Today, the KDE Project released KOffice 1.3 for Linux and Unix operating systems. Big improvements have been made in KOffice 1.3 with respect to interoperability with other office file formats. It is now for example possible to import as well as export OpenOffice.org documents. Also new is the ability to import PDF files into KWord and make changes to the document. Support for Microsoft document- formats has improved as well.
KOffice 1.3 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Oh man that rocks!!!
if ever office app could do that, then some one could just use PDF to send documents in and any forms or charts would be transfered into native peices, basicly getting rid of ALL interoprability problems.
so do I assume that KO 1.3 does since it now can import them? not much use to import them if you can’t export them.
First, I’m a KWord user, and really like the software. I especially dig the frame-based approach, which makes the software much nicer to use than AbiWord/MSWord’s inline-flow approach. Its also fast, both in responsiveness and startup, and integrates nicely into KDE.
However, the software could use some improvement:
– The icons are better, but they neglected to include icons for all sizes, and only provide 22×22. For users who use larger icons, they have to deal with the crappy old icons. As of RC1, anyway, some icons (Bold, for example) are inconsistent between KWord and other apps (ex. Kivio).
– There are little polish issues in places. The toolbar layouts of KWord and KSpread could be improved. Gnumeric’s layout is pretty good, for example, as is Abiword’s. In KWord’s frame panel, there are by default two items “Arrangement” and “Text Frames/Frame Sets.” The latter is so much longer than the former that it usually gets cut given the default size of the panel.
– KWord, KSpread, and KPresenter are pretty good, but several of the apps included in the release are not really what I’d call release-quality. Some apps (Karbon 14, for example) aren’t even actively maintained.
I’m using the RC1, and 1.3 is a definite step up from previous versions. Everything is much more stable, quite a bit more polished, and certain features have been fleshed out. I’m looking forward to future releases
KDE apps don’t need a “PDF export” feature. KPrint has support for printing to PDF or Postscript from any app.
Regarding KWord’s PDF support — it needs work. Its very fast, but on the few PDF’s I tried, it lost most formatting, and had significant problems with missing spaces between words, rendering the text illegible.
hmm…well if it has a universal print to PDF then great…as for the import to PDF…if it is not workign well, then I hope they just don’t include it yet….they need to make it so that it translates well and can create from a PDF image a complex frame document that has frames from kSpred and kChart, otherwise people will jsut get ticked off.
I will say though that they should have a “print to PDF” in the file menu rather than in the print dialouge. it is more user friendly.
at what point does KO become the “office suite to rival MSOffice”? right now all i hear about is openoffice.org, which is just too slow for my liking. i’m curious, what is the outlook for KO?
then Mac folks will start hacking it and the development will increse
KOffice 1.3 consists of the following applications:
* KWord – A frame-based word processor
* KSpread – An advanced spreadsheet application
* KPresenter – A full-featured presentation program
* Kivio – A Visio�-style flowcharting application
* Karbon14 – A vector drawing application
* Kugar – A tool for generating business quality reports
* KChart – An integrated graph and chart drawing tool
* KFormula – A powerful formula editor
> what is the outlook for KO?
http://www.kontact.org/
There are Alpha ports available: http://ranger.befunk.com/phpwiki/
Is there any point in using a format that will likely never be standard ? OO.org’s format should be the norm so that we have something more than proprietary apps users : freedom of the application regardless of the file formats.
OO.org support in KOffice is cool! That makes OO.org formats available directly from the main linux distros without installing another program, Now if Vi & Emacs could handle oo.org files [strip out the formating for viewing/editing] we’d be all set. OpenOffice.org format is now supported in StarOffice [Duh!], OpenOffice.org[again Duh!], Abiword, Gnumeric, & Koffice! Those programs run on all the major and some minor OSes such as Windows, Linux, BSD, MacOSX, etc.
So you it getting to the point to go to companies and ask: Which software is MORE compliance? Not to mention OO.org is an open XML format…it should be simple to write DB/web/app server plugins to directly export OO.org files for more complicated formatting than W3C standards can allow!
It will from KOffice1.4 on.
David Faure is part of the OASIS TC for the OO standard format.
Koffice is my favorite program that I don’t use. I love the way it works I love the way it flows. But polish and import/export from msword and open office have kept it from being my full time word processor. For documents that I make myself and distribute as pdf I almost always use kword. It is the only word processor that I have tried that does not drive me insane when handling image heavy documents. Back when I worked in a lab I made heavy use of kword 1.2 for this reason.
I hope that someday I will be able to fully replace my traditional office suites with koffice.
time to start compiling some koffice!
So am I to understand there is yet another file format involved with Koffice? If this is actually the case, forget it. The world already has entirely too many file formats for my taste, and adding another isn’t going to help them or the rest of us.
You can always print to a PDF, so whats the problem?
Koffice is moving to the OASIS standard. The openoffice format is the base for this new standard. I don’t know about abiword, but at least OpenOffice and KOffice are going to use the same XML OSASIS standard.
I’m building the Fedora Core 1 rpm as we speak. Would be cool if I could find a server where to put it for the rest of the world.
Is KOffice any better than OOo @ MS .DOC file handling?
OOo is great for simple text files, but once you use specialized formatting or bullets OOo winds up creating screwed up Tabs or Bullets or Numbering.
OOo has gotten a lot better, but it’s still not there yet for my full time use (If I write .DOC files, I have to check them every time with MS WORD, so what’s the point of using OOo?) I have MS WORD at work, but not at home.
Can KSpread do matrix determinants in this version? I’m probably in the small minority that treasures this function in a spreadsheet, and its one I’ve been surprised KSpread lacked. Gnumeric and MS Excel both have it.
One of the comments on http://dot.kde.org/1075216593/ is that the author of Karbon has been *very* busy with KSVG.
Anyway, KSVG is now part of KDE. If you have it then you can see this http://www.pdftron.com/pdf2svg/examples/tiger/tiger-1.svgz.
I haven’t used koffice recently.
Does it now have the capablility for producing outlines.
The last time I checked it was only able to automatically do lists (numbered and bullets).
This feature is also missing in Abiword.
That is, I would like to make
I. Subject 1
i. section i
ii. section ii
a. case a
b. case b
II. Subject 2
etc…, but I would like koffice to keep track of the numbering and indenting automatically.
Actually, I think its a lot more user-friendly to have all the print options in one place. “Print” is a verb. “PDF,” “e-mail,” “Canon i850” are all objects. So the user selects the verb first, than the object. The only way the “Print to PDF” action would be logical is if there was a menu item for each possible target, and that would just be cluttered.
I know what you’re saying, but I agree with the earlier comment about it being a separate item. I “PDF” my documents, so in that context it becomes a verb. Most users don’t understand that PDF is basically printer output so why bother trying to educate them in this regard. As far as they’re concerned they’re ‘converting’ it to a different format so why not treat it as such? It seems an easier approach to have a menu item specifically for it…or include it in the “Save As..” dialogue. Either way makes sense.
I think an “export document” item would be fine too — it would include a list of different formats to export too, or users could just have it in the “save as” dialog. All of those seem equally logical to me. “Export PDF” specially just strikes me the wrong way — it seems like too much of a special case, that’s all.
anyone know if there is a mirror for some debs somewhere?
It’s a very nice Office suite to use and seems quite stable and feature rich, I’d certainly use it in preference to OpenOffice. But is isn’t much use to me until it can open MS Office documents successfully. IMO the no.1 thing that needs to be improved is compatibility with MS Office. It’s the industry standard and many people have to deal with documents created in it.
are you going to pay for the format license?
anyway….I think that KSpread needs boolean operation support….nothing better than to make a spread sheet with built in formulas that do boolean calculations when you are doing Truth tables 🙂
‘are you going to pay for the format license?’
No, but I am going to pay for a copy of MS Office while K Office and OpenOffice are useless for me. So will a lot of other people.
You don’t need pdf export in koffice. This conversion is taken care of by the printing system. Just set up a pdf printer. Then you have pdf export in all programs.
“You don’t need pdf export in koffice. This conversion is taken care of by the printing system. Just set up a pdf printer.”
That misses the point though. Useability. It doesn’t matter if a user can save a file as a PDF if they have to figure out that to do be able to save the file… they need to print it. “I’m not trying to print it! I want to save it!”
No matter how the functionality comes about, it should appear in the logical position which is the user-experience driven one. ie: “I am saving this file as a Acrobat file, so I go Save… and oh yeah there it is. File type, Acrobat PDF.” The system can then use the print system but that must be obscured from the user. The user doesn’t need to know.
…with those who say there should be a save to pdf option. Please, People associate printing with paper. I have not seen anyone besides myself with a pdf printer. Openoffice has this. Discoverability is a big issue. Most people will not set up a pdf printer.
Also, where can I get a list of the worksheet funtions in KSpread. I searched high and low for it, and have not found it. Come on, this is basic documentation. People do not have to actually install something to actually know if it does what they want. At least, they could have an idea beforehand.