KOffice 1.5 Released 296
ingwa writes to tell us that the KOffice team has released version 1.5 which offers, among other things, default OpenDocument file format, new project planning tool KPlato, professional color support and adjustment layers in Krita and the long awaited Kexi 1.0. From the announcement: "KOffice was the first office suite that announced support for OpenDocument and now the second to announce it as the default file format after OpenOffice.org. This makes KOffice a member of a very select group and will lead to new deployment opportunities. Great care has been taken to ensure interoperability with other office software that also use OpenDocument."
KPlato (Score:5, Funny)
K'Platoh!
Re:KPlato (Score:3, Funny)
Re:KPlato (Score:3, Funny)
OpenDocument As Default is Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OpenDocument As Default is Great! (Score:4, Interesting)
OpenOffice Writer Import: The filter generally works well, however some features might be missing or might not work correctly yet.
OpenOffice Writer Export: The filter generally works although it is not finished, and it may suffer from some instability.
This certianly raises some questions.
Re:OpenDocument As Default is Great! (Score:2)
Re:OpenDocument As Default is Great! (Score:5, Informative)
I've moved away from Open Office because of the bloat, so if Koffice skips some of the more obscure parts of the format that Open Office supports, that's okay by me.
Re:OpenDocument As Default is Great! (Score:3, Interesting)
There are various little things that KWord does support that OOo does not (yet) support. The ODF standard was created by both office suits and KOffice people did request features like Frames and some numbering-types , as a fast example, that made it into the spec but that OOo still does not support. I'm sure there is more.
Re:OpenDocument As Default is Great! (Score:3, Informative)
Since KOffice saves in OpenDocument format by default now, I would guess they don't list it as an "import/export filter."
Mixed Bag (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Mixed Bag (Score:3, Insightful)
Congrats... (Score:3, Interesting)
ODF has pushed a long way since I first heard about it, but without support from the industry, their will be no pressure against Microsoft to implement it into MSOffice.
Hopefully Google and Writely will tip the edge toward ODF.
Re:Congrats... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Congrats... (Score:4, Insightful)
They have many full-time programmers working on it (about 40-50, if I'm not mistaken) and they are doing most of the work.
Sure, openness is good and we have many really cool things as a result of this -- see KDE integration for a very important example -- but Oo.org is hardly the shining example of hobbyists coming together to build a great product.
Actually, KOffice is a far better example for this.
Re:Congrats... (Score:2)
anyway, i agree, openoffice certainly is more ready for the primetime. but as for integration with the rest of the system, all the kde goodies (or should i spell it koodies?) are better.
kotta ko to sleep now...
(and tomorrow Koogle will take over the world, muhahahaaa)
Re:Congrats... (Score:2)
I typed "Master Document" into the "Type a question" box and found a wealth of information about them.
What is so awful about using styles? They have a big pane on the side in Word 2002 and they've had a dropdown in the Formatting toolbar since around Word
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Congrats... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, as long as they're properly compatible - pick the one that suits your personal preference. Or even the right tool for the right task, if one does something well that the other doesn't (or not at all). I'm perfectly happy that Firefox is more popular than Opera (my preference), because if you've built a site to work in one it's 99% sure to work in the other.
If we see competition on features rather than on format and compatibility, nothing is better than that in my opinion. If it isn't clear what I mean by that, let's for the moment assume that one of them offered regex search & replace, and the other did not. The results, before and after are both valid ODF documents - the difference is how you get there. Same with layout, which offers good layout management? Spell check and grammar?
Besides, I think the only way to have a format implemented according to spec is to have at least two implementations. They're sure to run into many of the other's bugs resulting in better standards compliance to benefit all. In short, I don't care if OpenOffice is "leading", I think "local competition" is just as excellent as motivator as the big competition against MS Office.
Re:Congrats... (Score:2)
Re:Congrats... (Score:2)
Re:Congrats... (Score:3, Insightful)
Right now I'm using Kubuntu and it's not exactly the world's most stable piece of software; I'd like to use Gnome, but they insist on using Windows-style menubars for everything. It's a crummy design[1] and I don't understand the resistance to having alternatives like KDE does.
[1] If you like it, more power to you; I think they suck and just want a choice, I don't care if you use it or not. The only good argument I've heard in favor of
Re:Congrats... (Score:2)
Re:Congrats... (Score:2)
Yes, that's what he said : "get an anaesthetic before using MS windows".
