
Missing features: Support for new file formats. Fancy text layouts like text on a path, dropshadows, and outlines.
Adobe FrameMaker
Professional desktop publishing program. As the name implies it is frame based. Along with AmiPro and LaTeX it is capable of really professional quality results.
KWord:
KWord lives on frames and styles. It allows text to flow between arbitrary frames. Very good for working with extremely large documents. The styles are one step removed from the user interface, if they came to the front it would be a professional contender.
Missing features: Macros
Lotus WordPro
The successor to AmiPro. Benefits include support for newer file formats, and some new features. The user interface was changed quite a bit to be more like WordPerfect or Word.
Anoyances: Somewhat sloppy UI design, merges are difficult. HTML output is not perfect.
Missing features: Fancy text layouts like text on a path, dropshadows, and outlines.
LyX / LaTeX:
LaTeX does styles extremely well. Is absolutely excellent for anything where you don't need frames (scientific papers, computer manuals, books, etc). HTML output is the absolute best.
Missing features: Frames essentially don't exist.
Word processors that can do frames and styles, but its difficult:
OpenOffice.org
The guiding design principal here seems to be "be as much like Microsoft Office as possible". In this it succeeds fairly well, with a few slight improvements. Styles and frames are far more accessible, but still hidden away a bit to far for my liking.
Anoyances: User interface is a lot like Microsoft Word
WordPerfect:
Frames and styles exist, but they are hidden out of view.
Word processors that can't do frames and styles:
AbiWord:
Last time I used it it was a glorified WordPad or RTF editor. Very simple to use for small documents. Lack of styles made it unaproachable for anything big.
Anoyances: No styles, no frames
Missing features: almost everything
Microsft Write (the dinky text editor):
Fewer features than Word. Easier to use. Results are just as good, and any other program can open it.
Missing features: spell check, almost everything
Microsoft Word:
This one wins the worst user interface award. It has support for styles and frame bassed document layout, but the user interface is designed towards formatting every gosh darn character / word / paragraph by hand. Most word documents are impossible to work with if they have any size. The user interface is so bad that these features might as well not exist
Anoyances: Almost everything. I've used a lot of word processors, from ancient WordStars and WordPerfects to AmiPro. Word has no guiding concepts to follow, either in document design or understanding the user interface. File format incompatibilities between Word versions make it miserable to deal with. Aweful HTML output.
Missing features: Acceptable user interface, functional file format
The answer is both, duh.
The best advantage of OSS software is that you can afford to run all of them. Who could afford to have MS Office and $COMPETITOR at $450 each? On the other hand OOo, KO and GnomeOffice have just cost me a little time and some donations that were my choice to make.
(IMO the best mix is AbiWord for editing, OO.o for conversion, Sodipodi for graphics... but hell, pick whatever you like.)
Beep beep.
I can't speak to the version of Kword that was released today. But after I read your comment I went and fired up the previous version under Mepis, and loaded in a WP 10 file I've been writing. About one in twenty words lacked a space before the next word. And all curly quotes and apostrophes got transferred over as squares.
Still, I'm eager to see if the new version has a better import filter. You'd have to be a masochist to use the previous version of Kword to import a lenthy WP file.
OpenOffice has nothing to do with GNOME. It doesn't use any of their framework or integrate any more than it does with KDE. So why do GNOME claim it as their flagship office product? Stick with your Gnumeric et al. :)
KWord's MS Word filters have improved, but they still have a ways to go as well. I tried importing my resume, and found that the import filter doesn't support font embedding, so the layout was different, and the table I used was positioned wrong. I probably won't be using KWord as a .doc file viewer, but I am a fan of its light weight and clean interface. If it proves to be stable enough I may use it for a few documents to see how it fares in real usage.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I used to feel the same way, but I was absolutely amazed when I upgraded to 1.1. Just for fun, I tried opening a complex Word document. Everything was absolutely perfect. Every equation came out exactly right, the pictures were all correct, the formatting was right, even the images drawn in Word with multiple layers were right.
I am not suprised that they are still getting some things wrong (as you claim), since it is such a complicated thing to do well, but after seeing how amazing 1.1 was, I have no doubt that I will eventually be able to actually use OO interchangably with Word.
Trolltech allows royalty-free use of QT under the conditions of the GPL. If you want to sell your GPL'd end-product, that's fine, as long as the terms of the GPL are adhered too.
Note I am not commenting on how viable commercial GPL software is, merely pointing out there's a difference.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
> I was wondering: Is KOffice based off the Star Office code like Open Office, or is it new development?
Nope.. koffice predates the open-sourcing of StarOffice by a few years. However, historically, it hasn't been ready for primetime because of lack of developers and consistant rewrites (the core of kword being rewritten all the time, krita being rewritten 3 times over the last 4 years), certain apps gets dumped in favor of even more rewrites (killustrator versus karbon14,etc..)
> And is there significant difference in functionality, or is it mostly UI differences?
OpenOffice has a significantly greater mass of features, but koffice is lightweight. Until recently, I perferred using koffice more, but I actually used OpenOffice more. That's starting to change now though, koffice 1.3 is pretty nice.
KOffice:
Uses KDE environment to full potential, very smooth, fast and clean. Less features than the others last time I looked. Doesn't really handle MS Office docs well yet, again last time I looked.
OpenOffice
Multiplatform, full of features, loads Microsoft Office documents quite well. Downside is it is rather large and slow. Occasional quirk, but on the whole rock steady.
MS Office
Feature wise, MS Office still rules the roost. But the price there is closed document formats, an untrustworthy company holding the reigns, and no Linux version. I'd count those as downsides.
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