Posted by Calixte Pictet | 0 comments
KOffice 2.1 released
I’m a big fan of KDE applications (when they don’t make it more complex than it should be). Even when they don’t fit in my GNOME desktop, they’re beautiful. I’ve held a grudge against KDE, mostly because it’s never been stable enough for me (more on that later), but as KWord is now my primary word processor, I’m excited about this second release of v2. What has changed? KOffice 2 is based on a new platform and integrates well with KDE 4. I find KDE 4 applications to have one of the best look & feel combinations available, and better than Mac OS X’s in my tastes (but that’s simply a matter of taste, right?).
KDE 4 was strongly criticized when it was released, mostly because it was unstable when it was released. Even Linus Torvalds switched temporarily to GNOME! The problem is that it had not been seen as what it was: a new platform still in developement. The KOffice development team is keen on avoiding this error. Two sentences are bolded in their announcement, both stress the same idea: “[KOffice 2.1] is not aimed at end users” and should “only be used by early adopters.”
Beyond that, they still want us to know that it’s consistently more feature-complete than the previous release (2.0). Also, Krita (picture editor / paint application) and Karbon (vector editor) are said to be usable already.
What’s great about KOffice? It works not only on Linux (all desktops, not just KDE) but also on Mac OS X and Windows. I’ve never tried, but the website states that “Since KOffice builds on Qt and the KDE libraries, all applications integrate well with the respective platforms and will take on the native look and feel.” You’ll have to use a KDE desktop to get the complete “K” experience however (in my opinion).
The interface layout is great too. To put it simply, “The GUI consists of a workspace and a sidebar where tools can dock.” That makes it very adaptable for small and large screens alike. It’s truly great for an era where netbooks are multiplying faster than anything while screens over 20″ become affordable.
Applications seem to be better integrated with the suite. The developers seem very excited about Flake, the central drawing application that is integrated within all of the suits’ programs. It does look interesting. If it’s good enough, I’ll give it an in-depth review. For now, all I can say is that it looks promising.
The native format is now OASIS Document Format (which you may know as ODF, Open Office’s format). One glitch: .docx support is not great, though .doc and .ppt has greatly improved. If KOffice wants to become widespread, the first has to be better implemented. KOffice is largely better than Open Office in my opinion, and could become the office suit of choice for a lot of people. However, more work is needed for it to become feature-complete.
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