KOffice 2 Alpha 6 Improves OpenDocument Support

KOffice 2 Alpha 6 has been released. This preview release improves the OpenDocument infrastructure, adds snap guidelines to several applications and sees major improvements in Krita, Karbon & KPlato. See the changelog for more details. Download it from source or get the packages for Kubuntu or openSUSE.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by T. J. Brumfield (not verified)

I use OpenOffice at work since I'm a SysAdmin and get to pick what I use at work, but I still have to share documents with everyone else using MS Office.

My wife is a student and must give documents to instructors who will only accept them in MS formats.

I can preach about ODF all day, but most of the world isn't listening yet. MS Office compatibility is very important, but if you can get some of those users to try OpenOffice on Windows (or KOffice on Windows) they will open their minds about OSS. Then converting them to Linux is easier.

by Max (not verified)

Same here. Or I have to OPEN documents my teacher send me. WITH TABLES, MACROS, etc. AND THEY HAVE TO FORMAT CORRECTLY.

I don't care how lightweight an application is, if it can't do basic stuff I need it to do.

Can't we just port openoffice to Qt? Wouldn't that be a smaller application, with a smaller memory footprint?

by Riddle (not verified)

OpenOffice uses it's own UI toolkit (on Linux, it works with GTK themes). It would be very painful to port it from it's toolkit to make it smaller. Also, KOffice only misses some features because it has less developers than OpenOffice and even without it, it's improving quickly.

Google is taking a more active role in supporting Linux & Wine.

http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2162

I'm guessing it won't be long until they will support the KDE 4.X platform more actively. (I hope!!)

Either way, we are thankful for google's role in the open source community.

Google - please become a patron of KDE.

Hopefully Google will host the next release party as well. I loved the webcast and Aaron Seigo's keynote. :-)

I strongly doubt you will see google support Koffice. They already support OpenOffice, there is no need for them to support another. Nor do I think you will see them support KDE, they are more likely to support a linux distro, which in a way they do by using gbuntu, google's inhouse version of ubuntu.

by AC (not verified)

Is the changelog complete? The OpenDocument improvements are missing and almost all changes are from the drawing apps, but none from the office apps.

by Tom (not verified)

There any plan to refresh the confusing open dialog?

by Thomas Zander (not verified)

Various cleanups (removal of buttons at center of screen specifically) have been done recently, I believe this release will show this change.

I'm quite excited about the updates and I'm sure that most users will like them. So check them out and after you did, let us know what you think.

by Jeremy (not verified)

When is KOffice planned to be released? 4.1 maybe?

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

Tested it a bit. Not even cell colors in spreadsheets is supported yet.
Koffice per se is getting very nice, but odf on it still have a lot of work ahead. Anyway a very nice version, run very well.
I just don't like how koffice uses too much screen, those new file dialog are just too big, and Krita panel by default don't even fit in my 1400x900 screen.

by Max (not verified)

I keep saying that. "desktop screen-real-estate". But no one's listening... :(