KOffice 1.6 Released

ingwa writes "The KOffice team today released version 1.6 of its office suite. Among other things, this release contains an improved Krita which can now handle color spaces like CMYK. This makes it the only free image editor that can be used in professional pre-press work. Together with the other improvements, this release probably makes it the best free image editor in the world. The release also contains improvements in Kexi, the MS Access like database application, and a new scripting framework which makes it extremely simple to script applications that handle OpenDocument data. With this release KOffice also surpasses OpenOffice.org in some ways, e.g. it handles over 70% of the W3C MathML test suite while Openoffice.org only handles 22%. See the KOffice homepage for more information."

Comments

Kudos to the dev team

[Dasher42]

KOffice has been for a long time the contender that has not gotten its due. Like KDE, it is mildly clunky, but quite powerful, and programming things in the C++/Qt/KDE paradigm makes it faster on its feet than OpenOffice. Qt 4.x should make it possible for this suite to make a splash on Windows and OSX too, so this year should be very... interesting.

Re:Kudos to the dev team

[nuzak]

> KOffice has been for a long time the contender that has not gotten its due.

I try to give it its due, and have often attempted to compose a praise-filled letter in KOffice, but it keeps crashing before I can finish it.

Re:Kudos to the dev team

[RAMMS EIN]

``it is mildly clunky''

and, last time I used it, very fast compared to the competition. That counts for a lot in my book. "It's the latency, stupid!"

Openoffice draining KOffice (Hurd effect)

[Gopal.V]

Eventhough I still use OO.org 2.0, I've always felt that the codebase has the feel of having been through too many hands, have had too many cooks mix in all their special sauce (*cough* Sun... *cough* Java...), for it to leave a good after taste. But people still work on it and use it because it has the best MS Word .doc compatibility versus esoteric features like MathML (@see LaTeX) - it is a chicken and egg problem of getting your users/developers and having work done to get them (@see Hurd).

So, if there were on OO.org, I'd have estimated that Koffice would be much farther up in .doc compatibility than it is now. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.

Re:Openoffice draining KOffice (Hurd effect)

[Enderandrew]

Yes and no. OpenOffice.org is written to take advantage of both QT and GTK widgets, but as I understand it, it is written in C with GTK really in mind. It has been suggested to the KOffice devs many times to just lift the code from OpenOffice.org for importing MS Office documents (the only real major advantage OO.o has on the Linux desktop in my opinion) and they state that they can't just plug that code in. Because you're jumping from C to C++, apparently it needs to be rewritten considerably.

Re:Openoffice draining KOffice (Hurd effect)

[vurian]

Well, actually, OpenOffice is mostly written in a primordial dialect of C++, comes with its own widget set (that can render using gtk or Qt) and a lot more. GTK nor Qt existed when the StarOffice people started writing their software.

Gnome version?

[Frogbert]

I'm not trying to sound stupid here. But what are the chances of getting a gnome version of Koffice? I don't mean a complete rewrite start from scratch office suite tied into the Gnome desktop project. I mean a port of Koffice to a gnome environment.

Is that even possible? It seems kind of dumb to port a linux application to linux.

Perhaps I'm way off base here.

Re:Gnome version?

[FishWithAHammer]

Install KDE libraries.

Shazam.

Re:Gnome version?

[porkThreeWays]

I think a lot of people get confused about KDE and Gnome. You don't really write a program to run in KDE or Gnome. They'll be written with either QT or GTK+ for the GUI toolkit. They might use certain kde or gnome libs on top of that as well. But both projects are fairly modular and programs usually don't require a full KDE install to run and I've never heard of a KDE program actually needing the user logged into a KDE environment to use the program. You'd just make sure that machine has the needed KDE libs. You can run it under almost any window manager or desktop environment if all the proper libs are in place. So once you've got a mature app written like KOffice, you wouldn't just up and switch GUI toolkits. The only reason an open source project might do that is if they wanted better MS Windows support because historically QT hasn't been as available on windows as gtk. With qt4 I think this is going to change however.

Re:Gnome version?

[misleb]

Don't underestimate the value of having applications integrated each other and the desktop. While you can just install the KDE libs if you must run KOffice, it certainly isn't an ideal arrangement.

-matthew

Re:Gnome version?

