KOffice development is currently going on at a tremendous pace. Version 1.5, with Open Document as the default file format, will be released in March 2006, and it is time to start collecting ideas for version 2. KOffice has received a donation of $1000 to be used as the prize in a GUI and Functionality Design competition. So whip out the RAD tools and your imagination and design the next big thing in office automation!

Are you using KOffice? What are you using KOffice for? Why did you decide to use KOffice? What are your main problems? We want to know who uses KOffice and we are especially interested in companies and people using KOffice applications in the course of their business. We have done usability testing with OpenUsability on some of the KOffice programs and will be working more with them. Now we want to reach our users directly and ask them what they think.

This Month in SVN for October looks at KOffice development. "While much of the rest of KDE is in feature freeze preparing for the imminent release of KDE 3.5, KOffice developers are starting to work hard for their 1.5 release, scheduled for between KDE 3.5 and KDE 4. This release will be able to be used with KDE 3x and Qt 3x, and will have a great deal of improvements over the current stable version." Topics covered include accessibility improvements, Krita one step closer to world domination and how you can help out.

The November issue of Linux Magazine presents a thorough review of KOffice 1.4 written by Marcel Hilzinger. While based on an older version of KOffice, KOffice 1.4.2 has just been released with many fixes, the review is fair, thorough and balanced. It was useful too, within two hours of having read the review Thomas Zander committed the first fix for a problem mentioned by Marcel. It is well worth a read, and not only because of the praise heaped upon Krita.

The KOffice team today announced the second maintenance release of the 1.4 series. Among various bugfixes and translation improvements, the KOffice 1.4.2 release further improves support for the OASIS OpenDocument file format and interoperability with OpenOffice.org. Also, Karbon, the vector drawing application has been much improved. More changes are listed in the changelog. Binary packages for Kubuntu and SUSE have been contributed and a Klik package is being prepared right now for those who want to test this release without installing it first (testers are welcome).

In his reply to the Massachusetts decision to use only documents in OpenDocument format, the Microsoft manager Alan Yates writes:
(paraphrased) Star Office, Open Office, KOffice and IBM Workplace are all derivatives of the same codebase. Thus there is only one program that supports Open Document, and that is illegal.
This is, of course, not true, and here is an open letter written by KOffice Marketing Coordinator Inge Wallin on behalf of the KOffice team which clarifies these facts.

The KOffice team today announced the first bugfix release of the 1.4 series. Among various bugfixes and translation improvements, the KOffice 1.4.1 release further improves support for the OASIS OpenDocument file format. More changes are listed in the changelog. Binary packages for Kubuntu, Mandriva and SUSE have been contributed and the KOffice Live-CD has been updated.

A year and a half after launching the KDE.OpenOffice.org Integration Project, the KDE plugin with the Native Widget Framework has become part of the official OpenOffice.org development packages. Developer snapshot m118 is the first of the towards-2.0 milestones that contains it.

The KOffice team is pleased to announce the next version of the lightweight, integrated and complete office suite. With exciting highlights like two new components - Krita and Kexi - and support for the OASIS OpenDocument file format, the KOffice 1.4 release is a large step forward. Even a Live-CD featuring the latest release is available so you can try before actually installing anything. You can also take a look at screenshots at OSDir to get a first glance. Read the full announcement and the changelog for further details!

The KDE Project today announced the release of the KOffice 1.4 Release Candidate. If nothing disastrous is found in this release, it will be renamed and become KOffice 1.4. A Live-CD has been created so that you can try out KOffice 1.4 RC without having to commit your hard disc to it. There are currently no binaries available for download of the release candidate. Read the full announcement and the changelog for more details. OSDir has screenshots of the release.