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KOffice 1.6 Released 186

Posted by CowboyNeal from the brand-new-bag dept.
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."
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KOffice 1.6 Released More

KOffice 1.6 Released

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  • Kudos to the dev team (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dasher42 ( 514179 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @10:27PM (#16462789)
    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.

  • Openoffice draining KOffice (Hurd effect) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gopal.V ( 532678 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @10:31PM (#16462823) Homepage Journal

    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: (Score:2)

      by eean ( 177028 )
      Um, well openoffice already had an existing codebase (in fact, a gargantuan one) from a commercial product.

  • Gnome version? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Frogbert ( 589961 ) <frogbert@gmail . c om> on Monday October 16, 2006 @10:33PM (#16462831)
    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? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FishWithAHammer ( 957772 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @10:41PM (#16462899)
      Install KDE libraries.

      Shazam.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by misleb ( 129952 )
        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
        • How about instead of saying shadowy things like, "it certainly isn't an ideal arrangement" you give examples of what is wrong with it? The main thing I've heard is that it takes up more memory. This is not really an issue because memory is cheap. Another thing might be because it is tightly integrated with the desktop, and uses some special features that only KDE has, but it is hard for me to imagine any such feature that is useful to a word processor.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by misleb ( 129952 )

            How about instead of saying shadowy things like, "it certainly isn't an ideal arrangement" you give examples of what is wrong with it? The main thing I've heard is that it takes up more memory. This is not really an issue because memory is cheap. Another thing might be because it is tightly integrated with the desktop, and uses some special features that only KDE has, but it is hard for me to imagine any such feature that is useful to a word processor.

            I haven't explored the KDE/GNOME app mixup specificall

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by misleb ( 129952 )

            It was my understanding that KDElibs did have some freedesktop specifications implemented in them for support for basic support of other desktops too.

            Can you drag/drop between GNOME and KDE applicaitons? Can you copy/paste non-trivial (non-text) objects between them? These would be two big ones that I can think of off the top of my head.

            If you start pushing all this stuff into the actual application, we start getting messy programs that behave differently because the same specifications have been reimplem

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbolden ( 176878 )
      I'm not exactly sure what you are asking, it doesn't even really sound like you are sure what you're asking. Anyway take a look at: http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards [freedesktop.org] which is pretty much standards for running KDE apps on Gnome and vice versa (as well as some other issues). At this point Gnome and KDE apps cooperate reasonably well with one another and KDE works as well Gnome as OO does so ....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nuzak ( 959558 )
      > what are the chances of getting a gnome version of Koffice?

      I imagine you could port all the idioms (qt to gtk, ioslaves to vfs, kparts to bonobo) but by the time you were done, you'd have completely recoded it anyway. May as well start from scratch and target the OASIS document standard as Koffice does.

      What would be nice is if you wrote it as a suite of cooperating DBUS components, since both KDE and Gnome are using it now. I imagine that itself would involve some major work, including quite probably

    • Re:Gnome version? (Score:5, Informative)

      by porkThreeWays ( 895269 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @10:52PM (#16462991)
      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: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by cybereal ( 621599 )

        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 i

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by andersa ( 687550 )
        All this is true, but I think the original poster meant that he wanted a KOffice with the look and feel of a Gnome application.

        While it is true that you can run any kde application in Gnome, the application will still feel like a KDE application, for instance the skin will look different and dialogs will have a different button positioning.

        I know KOffice is fairly modular, but I don't think it would be possible to tie it into Gnome's UI libraries easily.
        • They can look, EXACTLY (pixel for pixel) the same, because GTK+ uses Qt themes.
          • Themes are not the problem. I can use qt themes on gnome apps (like the gimp), but that won't change its crappy open/save file dialogue. That's the main problem. You can skin koffice to blend into your gnome theme, but the open/save dialogue would remain kde, just as the toolbars, menus, etc.
      • When you run a KDE app outside of KDE, it dutifully starts a pile of daemons in the background and runs your app. When you exit, it then closes all those daemons.

        GNOME does the same, except the part about cleaning up. Run a GNOME app on a box that you rarely log into, and you find a various GNOME daemons sitting around forlonly, like lost little children. Oh, little gconfd and gnome-settings-daemon! Where's your mommy? Don't worry, I won't hurt you. I'll take you to her right now.

        % bonobo-slay

        Right.
    • The standard answer is that you are welcome to do so.

      Now with that out of the way, there really is no need to. First, both OO and Koffice are capable of running on either desktop. You just fire them up. Secondly, it would take a bit of work to rip out Qt and replace it with gtk. Instead, that effort could go into improving either or both of the projects. Finally, while OO does better on .docs, there are places that koffice is better. Make use of both. Simply use ODT format. In particular, this past
  • 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 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by photomonkey ( 987563 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @11:28PM (#16463279)

      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: (Score:2)

        by xtracto ( 837672 )
        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.

        Yeah, I agree witih you on this. I am still looking for linux programs to replace irfanview and paint.net. I do not need (and certainly don't like) to use a beast like the GIMP to do certain small tasks, I am a game programmer and usually slightly modify (resize, crop, batch rename, change RGB colors, etc) images. But doing that with GIMP and other l

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Elbows ( 208758 )
          For basic image viewing, kview does the trick for me. It's lightweight and supports plenty of image formats. Is there some particular feature from Irfanview that you need?

