Guest post by “The KDE community today announces the start of the Calligra Suite project, a continuation of the KOffice project. The new name reflects the wider value of the KOffice technology platform beyond just desktop office applications. With a new name for the Suite and new names for the productivity applications, the Calligra community welcomes a new stage in the development of free productivity and creativity applications for desktop and mobile devices.”
What??? Calligra??? You mean Kalligra, of course.
Next step will be to rename KDE to CDE.
They managed to get rid of all but three of the knames. Krita, Karbon and Kexi still have their old knames. Thankfully the new names are not cnames, or winnames, or gnames or iNames.
Edited 2010-12-07 23:41 UTC
KSpread sounds vaguely dirty
> – Stage Presentation program, previously known as KPresenter
Did they hire a Microsoft dropout? I don’t like some of these names.
CLIPPY AND VISTA STRIKE BACK
Wee, names that are so generic that they have zero branding value and are impossible to google, way to go 🙁
What is difficult about entering the search term “Calligra Words”?
Try it. The search results are very precise.
This is the top result:
http://www.calligra-suite.org/words/
Spot on.
Edited 2010-12-08 09:47 UTC
Yes. Word (Windows) is generic too, also Pages (Mac) is generic.
People love generic names and they sound modern. This is why they’re chosen so widely.
kde is way too kool for that
So, they renamed many applications – at least the “base” KOffice applications. And the word processor application is called …. wait for it …. Words.
Really? Words?? That is a trademark infringement lawsuit waiting to happen. And before y’all come shouting about the inability to trademark protect generic … words (pun intended) – remember how Microsoft shoved it to Lindows…err…Linspi…err…Freespi…err…whatsitsname.
Word is a trademark, not Words. Trademark are only on the exact same spelling. It is why Adida or Addidas are legal brand even if it look like Adidas (this example is getting old).
This is not true at all. If one can demonstrate that a name is similar enough to be confusing within the same industry, then there’s a good case for trademark infringement.
Never heard that example personally – assuming these are shoe brands, and being distributed in a country where the Adidas brand is trademarked, they have an extremely compelling case there. However, if they don’t pursue it legally, then they forfeit the ability to enforce their trademark against these names after a period of time.
If ‘Word’ with a ‘K’ at the front wasn’t similar enough to upset Microsoft, I don’t imagine ‘Word’ with an ‘s’ at the end will bother them too much…
Actually, I think that Microsoft Word doesn’t have a trademark. There is no mention of “TM” on this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_word
other than the trademark “Wikipedia®”.
Nor is there mention of TM or ® on this page:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/word/
even though there is a mention of copyright “© 2010 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.” for the page.
Interesting. I suppose Word is just too common a word. Pun intended.
Edited 2010-12-08 02:38 UTC
Then Corel should sue Microsoft for trademark infringement. they were (before Corel) the first “Word” (Perfect).
Except Apple basically owns iEverything and Facebook pulled the same thing with FaceEverything. There is precedent here.
Including Valve’s FaceHuggers ? ^^
didn’t apple have facetime? :-).
It might be a problem if “Word” and “Words” were the actual names of the products.
The actual product names are “Calligra Words” and “Microsoft Word” respectively. There should be no confusion between these names.
In all honesty, they should come up with a better name than Words. I mean that’s Microsoft’s job for coming up with generic, uninspiring names.
Actually if the goal is to reinforce the office suite over the applications then the new names are perfect. They make no sense on their own, but they work when combined with the suite name: Calligra Words, Calligra Tables, Calligra Plan
Not bad as sub-applications, but bad as stand-alone applications.
This is a characteristic of the Calligra suite itself … each application on its own is so-so, but the combination is quite powerful.
