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KOffice 2.0.0 Now Open For Firefox-Like Extensions
jakeb writes "After a massive three-year development effort KOffice 2.0.0 has been released (packages for Kubuntu are available) aiming to be a lightweight, cross-platform office suite that supports third-party apps and extensions. With its new design (everything, including the core components, is a module) and bindings, you don't need to know C++ to hack on KOffice, as extensions can be written in Python or Java, among others. TechWorld has an interview with KOffice marketing coordinator Inge Wallin about the vision for an easy-to-use office suite that supports click-to-install extensions like Firefox. Will this be the key to KOffice rising above all other free office suites? The KOffice devs think so. An online repository of extensions, templates, and content for KOffice? I like the sound of that."
From TFA:
Our goal for now is to release a first preview of what we have accomplished. This release is mainly aimed at developers, testers and early adopters. It is not aimed at end users, and we do not recommend Linux distributions to package it as the default office suite yet.
Why don't they release this version as KOffice 2.0 BETA? Funny that they put the 0.0 number to kind of "inform" that it is the very very first version...
It seems to me that it is official, Open Source .0 versions = beta
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Sweet! Now I can block ads in documents!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Sorry, this is wrong. KOffice is *from* KDE (i.e. the KDE community). It's for all major desktops, including Gnome.
But yes, it is a different code base than the others.
I don't think anyone is expecting KOffice to take over the world. That's really not the point. What the KOffice team has accomplished is creating a set of tools that some people will use and others will extend, and the extensions will bring more users. Making creating useful extensions easy is critical for an open source application - it's how you allow the community to implement needed features without central planning and control. That the KOffice team gets it doesn't need to be derided, they should be congratulated, and now that I have a word processor & spreadsheet I can extend, I'm going to have some real fun. Oh, and saying there is nothing novel here, well, you need to go read up a little. The KOffice team has done a yeoman's job on this one.
-- $G
Bloat for you and me is a necessary feature for someone else, and vice-versa. The real issue is this: is the interface intuitive enough to not overwhelm the user, and is it spaghetti code or modular enough that unneeded/unused parts do not have to be loaded into RAM at run time?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Open Office is a large, very feature completeness attempt at replacing MS Office. It does very good import/export and is very cross platform, making it a good general solution if you have lots of RAM (512 MB +). OO.Org has fairly good Gnome integration, not sure on KDE.
KOffice is done by the KDE team, it is designed around the KDE libraries and as such it integrates very well. KOffice2 makes very good use of KDE4 allowing for a very nice interface of docking/floating toolbars and widget manipulation boxes (don't know a better word for it). I actually REALLY like the interface for KWord2.
GNOME Office is simply a collection of applications that use the GNOME libraries (or used to be anyway). It is Gnumeric (my favorite Linux spreadsheet, and Abiword, the best truly lightweight word processor I have used, maybe Dia (diagramming counts as a part too?). It does not feel at all like an Office suite, just some nicely done programs.
I personally use Open Office in GNOME, and KOffice on KDE, occasionally using Gnumeric on either because I like it.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg