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."

Comments

KOffice vs Open Office

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Fun for Gentoo

[GweeDo]

Get the build here

Be sure to do: emerge koffice-1.3.ebuild digest

Then emerge it and enjoy :)

KOffice for OS X still moving forward

[abischof]

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.

Re:Speculation

[Trillan]

I found a blog entry on a possible Aqua port, but it doesn't seem to be integrated into the builds yet.

Try both.

[Balinares]

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...

Re:Open Office Environment

[CedgeS]

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

Re:This can only be a good thing

[jrcamp]

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. :)

Re:Speculation

[squiggleslash]

If people want to profit from code based on the excellent Qt toolkit, why should they not have to pay Trolltech for the privelige of using their excellent toolkit? TT is gracious enough to allow free (beer and speech) usage of Qt for noncommercial uses, and their commercial license fees are by most accounts very reasonable. It isn't as if they are starved for customers.

Proprietary, not commercial. You can have open source/free commercial software, and non-commercial proprietary software.

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.