“Flakes” are the means via which “office objects” can be handled by all of the Calligra applications, with one application library providing the handling for one or more of the flake types associated primarily with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flake_%28KDE%29
http://wiki.koffice.org/index.php?title=Flake
There is a new and extensible scripting framework dubbed Kross.
http://wiki.koffice.org/index.php?title=KWord/Scripting
KOffice has been optimized for widescreen monitors. The extra space to the right of a widescreen monitor is used to create a variant on MS Office’s ribbon interface.
http://www.koffice.org/kword/
http://www.koffice.org/kspread/
http://www.koffice.org/karbon/karbon-screenshots/
All-together, this gives each application the power of the others, and the whole suite has an integrated feel to it without becoming one huge application.
At first I was pretty sure that I had read “Caligula”.
(Which confirmed my suspicions about KDE all along. >:-D)
Edited 2010-12-07 22:38 UTC
me too.
Yeah
that’s all I’m going to say.
Yeah, seems to be some sort of a smart decision. Really, the Name “KOffice” ist boring, and no one is proud of saying “Im using Kay-Office” (or pronounced Koffice?)
Well, the most important thing is, that they try to improve the Suite, and that is great. Really. I mean, KDE SC wants to be a big Player in Desktop, Office and Buisness… And with all the effort, they are going to be one.
At least in my dreams
People seems to overlook the real motives behind the new name.
The new name is due to conflicts between the KOffice team, so Calligra is mostly a fork of KOffice.
Well, since Calligra Office takes with it all of the code and all but one of the former maintainers (only the former Kword maintainer is not part of calligra Office), then it follows that Calligra Office is not the fork … rather anything else is the fork.
Backup:
http://dot.kde.org/2010/12/06/kde-announces-calligra-suite
This is as announced on the dot.kde.org website.
I don’t understand this part, how does this change of version control system make Calligra “an even better platform for innovation in the free office space” ?
Edited 2010-12-08 08:49 UTC
Git is better at multiple branches, which helps when you have many developers each working on their “own thing”.
Thanks ! In which way is Git better exactly ?
Git was written by Linux Torvalds with the design aim to address specific needs of co-ordinating a large number of independent open source developers all doing their own thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_%28software%29
Torvalds had several design criteria:
– Take CVS as an example of what not to do;
– Support a distributed, BitKeeper-like workflow
– Very strong safeguards against corruption, either accidental or malicious
– Very high performance
Git’s design is a synthesis of Torvalds’s experience with Linux in maintaining a large distributed development project.
Git has:
– Strong support for non-linear development
– Distributed development
– Compatibility with existing systems/protocols
– Efficient handling of large projects
– Cryptographic authentication of history
– Toolkit-based design
– Pluggable merge strategies
– Periodic explicit object packing
Edited 2010-12-08 11:25 UTC
Hold the phone: here is another article which tends to back up your point calling Calligra the fork:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ODg4NQ
I still don’t get how the group withh all but one of the developers gets to be considered the “fork”, but there it is. Aaron Siego of KDE has apparently called Calligra the fork.
However, having noted that, Aaron also says:
Too right, it is indeed overly dramatic IMO.
Let’s rephrase that. KOffice experienced a fork and in the process KOffice has been renamed ‘Calligra'”. Not “the fork is called Calligra”. “KOffice has been renamed Calligra”.
wat? Fork in this case refers to the branching of the codebase. KOffice forked. He’s not in that instance calling one of the results “the” fork. He’s saying having everyone but one agreeing barely counts as a fork, but it nevertheless is. There was a split. A fork happened. This is not the same as saying Calligra IS the fork. It is one of the results of the fork.
Edited 2010-12-09 10:03 UTC
Calligra Office also has a variant called FreOffice which is claimed to be the only freedom software Office suite available for mobiles and handhelds.
Since it is based on Qt, it might be constrained to use with Meego, rather than Android. That might be enough to prevent Calligra Office from ever becoming a “big player” in any sense.
Prevent? Surely Nokia still has a fair portion of the market. Oh, and Symbian also has Qt support.
Yes Nokia has a fair proportion of the mobile phone market, but not the smartphone market. At this time, the smartphone market (on which a freedom software Office suite for mobiles and handsets might conceivably run) is occupied almost exclusively occupied by iPhone and Android.
