KOffice Meets the Users

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.

The KOffice hackers have been working on KOffice for quite a few years now and we've received quite a lot of great and useful feedback from users. KOffice is picking up a lot of momentum now and in the run-on towards the 1.5 release we would like to get to know our users a lot better.

So... Are you using KOffice? What are you using KOffice for? Why did you decide to use KOffice? What are your main problems? Please not too many comments about reading MS Office files and the difficulties of loading large files, we are continuing to work hard on these areas.

As we wrote above, we want to know who uses KOffice right now. We are especially interested in companies and people using KOffice applications in the course of their business. If you are using KOffice and want to help us, please leave a comment below or contact our marketing guy Inge Wallin ([email protected]) and give him your story.

Thanks!

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Comments

by Jakob Petsovits (not verified)

I like KWord for exposing the most used functions at places that are easy to find (insert image at a prominent place, and no need to open a dialog for inserting a page break). Not being

The biggest problem for me is really the bad printing output, which makes it hard for me to stick with KOffice (or, say, KWord, as most important app in there), because when I need OpenOffice for proper printing, I can use it for creating the docs as well.

Also, I remember having had problems with KSpread changing the format of multiple cells at once which were formatted differently. I also despise the weird tool handling in Karbon (when I select the text tool and click into the page afterwards, I would seriously expect to get a text box inside the page where I can enter text). I don't see enough reason to switch from Inkscape to Karbon, I guess it needs to improve dramatic to change that.

KPresenter seemed quite cool to me, but lacks a bigger amount of templates. (You know, I estimate 90% of the non-corporate PowerPoint presentations to be based on one of the standard templates.)

But on the whole, KOffice is Really Cool (TM). I can't wait for 1.5 (for Krita) and 2.0 (for KWord's new Qt4 font kerning stuff). Seems like quite a long time for waiting on a pretty printer/pdf output.

by Tim Beaulen (not verified)

Quote:
"I also despise the weird tool handling in Karbon (when I select the text tool and click into the page afterwards, I would seriously expect to get a text box inside the page where I can enter text). I don't see enough reason to switch from Inkscape to Karbon, I guess it needs to improve dramatic to change that."

Inkscape is indeed great, but it also has ten times more developers than Karbon ever had.

Karbon will change though. And I personally would like it very much if people will try out Karbon regularly (especially people using other vector drawings a lot) and post their findings in the koffice mailinglist or post suggestions and bugs in the bug database (bugs.kde.org).

The more suggestions and bug reports we get, the better KOffice will be.

by Jakob Petsovits (not verified)

Quote:
"Inkscape is indeed great, but it also has ten times more developers than Karbon ever had."

That's right. I didn't want my statement to be negative critisism, and I love seeing Karbon regaining some momentum again. If I had to restrict myself to one saying, it would be that I find it great that you get so much done with so little amount of developers. Go KOffice go!

by Andre (not verified)

Well, usually I get used to software by using it. for instance I had a cultural barrier from getting involved into tex. It was always very complicated and I knew there was a whole lot of stuff you had to learn. And it further seems people who know latex cannot explain their universe to beginners. It becomes to complex and that's what drives you away.

But there is another way and this is how I slipped in latex and finally got to know the universe by myself. I edited good existing .tex files and tried to build my own documents. And I got fast and good results, learned more elements of latex and so on. This is how I explored the software.

when you look at a dictionary -- there are so many words in. A chinese student wanted to learn the dictionary by heart and refused to pratice the language before he knew at least half of the vocabulary. His friend went to parties and drank beer with us. Guess who was more succesful in learning our language. (I still wonder how I got to know all vocabulary of my language, I do not remember studying dictionaries as a child)

So the same applies to software such as Koffice. what is more needed than software are people who actually use Koffice to get their things done. And once they work with the software they will find glitches and ask for improvements but: how to get them to jump into the water and start swimming? The answer is easyy: A good set of well-designed sample files is needed which cover typical needs. Files to hack into. I mean naked software with functions and features only does not sell. What's needed for KOffice is cosyness for new users, the ability to play around and explore the features. Sample files and user community building are crucial for that.

by Sebastián Benítez (not verified)

I work at home, so I use KOffice for my personal things, but mostly for work. Problems I detected are mainly in KSpread: cell borders don't always work as expected (i.e. they won't show all the time the way I want), gnumeric import filter doesn't work, excel import filter doesn't work for complex spreadsheets (i know, i know, but they aren't that complex). For most of my stuff, it just does well.

