KOffice 1.6 Released 186
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."
Gnome version? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is that even possible? It seems kind of dumb to port a linux application to linux.
Perhaps I'm way off base here.
Re:Marketer alert? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes: I, a KDE fan, can't use KWord: no Word import (Score:3, Interesting)
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.)
Kerning (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:For people who complain about GIMP (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Openoffice draining KOffice (Hurd effect) (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows Version? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anybody know if this is still the plan? I'd love to move back to Koffice.