But it still can't print! (Score:5, Interesting)
I know this sounds like a troll but I don't mean it that way. I'd switch from OpenOffice to KOffice in a heartbeat if I could, but I just can't do it right now. Please, please! make printing work right and I'll be eternally grateful.
Re:But it still can't print! (Score:2)
If you prefer KOffice to OpenOffice for everything but printing, why don't you edit your documents in KOffice, and print them from OpenOffice? Isn't that the whole point of using open file formats?
Re:But it still can't print! (Score:5, Interesting)
My PDF output [honeypot.net] looks nothing at all like my KWord screen [honeypot.net]. To make those images, I imported a Word doc that our transcriptionist emailed to us, then printed to PDF. I took a screenshot of KWord and KPDF using The Gimp, and cropped each shot to show a representative snippet of text.
Unfortunately, the PDF looks much more like my printed output that I'd like. I have no idea why my printing looks so awful (only through KWord; oowriter2 looks fine), but that's a pretty accurate example of how bad it is.
Other than the fact that I can't print from it, I love KWord. Of course, that's like asking Mrs. Lincoln how she liked the play.
Re:But it still can't print! (Score:2)
To be honest I have never printed from kword before, I usually use oowriter as my primary word processor, even though I may only use it once or twice a month. However I was curious about this kword issue, and I have 1.5 installed on my Debian box here and ran a test printing to PDF and comparing it to the on-screen image. The result is available here [hoopajoo.net] with the PDF on the left and the on-screen on the right (I assume the red/green fuzzies are because it's trying to do nicer type output on my laptop screen).
Re:But it still can't print! (Score:3, Informative)
I'm usually really bad at seeing the difference between fonts, and yet, I can say that the text on the left still looks horrible. You can see it most in the word "be".
Re:But it still can't print! (Score:2)
Exactly! My PDF sample was actually a bit worse than my normal printing results, but his sample is precisely what I see most often. Some letters are spaced widely, while others literally overlap. The result is so awful that my wife's nurse even asked why her dictation looked so bad and whether we could change it.
Re:But it still can't print! (Score:2)
FWIW I now use OOo for generic text and Scribus for stuff that requires complex layout. I might look at KOffice again if it conforms to OpenDocument standards.
Re:But it still can't print! (Score:3, Informative)
LyX (Score:2)
Look into LyX for real document processing. Great LaTeX front end, export to PS, pdf, html. Use all of the background of LaTeX.
I have written numerous papers, a thesis, and multiple books using it and they are all typeset quality.
Sorta a pain for simple stuff, the only way for complex stuff.
Re:LyX (Score:2)
Re:LyX (Score:4, Informative)
I also found a csv2latex application, that would be nice as well.
Thanks!
Re:But it still can't print! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:But it still can't print! (Score:4, Funny)
Large documents (Score:4, Interesting)
LaTeX? (Score:5, Informative)
To be honest I find Word to be a mess. I know some people love it but I find it unusable.
Re:LaTeX? (Score:2)
Re:LaTeX? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:LaTeX? (Score:2)
Re:LaTeX? (Score:2)
LyX is a great front end for LaTeX Processing. It helps with the learning curve.
You can still do all the stuff you want from LaTex in lyx.
There is a version that runs on cygwin with and auto installer (you need a lot of components to get stuff to work, auto install should help).
Not quite WYSIWYG, but at least your equations and tables should work ok. LaTeX is the only way for complex documents.
http://wiki.lyx.org/pmwiki.php/Windows/LyXWinInsta ller [lyx.org]
Re:Large documents (Score:3, Informative)
It will save you loads of time and grief in the long run. Word documents are fine for 1 page memo's and the like, but if you want a beautiful looking manuscript there is only one option.
I've seen people literally go mad trying to write their thesis in Word once the page count gets high.
Re:Large documents (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Large documents (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Large documents (Score:4, Informative)
And if you don't like the "coding style" of LaTeX, you can use LyX [lyx.org].
Re:Large documents (Score:2)
Re:Large documents (Score:2, Interesting)
I was at a seminar by an APS (American Physical Society) editing committee guy once, and he said that certain typesets render better on their mass printing systems than others (we are talking a worldwide distribution numbering in the hundreds of thousands), so they have been known to reject latex submissions with unnecessarily long or redundant typesettings (like people who use lots of $$ $$ instead of eqnarray{} and so on). He did not provide details.
