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Does the End of KOffice Mean the End of KDE?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the yeah-that'll-happen dept.

jfruhlinger writes "Venerable Linux office suite KOffice has been reborn as "Calligra," a name meant to evoke calligraphy but perhaps a bit too close to the neme of a deranged Roman emperor. Perhaps more importantly, Calligra seems to be cooperating with the future MeeGo mobile Linux distro. Could this be the beginning of the end of the KDE desktop, at least under its current branding?"

4 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Oh no by stoolpigeon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    not just the end of KDE - but the end of all life on earth!
     
    What a stupid headline. Page views, clicks, etc. Yeah I know.

    --
    It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
  2. Tag: Troll by bcmm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's tag this story "troll" and move on quickly.

    --
    # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  3. Did anyone actually use KOffice? by ndogg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know I never have, and I use KDE quite a lot. I don't know anyone that has. It's usually OpenOffice.org that's being use.

    --
    // file: mice.h
    #include "frickin_lasers.h"
    1. Re:Did anyone actually use KOffice? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I know I never have, and I use KDE quite a lot. I don't know anyone that has. It's usually OpenOffice.org that's being use.

      I've tried to use KOffice. Lord, how I've tried. I hate OpenOffice with a passion, but I just keep coming back to it.

      There's really only one thing holding KOffice back from general recognition as an Office contender: the font rendering/kerning is abysmal.

      The history behind this is tragic: someone in both the KDE and KOffice projects made it a principle that these projects should always use Qt libraries whenever possible instead of re-inventing the wheel. On paper, this sounds good. The problem is that there are still areas where the current Qt libraries....well, suck. Font rendering is one, printing is another. Thus, KOffice sucks and fonts and KDE sucks at printing (KDE3 was great at this because they used their own libraries).

      This is not usually a big deal because bugs can be fixed, right? Not in this case. The KDE and KOffice people point at the guiding principle (use Qt libraries) and say it's a Qt problem--ask Qt for a fix. The Qt people say that these features are not important to include in their libraries (because neither KDE nor KOffice are their bread and butter). And nobody fixes the problem.

      Actually that's not entirely true. The Scribus team created their own font rendering library for their Qt-based app. Because they don't want to produce crap, even if they have to re-invent the wheel to avoid producing crap.