[cybereal]

The only reason an open source project might do that is if they wanted better MS Windows support because historically QT hasn't been as available on windows as gtk. With qt4 I think this is going to change however.

Actually historically speaking Qt has been better supported on Windows than GTK and still is. There are actually two hinderances here: 1) In the past there has been no GPL license for the windows version of Qt (or Mac) but that has changed. Mac has a GPL version and Windows either has one or is getting it in the next major release. But, the more important limitation (anyone could've built binaries with a paid license to Qt...) is that KDE apps require KDE libs which are built on top of Qt and make many assumptions about the underlying OS being a unix-like OS. Sure you could use cygwin to get around this I imagine, and there ARE some prior examples of KDE running on Windows but it always worked terribly.

However, with the licensing question gone for Windows, it is much more likely that KOffice and the required KDE libraries to compile and run it could get a Windows port.

I wish this would happen. I would much rather use KOffice than blOatpenOffice.org.

Re:Marketer alert?

[RobotRunAmok]

Does anyone smell a marketing rat trying to push new software?

Push it... to what end? To make more money? It's all free! And my experience is that the free software guys don't have Marketing Rats, or at least none worthy of the name, else the products wouldn't have names like "The GIMP."

Re:Marketer alert?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone smell a marketing rat trying to push new software? Rather interesting post on the heals of post on the GIMP graphics subsystem.

Yeah, those greedy KD£ fuckers only care about how much cash they can squeeze out of you for a minor upgrade!

For people who complain about GIMP

[frup]

Well maybe now all those people who go "OOOH gimps not like photoshop" or "Linux image editors suck" can be silenced?

Re:For people who complain about GIMP

[photomonkey]

Not really, because a lot of the people I know that use Pshop and other Win/Mac only photo software can't get the linux stuff to do what we want easily enough.

I need simple support for camera raw files, multiple (including uncommon) colorspaces, exif and IPTC/XMP support and respect, and better image browsing/sorting tools.

I am a professional photographer and have tried to put together a linux system that would meet ALL the requirements of the job, and have been as yet unable to do so. And I don't mean "I took a weekend" kind of trying.

Show me a combination of linux software packages that work as well as (not use the same cpu cycles, not use less memory, not play well with t'0pen s0-urse' file formats) or better than (that's where I get concerned with hardware requirements, hardware compatibility and system overhead) the industry standard Photoshop+PhotoMechanic+NoiseNinja (or some other noise correction software) combo, and I will be frucking amazed.

This actually raises a good question. I'm a professional photographer (news, commercial, portrait and event) and I need to be able to quickly and easily dump a CF card onto a computer, apply IPTC/XMP information to them while or after ingesting the photos, browse collections of these photos (.NEF [Nikon RAW file format], jpeg and tif files), and edit them in or convert them between industry-standard colorspaces such as (but not limited to) CYMK, Adobe 98, and of course, some flavor of sRGB.

Oh yeah, and the software/OS need to support hardware-level or equally good color profiling as well as a general high quality photo scanner, negative scanner (for digging into the older, pre-digital work) and photo printer.

So how do I do it?

PS, I am totally willing to help/advise an ambitious Linux zealot put together a Linux distro or software package that steps it up to the professional level. I and others would love to stop giving Adobe $800 every time they drop a new Pshop. I can't code, but I sure as hell know what needs to be accomplished with the software and am willing to help with look and feel. I'm serious.

Until there is support for the nitty-gritty necessary to the job, pros won't care and consumers will continue to use the 'easier' Win/Mac stuff.

Re:For people who complain about GIMP

[AaronW]

I've been using Bibble for my photography needs. It handles raw files quite nicely and includes Noise Ninja. I know it's not open source, but it's an excellent package with good workflow support. It has all the tweaks for changing white balance, fixing lens distortion, exposure compensation, curves, and features for removing blemishes.

It's also available for the Mac and Windoze. The professional version, which I use, includes all three. Additionally, since I've bought it I can't count how many free upgrades I've downloaded with useful new features. They also seem fairly responsive to their users needs.

I haven't spent much time with Krita, but it also handles raw files and has 16-bit per color support (48 bit RGB) and multiple color spaces.

As for printing, I've heard there's new printer support coming out (if not already out) that looks better on Linux than Windows, at least with Epson printers (I don't know about other brands).