Don't look at me. He said so
Re:Large documents (Score:2)
So my guess is its not the printing that makes any difference its the guy doing the layout for the editing. In other words it could be one copy and it wouldn't matter. That guy may actually work directly in the TeX to layout the whole journal and he wants a consistent feel so no ma
Re:Large documents (Score:3, Insightful)
I went to Lyx instead. I didn't want to learn pure latex, and lyx worked like a charm, once you got the hang of it's little qirks.
Re:Large documents (Score:2)
However, if you're in the humanities or so, your students will likely be unable to learn LaTeX in reasonable time. In that case, I'd recommend Papyrus from ROM Logicware, which is a very fast text processor that can deal with large documents. (Their web site is crap, but try the Papyrus demo!). There are alt
Re:Large documents (Score:2)
They do:
diagrams
different fonts
often different languages
pictures
diagrams
tables
graphs
If its pure humanities work then I guess it depends which one. I'd assume an Art history dissertation is no piece of cake to typeset
Re:Large documents (Score:2)
Re:Large documents (Score:2)
Apart from making it less likely to break the word processor it can make collaboration easier for when people are reading your drafts (you don't need your professor to check things in and out of CVS for instance).
When you are done with the major revisions you mark the document up in Latex. I have found this gives the best of all worlds, 'wiggly underlining' spell checking for my tpying, change tracking when people are helpi
Krita (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone who's ever complained about the gimp needs to check out Krita [koffice.org], the paint application in KOffice. As of 1.5, it now has support for adjustment layers and layer groups, 2 of the things I missed most in the gimp. It also has CMYK support and does not have separate windows for all the tools (something that never bothered me but soooo many people complain about it). The difference between 1.4 and 1.5 of Krita is absolutely amazing, I figure give them 6 more months and they will have passed gimp in functionality. Too bad Krita is KDE only though, so no help for windows users looking for a good free photo editing suite.
Re:Krita (Score:2)
Re:Krita (Score:5, Informative)
Yet. Qt4 for Windows is GPL, KDE is moving to Qt4 which means it'll run on Windows eventually. You can still make it happen today with Cygwin, but that's not a consumer-friendly solution. Give it 12 months and you can probably run Krita on Windows.
Re:Krita (Score:2)
Poor table support (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Poor table support (Score:2)
Re:Poor table support (Score:3, Informative)
No, we didn't work on Table support very much, we just made it crash less on tables. You, for example, still can't have a table bigger then a page.
Tables will be re-done in 2.0, most probably.
ODF in OOfice? (Score:2)
(I know this is a KOffice thread, but maybe some knowledgable people are reading).
Try OO.org 2.0 (Score:3, Informative)
Why I'm using KOffice (Score:4, Interesting)
I had previously shied away from KOffice/Kword because although the earlier versions offered the ability to save/print to pdf file, the pdf file it created sometimes wasn't compatible with Acroread or Windows or even OO.org. So when creating docs with earlier versions of KWord, just to be sure, I'd save the file as ps, then open a shell and use ps2pdf to convert, and everything worked ok. In order to avoid that, as OO.org hit 1.1.x then 1.2.x then 1.3.x, I started using OO.org more and more, especially because its export to pdf button worked flawlessly every time. Still does. But events have conspired to bring me back into the KOffice fold.
OO.org is just too resource intensive. When I need to create a short document, if kword/kate or vim aren't good enough for lack of features, I found myself trying to think of alternatives rather than fire up OO.org and watch it eat up memory and slow everything down. So I apt-get installed KOffice again after purging it, and installed all the KOffice related recommends/suggests, and found that it had advanced enough to the point of my liking it. That's a change because just a few versions back I was really disappointed in the pdf problem, the limited number of other file formats it was capable of saving to with those formats being compatible with the same formats on other applications, etc.
Now, the number one reason I'm using KOffice almost exclusively is because I can't print from OO.org, Mozilla/Firefox, or some other applications. I have an HP4+ printer plugged via parallel port into a knoppix desktop running from the CD drive. It's running cupsd, and I'm printing either directly from the knoppix desktop, or printing from other desktops logged into the file server via ssh, using the identities on the file server. Previously, I had an Epson ink jet printer plugged into the knoppix via cupsd, but changed the printer to the HP a while back. Changed the configurations in cupsd and cups in
I went to the OO.org site and followed the how-to for setting up a printer, but I still couldn't get it to work. It was a while ago, but I think I also went to the Firefox site to look for help, and went through the Mozilla/Firefox help menus to try and find help, but I still can't print from OO.org, Firefox, and now that I think about it, Acroread and possibly xpdf as well.