I think KOffice is great, but needs a LOT of work to be usable in a company. Importing from other suites is a must.

by A. Nonymous (not verified)

One irritating factor is when you have a simple formula, such as a column total, and then insert a new row somewhere in the scope of the column totals range. What would happen in MS Office is that the formula would be updated to include the new row, but not in KSpread.

by Ned (not verified)

"Cell borders don't always work as expected" -

they NEVER work as expected.

I love KWord, and also would love to use KSpread, but this renders it unusable for me:

My girlfriend is a teacher and needed a checklist for her class to keep attendance;
very simple: one column with names, and the rest empty boxes -
after trying to print this with KSpread for hours and only getting weird results I finally had to install OpenOffice for being able to do it ...

by Eric Soderberg (not verified)

I work at Hewlett-Packard where the vast majority of users in my neck of the woods use MS-Office. I'm a KDE fan at heart and attempt to use KDE native tools wherever possible.

My primary need is a way to read powerpoint and then publish back revisions to powerpoint. I can't use KPresenter to do this. It crashes too much on .ppt files. I can use OO Impress to read 99% of the powerpoint files I get. I still have to use Powerpoint (in VMWare/Windows) to edit them in a way that everyone else in the company can read them with Powerpoint.

I cannot use KWord for MSWord (.doc) files, it crashes or goes CPU bound too much. I can use OO Writer to read 90% of the MSWord files I get.

My favorite KOffice application is Kivio. I used to use SmartDraw on Windows for flowcharts and diagrams but Kivio does everything I really need. The main thing I miss from SmartDraw is the ability to double click on a text object and be able to edit the text in place, without requiring a dialog. I can get away with using Kivio because I publish all my documents in html (using Quanta+).

Why do you use vmware/windows ?
Try to use crossover office+msoffice . you will find this combination softer on resources and faster than Openoffice :)

by humufr (not verified)

I tried different time to use koffice but kchart is so awful that I never been able to pass the test period.
I never been able to have what I want draw with it. It's far away from the equivalent software in gnumeric or openoffice for example. I think that will be a very good idea to use something like matplotlib to build a new chart software for koffice.

by Inge Wallin (not verified)

It would be interesting to hear what exactly you want and what you cannot do with the current version.

by Danni Coy (not verified)

KWord seems to follow my KDE Colour Scheme a little too close. In general it makes more sense for a word processor to default to black text on white background rather than light grey text on dark grey background (my current colour scheme). What makes this worse is any new frames that I add to the document print this way.

by bangert (not verified)

As others have pointed out, in many areas koffice appears to be alpha
or beta quality software. This is especially frustrating in situations,
where you, really fast, want to create a small document - and because of
an obscure bug, can't.

So even if I would file a bug (which I do, from time to time), it would
probably take two - three months before a fix reaches me... (I'll throw
in a dumb one: even the linux kernel has more frequent releases!)

I could imagine that koffice, especially the stable tree, could easily
(automagically even) be released once a week and made available via
(among others) klik...

Kind of like the way amarok handles it.

(I don't know much about releases, but I care more about functionality
than press statements)

Also, have TestDrives, BugDays and such...

The kerning issue appears to be a big one - i don't think it's all
Trolltechs fault, but if it is then IMHO they should fix this
embarrassing situation... but then, this issue probably does not
come up to often.
(IIRC qt-3.0 was promised to bring the fix)

Personally, I use koffice for writing invoices. For that I embed a
spreadsheet into a word document. This works pretty good - you learn
where not to step with time. I haven't had a look at kexi yet, but I
hope to automate the process more in the future...

I have not even tried to show koffice to my girlfriend, she finds
so many bugs in openoffice and ms office - she'd be throwing around
things after 10 minutes of koffice usage.

Anyway - I'd like to thank everyone who has, is and will be
contributing to koffice. It is a great piece of software and,
as Inge has pointed out before, has huge potential.

by Luke Sandell (not verified)

KOffice has a lot of potential. Unlike a certain other free office suite, it starts instantly instead of in 2 mins (OpenOffice.org) and actually uses native widgets. However, I have never seemed to be able to do anything in KOffice without causing a crash. Recently, I could not so much as open a document in Krita. Usually I get discouraged and stop using it.