-Aaron

Re:Marketer alert?

[Warbringer87]

I haven't ever used Krita before, but they win by default if they have a better UI than GIMP. As for OpenOffice, wouldn't it be wiser to not bother to compete with them until their own stuff can run on Windows?

Re:Marketer alert?

[KingJackaL]

At least they're competing on open standards. Sort of like Opera's race to get support for SVG-(tiny/full) into their browser ahead of Gecko etc. No embrace and extend bollocks ;).

I'm also pretty pleased to see another FOSS image editor doing well, competition does great things for the market, even when the market is free :). I'll definately be giving Krita a go soon.

Re:What the hell is this crap?

[MrZaius]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP
"For the future it is planned to base GIMP on a more generic graphical library called GEGL, thereby addressing some fundamental design limitations that prevent many enhancements such as native CMYK support. However, implementation of this plan has been continually put off since 2000."

An eternity, eh? Apparently CYMK hasn't been in there long enough to get inclusion in the Wikipedia article. Also, are you sure you aren't just using the plugin? http://www.blackfiveservices.co.uk/separate.shtml

Re:What the hell is this crap?

[ocelotbob]

Not quite the same, because you're going to blow through pages getting things looking good. Native CMYK from start to finish means you don't have to do the inevitable tweaks to the document when converting between colorspaces.

Yes: I, a KDE fan, can't use KWord: no Word import

[KWTm]

I've been a KDE fan ever since Mandrake 8.1, and later Kubuntu 5.10. It would be very elegant to be able to use KWord and the KOffice suite, since it integrates so well, and I can use the KIOslaves and take advantage of all the KDE features, including my favourite, completely configurable key bindings.

Nevertheless, KWord's inability to export to MS Word format is a dealbreaker. Not only don't they have a working MS Word export function, they don't even have a non-working one. They haven't started. There are no plans to do any work at all on exporting to MS Word format in the near future.

I don't have any particular fondness for MS Word, but sometimes you just need to create one when, for example, working with some complete compu-noob who is already approaching the seizure threshold just from trying to understand what a computer is; trying to explain how to convert from ODF might just send him into a coma.

There are several other things that also make KWord hard to use. On my installation of Kubuntu, KWord seems to have a screen-refreshing problem: I page down, then page up, and it just shows a blank page. Scrolling around makes the edges refresh slightly, but otherwise the page stays blank, and I have to jump through hoops to make the words appear again. At first I thought that the words really were erased and I had started to re-type.

KWord has struck me as a "very good idea" with some way to go before the implementation reflects the reality. Unfortunately, "elegant" isn't enough to get my work done, so I reluctantly installed AbiWord --a well-done piece of work, and preferable over OpenOffice v2 simply because of its loading speed if nothing else. (Yes, I know about pre-loading, and I know about disabling Java to make it run faster.)

Re:KOffice for OSX, Win32?

[The MESMERIC]

Koffice is optimized for KDE.
Hence things fire in a split second.
So for very quick jobs it can be neat.

OpenOffice takes ages to fire-up add Firefox to the list too.

Now for all you lovers of proprietory and closed-source software,
these guys used to code a neat fast loading Word/Excel alternative:
http://www.softmaker.com/

Kerning

[BeeBeard]

Oh please, let it have improved font kerning in KWord. T he str ange way it pu ts gaps betwe en words keeps me from using it full time.

Re:Kerning

[Atmchicago]

From what I understand, this is at least in part a Qt 3.x issue, and will be fixed in Koffice 2.0 with the port to Qt 4.x. The big showstopper for me, and most people, is the lack of Microsoft Word support. See http://koffice.kde.org/filters/1.6/.

Re:Kerning

[jZnat]

I'm pretty sure that's a Qt problem that's fixed in Qt 4 (and thus KOffice 2.0 when that's released).

Re:Kerning

[Ed Avis]

It's not bad form to reply to your own post. It is, however, bad form to reply starting with 'I know it's bad form...'.

Re:Yes: I, a KDE fan, can't use KWord: no Word imp

[vga_init]

It doesn't suprise me that they sidesteped MS Office support. Can you even imagine why it's important at all to support those proprietary formats?