So I think I'm missing an entry in another config file where OO.org and Firefox and Xpdf and other non-kde apps look for info on what printers are available. Luckily, kde apps are using some other method to list available printers, so if I need to create something in OO.org, I reopen it in Kword or create a pdf and print it through kword or kpdf. If I have a web page opened in Firefox or Mozilla that I need to print, I have to re-open the page in Konqueror before I can print it.
As long as my situation lasts, I'm hoping that KOffice gets better and better before Etch hits stable, and continues to get better after that. I'm semi-hooked and getting in deeper as time passes.
Re:Why I'm using KOffice (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why I'm using KOffice (Score:2)
MS Word import quality? (Score:2)
I have been using Open Office, and would like to ditch it, in part because it is too resource intensive (even with java disabled), but also because the
Re:MS Word import quality? (Score:2, Informative)
why kspread sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Kcrappy Knaming Kscheme (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Kcrappy Knaming Kscheme (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as they keep giving their software stupid names by sticking a "k" or a "g" on the front of it this software will never appeal to anyone but the Linux zealots (a.k.a. "Power" users).
As long as they keep giving their software stupid names by sticking a "microsoft" or a "i" on the front of it this software will never appeal to anyone but the Windows and Mac OS zealots (a.k.a. "Least Common Denominator" users).
Did you flunk math? (Score:2)
( Classification of the author is uncertain, pending the completion of his Operating System To End All Operating Systems (OSTEAOS) pronounced (aws-TEA-os) (patent pending)).
Re:Did you flunk math? (Score:2)
Re:Kcrappy Knaming Kscheme (Score:2)
99% of the market for an office suite. or general productivity apps of any description whatsoever.
Linux vs Windows naming (Score:4, Interesting)
To me the K is fine, but some of the Linux application names are just dumb. Take Pico, GIMP, and GAIM. Who would of thought that they are a text editor, image editor, and IM apps, respectively?
You're right. Applications should have clear and consise names that reflect what they do, like Microsoft Excel...
Certainly not me, and according to usability studies not by many other users either.
The GIMP's name affects its usability? I assumed the less-than-stellar UI was what causes issues, not some silly name. I guess that's why the iPod was so unsuccessful too, since you can't tell it's a music player from its name.
Linux wouldn't be where it is today without its user interface, and that is of course, how Windows became so popular.
The one "borrowed" from Apple/Xerox?
For the Linux users that say, well its an "expert" interface
By "Linux" I assume you mean KDE, or Gnome, or XFCE, or TWM, or any number of window managers or desktop environments that run atop the kernel. Of course, you can choose whichever interface is most appropriate to your tastes/tasks: KDE gives you immense customization ala Windows, GNOME strives to keep things simpler, etc.
Linux will only become more dominate with a better UI
I fail to see how KDE or GNOME will ultimately fail in this respect, with my preference going to the former. But YMMV.
Re:Kcrappy Knaming Kscheme (Score:2)
Re:Kcrappy Knaming Kscheme (Score:3, Funny)
Here [stallman.org].
Re:Kcrappy Knaming Kscheme (Score:2)
Products don't need horribly boring, uninspired names like "SQL Server", "Server 2003", "Media Player", etc. in order to be successful.
Re:iReadme (Score:2)
Sounds fine to me, but I imagine it'd be kind of hard to convince every K project to change their name. Inertia can be difficult to overcome.
Re:Kcrappy Knaming Kscheme (Score:3, Insightful)
Aww, that isn't even a good troll anymore. At least you could take it one step further to the root of the issue and say it'll never appeal to anyone but Linux zealots as long as you need to prefix it with "k" or "g" to indicate what toolkit it uses, which endusers shouldn't have to give a fuck about. If it was just the na
Re:Kcrappy Knaming Kscheme (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Kcrappy Knaming Kscheme (Score:2)
At Krispy-Kreme?