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

A released version of Krita, or one you compiled yourself? Could you contact me so we can fix this problem for you?

by L.. User (not verified)

As a background: I work at lower management level in a medium-size company and use MS Office daily for making technical and commercial documents and presentations. Here are some comments:

Kword:
-I use outline mode in MS Word a lot, but can't find it in KWord, also no way to quickly promote/demote paragraphs (Alt-left/right in Word)
-Header/Footer does not seem to work, critical in business environment
-where are picture/table captions, List of images/tables, indexes?
-just an idea: scan document for TLAs etc (basically all words in caps), automatically generate a list of abbreviations from these

-> not usable for technical documents, user manuals etc., could be OK for memo level stuff

KSpread:
-print preview font is not the same as in the sheet
-this was also in earlier comment: no way to name the cells. Imagine programming with absolute addresses only instead of symbolic names!
-although I have set time to 24h format in Control center, KSpread uses AM/PM format
-adding times, like 1:30 + 3:40 does not work

-> good for casual calculations, need some work to be real business tool

KPresenter:
-screen drawing is bit buggy and slow
-single-clicking text does not make the it in edit mode, need to double-click, annoying
-crashed when tried to demote/promote (alt-l/r)
-show sidebar does nothing
-no outline mode
-ctrl-enter does not add slide or move from header to text
-no slide design (e.g. text+image, title slide)
-transition/object effects generally suck, they should not be on by default, no way to globally disable object effects like for transition effects
-there is no way to skip the effect once it started
-in presentation mode, sometimes the page is not displayed in final form, but some incomplete images are displayed, very unprofessional
-I'm not with a projector now, so can't test it, but I like the PowerPoint's dual screen presenter view, where you can show the slides on the projector and a control panel on your laptop screen, is this possible?
-no organisation chart tool
-tables are better than PowerPoint
-shortcuts: --> works, ==> doesn't
-can't add drawing guides to master slide

-> not usable for any business use, when presenting your company to outsiders, everything needs to be really polished and professional, never ever crash

Kivio:
-European map is ancient (Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia are no more, Baltic states are not part of USSR)
-mind mapping chart would be nice
-locking the tool with alt/shift-click needed

-> looks OK, but I'm not expert here

This is with Koffice Debian sid 1.4.2-2, using KDE 3.4.2-4.

Thank you for you good work, I'm sure that with a little work you'll beat MS Office easily.

by Tomas (not verified)

> -although I have set time to 24h format in Control center, KSpread uses AM/PM format
> -adding times, like 1:30 + 3:40 does not work

I assume this was in KOffice 1.4.x ? Both these things should work correctly in SVN version.

by Danni Coy (not verified)

I use outline mode in MS Word - Try kdissert (works with swx or html files)... Beats the hell out of using a word processor when planning documents.

by L. User (not verified)

Thanks for the tip!

I tried KDissert, here are some remarks:
-in general, you get results faster than with MS Visio (ok, it's not the best mind mapping tool)
-can't change line style
-not integrated to KOffice
-only basic tools available

KDissert wouldn't probably cover my need for outline mode, as I use it not only in first plans, but mostly during editing. It's nice to promote large parts of document higher in heading hierarchy. I'd like to see this feature in KWord/KPresenter as well.

by Boudewijn (not verified)

We really want KDissert (or the other app that does almost the same thing, forgot its name, forget my own name next) to become part of KOffice. In fact, Inge is a very voiciferous proponent of such a move and I bet it'll happen before 2.0 -- in which case we'll be able to generate skeleton KWord documents from the mind-map.

by Zagge (not verified)

>KPresenter:
> -screen drawing is bit buggy and slow
Where do you have problems. This is a not clear enough for fixing it

> -single-clicking text does not make the it in edit mode, need to double-click, annoying
That is so by design

> -crashed when tried to demote/promote (alt-l/r)
What do you mean by this. Do you have a backtrace?

> -show sidebar does nothing
works here

> -no outline mode
we have on in the sidebar, but it might not be what you want.
> -ctrl-enter does not add slide or move from header to text
> -no slide design (e.g. text+image, title slide)
can you explain a bit more in detail.

> -transition/object effects generally suck, they should not be on by default, no way to globally disable object effects like for transition effects
If you think they suck why are you using them?

> -there is no way to skip the effect once it started
Yes they are since kpresenter 1.4.

> -in presentation mode, sometimes the page is not displayed in final form, but some incomplete images are displayed, very unprofessional
Can you send me an example.
> -I'm not with a projector now, so can't test it, but I like the PowerPoint's dual screen presenter view, where you can show the slides on the projector and a control panel on your laptop screen, is this possible?
It's not possible at the moment

> -no organisation chart tool
> -tables are better than PowerPoint
> -shortcuts: --> works, ==> doesn't
Can you please explain what you mean by that. Give an example

> -can't add drawing guides to master slide
It is possible here. Go to the master slide and drag the help line out of the ruler. The guild lines are reworked at the moment so that they will be of more help in the next version. They are allready partly in svn.