I just can’t see FreOffice somehow making it on to the the Apple App Store. AFAIK Android doesn’t support Qt. Therefore, FreOffice only potential market right now is Meego phones and handhelds. AFAIK, you can’t actually buy any of those as yet.
This is my meaning.
Edited 2010-12-08 00:33 UTC
Symbian is a smartphone OS, but a little(…) outdated. It is still the #1 smartphone OS.
Qt work on Android by the way, the Lighthouse project (for Android and Google ChromeOS) will be merged in the next version.
Highly debatable. It depends on what you call a smartphone (most people define it simply as a phone for which one may code native applications).
Considering screen and keyboard size, a mobile office suite is basically only useable to open mail attachments and do some quick edits on them. On symbian, QuickOffice already does just that. It would really be cool to see a free, non-commercial replacement.
I track smartphone market share rather extensively, and I’ve never seen Symbian omitted from the research. Not one single time.
Nor should it be. Symbian runs native applications, written to the legacy API or to the QT framework. It has a successful app store, Ovi, with over 3 million downloads a day. It syncs to a PC via USB or over the radio network, and supports wifi and web browsing and GPS and all of that other smartphone goodness, just with a rather dated (but recently UPdate) UI.
And it *already* runs office suites, for example, http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/OfficeSuite_S60.php.
I’ve never owned or used a Symbian phone, but claiming that only iOS and Android constitute smartphones is rather like claiming that only BMW and Lexus constitute luxury sports cars.
Fair enough. Even though symbian seems of late to be left out of the forward thinking of virtually all smartphone developments, nevertheless symbian still is the current smartphone OS leader.
When one looks at new phones running symbian, even though there are announcements:
http://thenextweb.com/asia/2010/11/10/boost-for-symbian-as-fujitsu-…
… the very announcements call the OS “flagging” and “troubled”.
So, in a forward-looking sense, perhaps a new application (FreOffice) might not be looking at Symbian, even though it is currently the largest share right now.
“… the very announcements call the OS “flagging” and “troubled”.”
That wasn’t the announcement, of course (unless “thenextweb.com” is the new Fujitsu corporate website 😀 ), that was one of many news articles reporting on the announcement, along with some editorial liberties.
No question that Symbian has lost significant share, much of it to Android and iOS. I rather like Nokia’s QT-based cross-OS strategy (and MeeGo), but they still have to execute to make that a success. Fortunately for them, their #1 position worldwide gives Nokia a bit more room – perhaps one more year – to build some momentum before they run out of runway.
Since I favor choice and lots of it, I’m rooting for them and their kindred.
I’m not that well informed but aren’t Adibas and Addidas from China (where there are car companies making flagrant copies of Mercedes cars and such)?
I don’t like this. I think I’ll fork koffice and name it klibreoffice.
Seriously, does this mean we’re finally going to see competition now? Or is the new “Calligra Suite” still going to require users to install the KDE desktop on Windows just to open documents? It’d be nice if there were something crossplatform that worked better than AbiWord or OO.o\LibreOffice does, plus competition between the two might actually lead to some innovation and polishing!
–bornagainpenguin
There is not going to be any change in that regard, as KOffice never required you to install the KDE desktop on Windows. Neither will it be a requirement for Calligra Suite.
Morty snarked…
Bets?
See: http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/1697/43749515.jpg
Oh and just so you can’t say “well you should have filtered it” in your next post:
http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/6943/82594494.jpg
You can see there that filtering did nothing.
Developers are always complaining about people using a Linux distro and complaining about things being nothing like on Windows, angrily repeating the refrain “Linux isn’t Windows!” Well, this is someone on Windows saying “Windows isn’t UNIX!” As nice as package managers are developers need to let go of them when they move to the Windows desktop and learn to make a simple packaged installer that installs the application or suite. We’re glad you have this entire desktop you’re proud of, but we didn’t ask for that–we wanted the application not the desktop.