I know interoperability is a key feature, but that's what we have OpenOffice for; KOffice is just trying to be the best office suite that it can be all by itself. It's that kind of focus that gives the project much of its promise. The article mentions that the suite surpasses OO.org and GIMP in many key features. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Also, now that the open document format is becoming more standard (and MS is begrudgingly obeying that standard), KOffice has more room to grow than it did before.

In my opinion, a good word processor/office suite acts as a tool for creation first. It just happens to double as a document viewer and exporter later, but that should not be the primary function.

Camera and scanner are not CMYK

[tepples]

Native CMYK from start to finish means you don't have to do the inevitable tweaks to the document when converting between colorspaces.

Your prosumer camera and scanner are not CMYK, which negates "from start" in a lot of cases. In addition, your computer monitor is not CMYK. Any intermediate view sent to a computer monitor will not be CMYK; it'll be a conversion, and conversions tend to be fallible.

Re:Yes: I, a KDE fan, can't use KWord: no Word imp

[Laur]

Nevertheless, KWord's inability to export to MS Word format is a dealbreaker... so I reluctantly installed AbiWord

Abiword doesn't really export to doc either, they just save as rtf and give it a .doc extension (see here. KWord can easily save to rtf, and even lists it as "RTF Document (Microsoft Word Compatible)" in the save-as dialog. Maybe you can request that the developers add an option to automatically save as rtf with a doc extension, just like Abiword, although I don't personally consider having to change a document extension manually a "dealbreaker."

Windows Version?

[cgenman]

The one thing I really miss about Linux (besides Grep... and skill... and alt-get... and perl that works) is Kmail. I remember hearing from a developer a while back that the port to QT 4 on the 2.0 branch was going to allow for a Windows compatible version.

Does anybody know if this is still the plan? I'd love to move back to Koffice.

CMYK was your mistake

[r00t]

For prepress work, the GIMP's real limitations are:

1. only 8-bit channels
2. most code is ignorant of gamma

CMYK as an editing format is normally very wrong. If you use spot colors, then maybe WITH DEVICE PROFILES it is reasonable to do some work using the color channels individually. Don't ever get the idea of painting in CMYK, which is as defective as saving your temporary work files in highly-compressed JPEG.

The other thing you need for prepress work is a proper RGB-to-CMYK output conversion. This is specific to your press, ink, paper, and other conditions. You should expect your vendors to provide you with a decent conversion. For an excellent conversion, you will need to measure the expected press/ink/paper setup yourself.

Note: if you worked in CMYK, you'd need a CMYK-to-CMYK conversion! Your press output will vary based on the ink and paper you use. It may vary with other factors, such as the humidity at which you stored the paper. So don't imagine that CMYK would let you get away without conversion. It just makes things worse.

It's really the 8-bit channels and gamma fuckups that make the GIMP unacceptable, but you made things much worse by falling for the CMYK myth.

Great!

[oohshiny]

With this release KOffice also surpasses OpenOffice.org in some ways, e.g. it handles over 70% of the W3C MathML test suite while Openoffice.org only handles 22%.

Any other pointless areas in which KOffice surpasses OpenOffice?

Re:Marketer alert?

[ingwa]

Yeah, sure I'm a marketer. Or rather: I'm a developer doing some marketing work. I am of the opinion that if we don't tell the world about our great work, then sure as hell nobody else will do it for us. And if we happen to be the best at something, then that's what I will say.

There are so many great open source projects that nobody is using just because nobody knows about it. I'm not going to let that happen to KOffice.

MathML

[RAMMS EIN]

``it handles over 70% of the W3C MathML test suite''

I do believe I just heard <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mn>5</ mn><mfrac><mn>1</mn><mn>4</mn></mfrac></math> people cheer.

And you have no idea how painful that was to type in.

Packages already avaliable for Kubuntu

[vhogemann]

Take a look here --> http://kubuntu.org/announcements/koffice-16.php

or, add these to you /etc/sources.list :

        * deb ftp://bolugftp.uni-bonn.de/pub/kde/stable/koffice- 1.6.0/kubuntu dapper main
        * deb http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.kde.org/pub /kde/stable/koffice-1.6.0/kubuntu dapper main
        * deb http://ftp.gtlib.cc.gatech.edu/pub/kde/stable/koff ice-1.6.0/kubuntu dapper main
        * deb http://kubuntu.org/packages/koffice-16 dapper main