Re:Kcrappy Knaming Kscheme (Score:2)
Re:Kcrappy Knaming Kscheme (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:ko or ooo? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:ko or ooo? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ko or ooo? (Score:2)
You probably mean Carbon or Cocoa. QT on Mac is essentially another UI library, like Cocoa, Carbon and some others are (Adobe's libraries for example), which all run on Aqua.
Re:I still don't get it...... (Score:5, Interesting)
Go ahead and explain to this dumbass why I want to give up a program that fits in with the rest of my desktop, supports KIOslaves, and is document-compatible with your office suite of choice. Really, I'm waiting...
The reason for their coexistence is that they have two different design philosophies, two different styles of programming, are built on two completely different frameworks, and appeal to two different groups of people (KDE users versus everyone else). How would you expect them to reconcile those differences? Do you also want KHTML to merge with Gecko? After all, they both do the same thing.
Re:I still don't get it...... (Score:5, Insightful)
A modern office suite needs to build on top of a really solid foundation in terms of widgets and supporting library.
OpenOffice (and StarOffice before it) chose to design everything from scratch. Every menu, every window, every pixel is hand-drawn by the program itself. They have a very powerful toolkit in VCL which DUPLICATES all that a toolkit should do. They coded all their dialogs from scratch, font handling from scratch, print support from scratch. Skins and themes - from scratch.
Basically, OpenOffice folks wrote half an operating system to make their office suite. Mozilla did something very similar. And then people wonder where the bloat is coming from!
There is another way to write applications. You look around, and see that there is a very very powerful library foundations out there. You get menus for free. Dialogs. Font handling. Network transparency. Buttons. Canvas. Printing. Image input/output. Sound. This set of libraries is called KDE, although you could use GNOME to a similar extent.
Why on Earth should KOffice people reinvent the wheel yet another time, when there is a very powerful library that does all of this already?
If you download OpenOffice.org, in its 300 MB, you download a whole toolkit plus half an operating system in bloat.
If you download KOffice, just download kdelibs while you're at it. You don't need the rest of KDE! Just look at it as another library providing functionality.
We shouldn't go back in time and recode each menu pixel-for-pixel in every single application. StarOffice did this out of legacy reasons and now we're stuck with it. But in this day and age, people use libraries which take care of this stuff, so you can concentrate on functionality.
Re:I still don't get it...... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, a more appropriate comparison is that the OpenOffice codebase includes a subset of the KDE functionality. This "bloat", written to be cross-platform from the outset, is why OpenOffice works on Microsoft Windows now, and KOffice does not.
Re:I still don't get it...... (Score:3, Interesting)
No, that's coincidental. Look at audacity for something happy to use an existing library and very crossplatform. And look at say xine for something that implements its own widgets and is still linux-only.
Re:I still don't get it...... (Score:2)
I don't think you realize what you are saying. From a technical standpoint, it's nonsensical and nearly impossible. In terms of vendor lock-in, it's replacing one shackle with another. In terms of freedom and choice, you don't have any. In terms of morality, you have no right to tell another what code they can or cannot write.
Uh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And you're right, it won't ever happen. Because some people will want some killer feature only KOffice has, and some people will want some feature only OpenOffice has.
Unity? Pah. The whole point of open source is that unity is neither necessary nor (typically) desirable. If you CAN use the same stuff in ANYTHING, ON anything, WHY would you want to use it in only ONE thing?
Re:what i'd like to see.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:what i'd like to see.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I certainly hope they don't. KOffice may be one of the very few chances we have to escape the awful bloatwares and clumsywares that are both MS-Office and OpenOffice. I haven't tried KOffice yet, but I sure wish it is very different.
(BTW, TextMaker despite it's drawbacks (not free, not Open Source, proprietary file format) is the only usable Linux/Windows word processor I have seen so far. Before Linux there was Ami Pro, but unfortunately that is long dead)
Re:what i'd like to see.. (Score:2)
Integration with commercial bibliography software
Z99.50 networking integration (automatic pulls from library databases)
For lots of other people its macros and VBA integration.
Re:KOffice (Score:2)
Re:KOffice (Score:3, Informative)
Re:KOffice (Score:2)
Re:Killustrator, Kontour, Karbon14, Inkscape (Score:2)
I haven't used any of these applications seriously, but I imagine that what you get most from Karbon14 as opposed to Inkscape is better integration with KDE. The same applies to most of the other KOffice applications.