If we wanted the desktop, we’d be running KDE on some form of Linux or BSD, wouldn’t we?
If KOffice or the Calligra Suite ever hope to be taken seriously outside their *NIX niche they need to make their installer more like the OO.o\LibreOffice installer. They need to conform to the desktop standards and conventions of the system they’re being installed on.
I really hope they get this fixed, because it would be nice to have an competing open source suite for Office on Windows the average user can use and right now this ain’t it!
–bornagainpenguin
Sure, but you loose!
Koffice and when it gets released, Calligra Suite, require only kdelibs and kdebase-runtime. This is the same on Windows as it’s on any *nix.
The KDE desktop, or Plasma workspace as it’s called nowdays, are not needed(kdebase-workspace in the installer).
Nice images, but you only manage to prove that KOffice is unfortunately not available with the KDE 4.4.4 release for Windows. But then again, I don’t think KOffice has had an official stable release on Windows. So it’s hardly surprising.
If you want to play the picture game, here is one clearly showing that KOffice does not require KDE desktop on Windows.
http://bildr.no/view/775670 http://bildr.no/view/775670
Morty snarked again…
Okay, I’ll play along. So how do I do get that then? I’m using the official installer, right from the KDE site where they linked their installer for KOffice for Windows.
Morty posted…
Well look at that–you’re proving my point for me. There needs to be an easier way for KOffice (or Calligra Suite) to be installed on Windows. The way it is now the average person looking for a free office suite is going to reject it out of hand as impossibly difficult to figure out–after they’ve already gone ahead and installed the KDE desktop hoping to get Koffice to install.
Here’s a picture again so you can see I did actually try to install the 4.2.2 version. Same issue:
http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/4565/27572602.jpg
Morty said…
Oh? Well then that’s something to fix, isn’t it? Maybe they should have one, take advantage of the situation and revamp things on the Windows side now that they’re doing a renaming on top of everything else?
Morty posted…
And yet I can’t seem to get it to even show up. Hence my original posting where I said this could (and should) be a whole lot easier than it is.
look I’m certainly not a hacker, certified engineer or what have you, but I am able to install and run Linux on several of my computers. I am able to keep my Windows install customized and maintained without issue. I should be able to figure this out. The fact I can’t and yet the OO.o\LibreOffice installer just works should be a warning sign.
–bornagainpenguin
bornagainpenguin wrongly rants again:
When you run the installer you need to select Package Manager mode. Remember, it has not had a stable release on windows so it’s obviously correct that it’s not avalible in the end user mode.
Next you select a different mirror(for instance winkde.org), as the mirror you have selected for some reason do not have all releases.
Select the stable 4.3.4 relese, go to the KDEUNSTABLE and you can select and install KOffice. The installer wil even handle any dependencies for you.
And remember: this is experimental software, not released for end users. Average users are not really suposed to install this, so having an install procedure causing them problems is a non issue.
Obviusly it will be easily avalible in the installer when it actually get a end user ready release on Windows.
It has not been released for average person on Windows yet, so it’s rather easy to understand and a rather good idea why it’s not avalible for those average users.
Most average persons I know of, and even the few below average, are not that dumb. When they run the installer and open the list. When they don’t find koffice anywhere in the list, they will conclude that there (for some reason) is not possible to install koffice and quit the installer. Some may try several times, to se if they made a mistake. At least none will try intalling something else, hoping it will give them koffice in stead.
Doh! And obviusly they will make it easily avalible for end users in the installer when they release it. So it will get “fixed”. It’s rather lame to keep on ranting about install issues in a unreleased software package.
I hope all the Kname haters are happy with a new name for the office suite that does nothing to betray that it is in fact an office suite. At least the individual app name changes are an improvement
Two points to note:
1. “Calligra” is a contraction of “calligraphy”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calligraphy
IOW, fancy writing.
2. I note with interest that self-styled “kname haters” never seem to mind iNames, ganmes or winnames.