          For a simple paint/image editing program, I like kolourpaint. It's pretty basic, but it's a step up from MSPaint, and it does the trick for me.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ajs318 ( 655362 )
        There's a problem with cameras' raw formats. They're kept very, very secret because they would reveal some information the manufacturer would rather you didn't know.

        Digital cameras are sold by the number of pixels in the image file, not the sensor array. When you download a "3072x2048" JPEG image from your "6 megapixel" camera, what you're downloading may well have 6 million pixels in it -- but it has been interpolated up from the raw data supplied by the sensor. The JPEG compression hides the interpol
      • Unfortunately, what best describes your desire is the distinctly Non-Free Aperture from Apple.

        However, it's good to state those requirements and desires openly, as hopefully some amateur photographer who's a good programmer will take up the challenge. By now someone has shot his sister's wedding on a 4GB CF card in JPEG format, and is staring at 10K pictures that need tagged, identically post-processed, and sorted. This person just needs a little encouragement to start coding.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by AaronW ( 33736 )
        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 upg

  • Kerning (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BeeBeard ( 999187 ) on Monday October 16, 2006 @11:10PM (#16463117)
    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: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Atmchicago ( 555403 )

      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/ [kde.org].

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Laur ( 673497 )
        The big showstopper for me, and most people, is the lack of Microsoft Word support.

        KWord can import MS Word docs, I just tried and it works, although I have no idea why your link doesn't list it. It can't export to doc, but it can save to rtf (which is what AbiWord does to achieve doc export, they just save rtf output with a doc extension).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Laur ( 673497 )
          I realize it's bad form to reply to your own post, however I found a better list of formats that KWord supports at [kde.org] http://docs.kde.org/development/en/koffice/kword/f ilters-included.html [kde.org] .

          For the lazy:

          Application/ Import/ Export
          Abiword/ Yes/ Yes
          AmiPro/ Yes/ Yes
          Applixword/ Yes/ No
          HTML/ Yes/ Yes
          KPresenter/ Yes/ No
          Hancom Word/ Yes/ No
          Magic Point Presentation/ Yes/ No
          Microsoft® Powerpoint/ Yes/ No
          Microsoft® Word/ Yes/ No
          Microsoft® Write/ Yes/ Yes
          Oasis OpenDocument/ Yes/ Yes
          Openo

          • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

            by Ed Avis ( 5917 )
            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:Kerning (Score:5, Informative)

      by jZnat ( 793348 ) * on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @12:28AM (#16463709) Homepage Journal
      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: (Score:2)

        by andersa ( 687550 )
        I am pretty sure you are correct.
      • On the same subject, does anyone know when this will be fixed in Abiword? Other than that it's a decent word processor. E ver yt hing jus tlook s ver y un profe ssion al.

        Still, KOffice isn't really an option for me since it's not cross platform. I'll have to stick with OpenOffice for now. Hopefully with KDE 4 and KOffice 2 they'll add support for MacOSX (please, no X11) and Windows.

  • Windows Version? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @01:02AM (#16463919) Homepage
    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.

    • This has to be the first time I've heard anybody say "I would switch to that office suite, if only it ran on Windows" rather than "I would switch to that operating system, if only it ran my office suite".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      Qt4 is available for Windows under the GPL (unlike previous versions which were GPL on Linux/Mac, but commercial only on Windows), so the whole KDE4 suite and libraries will be available for Windows. I don't know if there are any plans to make an explorer replacement, but pretty soon you'll at least be able to run all the KDE applications meaning Firefox, OpenOffice, GIMP etc. will have OSS competition on Windows. Either as a migration path or simply to be able to create a best-of-breed mix of Windows and K

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ajs318 ( 655362 )
        Qt4 is available for Windows under the GPL (unlike previous versions which were GPL on Linux/Mac, but commercial only on Windows)
        Bollocks. GPL does not allow programmers to impose platform restrictions. The only thing which ever prevented anyone from porting QT to Windows was the incompetence / antipathy to Open Source of Windows programmers.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kjella ( 173770 )
          Bollocks. GPL does not allow programmers to impose platform restrictions. The only thing which ever prevented anyone from porting QT to Windows was the incompetence / antipathy to Open Source of Windows programmers.

          No the GPL does not, but Trolltech (you know, the copyright holders) restricted what source they released under GPL. Specificly, Qt3 for Windows wasn't GPL'd. In fact, they're still holding back a few minor things between the commercial and GPL'd Qt versions such as compiler support. There was a

  • Great! (Score:5, Funny)

    by oohshiny ( 998054 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @03:03AM (#16464621)
    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?
  • ``KOffice also surpasses OpenOffice.org in some ways, e.g. it handles over 70% of the W3C MathML''

    Yeah, like anybody uses that.

  • MathML (Score:5, Funny)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @05:12AM (#16465273) Homepage Journal
    ``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 (Score:3, Informative)

    by vhogemann ( 797994 ) <victor AT hogemann DOT com> on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @09:58AM (#16467825) Homepage
    Take a look here --> http://kubuntu.org/announcements/koffice-16.php [kubuntu.org]

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

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

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