-> not usable for any business use, when presenting your company to outsiders, everything needs to be really polished and professional, never ever crash
I found it much easier to use that OO-impress or Powerpoint and that was at version 1.2. :-)

Thorsten

by Hans (not verified)

klik://krita is not enough! ;-)

klik://kword
klik://kword-svn
klik://kspread
klik://kspread-svn
...

by Hans (not verified)

Btw., klick://krita is old, isn't it?
It can't open jpeg files on my suse 9.3.

So I'm waiting for klik://krita-nightly

If you think this is to much work, maybe you could ask the Amarok developers how they do
klik://amarok-svn-nightly

This amarok klik package is updated by about 11:00 UTC almost every day.

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

If it can't open jpeg files, there's something wrong with the klik image... I've found it harder than I assumed to create working kliks.

by Hans (not verified)

It seems that libxsltexport.la is missing.

Maybe this can help ( I tried to open a *png img (jpeg does not work, too)):

./.zAppRun Desktop/krita_1.4.88.cmg
[...]
koffice (lib kofficecore): kritapart.desktop found.
koffice (lib kofficecore): kritapart.desktop found.
koffice (filter manager): KoFilterEntry::query( )
koffice (filter manager): Filter: KFormula-Export für LaTeX ruled out
koffice (filter manager): Filter: KWord-Export für LaTeX ruled out
koffice (filter manager): Filter: LaTeX-Exportfilter für KSpread ruled out
koffice (filter manager): WARNING: Huh?? Couldn't load the lib: Library files for "libxsltexport.la" not found in paths.
koffice (filter manager): Filter: KOffice-Export für XSLT does not apply.
koffice (filter manager): Filter: HTML-Export für KSpread ruled out
koffice (filter manager): Filter: ASCII-Export für KWord ruled out
koffice (filter manager): Filter: HTML-Export für KWord ruled out
koffice (lib kofficecore): kritapart.desktop found.
koffice (lib kofficecore): KoDocument::openURL url=file:///home/mw/testbild.png
koffice (lib kofficecore): kritapart.desktop found.
koffice (lib kofficecore): KoDocument::openFile /home/mw/testbild.png type:image/png
koffice (filter manager): KoFilterEntry::query( )
koffice (filter manager): Filter: KOffice-Export für XSLT doesn't apply.
koffice (lib kofficecore): WARNING: libtiff.so.4: Kann die Shared-Object-Datei nicht öffnen: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
koffice (filter manager): ERROR: Couldn't create the filter.
koffice (lib kofficecore): KoMainWindow::addRecentURL url=file:///home/mw/testbild.png
koffice (lib kofficecore): [KoMainWindow pointer (0x8300e70) to widget krita-mainwindow#1, geometry=1024 x747+0+0] Saving recent files list into config. instance()=0x81156f0

by klik power user (not verified)

"koffice (lib kofficecore): WARNING: libtiff.so.4: Kann die Shared-Object-Datei nicht öffnen: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden"
------------

Here is the fault!

You can fix it locally on your system (but this is not very klik-like, interfering with the base system!):

--> cd /usr/lib; su ; ln -s libtiff.so.3 libtiff.so.4

The real fix would have to be inside the klik package. If you know how to do it, create the same symlink inside the AppDir:

--> cd /tmp/klik/krita; su; ln -s /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3 libtiff.so.4

and repack the .cmg -- See http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1474 --> "klik tips+tricks: how to hack (or fix) a klik bundle".

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

I hope to find some time next week to update the klik package -- thanks for the pointers. Of course, if someone would want me to help maintain the thing, undying gratitude and a honourable mention in the about box would be their eternal reward!

by klik power user (not verified)

I know Kurt started to work on a brand new KOffice klik package. But this got stuck for a few reasons, as he told me:

a) work-related (overload from his employer)

b) he had some problems with khelpcenter not displaying manuals and translation strings from inside the bundle, but using the (old) system wide installed documentation instead

c) he didnt think there was much of an interest from the KOffice developer side in having a kick-ass klik, so no support from them

d) he therefor will not give up to work on a klik://koffice bundle altogether, but will give it less priority, and try to convince the KOffice developers again once he can show off something and proof his package works as he intends it to.

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

Yes, I know about the khelpcenter problem -- the big problem there was that nobody knew a solution :-(. As for no interest from KOffice developers, the simple fact is that everyone is incredibly busy, so we were quite glad he was working on it. It also turned out that it's a problem if you've got KOffice installed already if you want to test the klik package. I should have installed a vmware image or something like that for testing the klik package -- but then again, my time isn't just limited, it's constricted like a boa constrictor who's trying to eating a crocodile.

by Hans (not verified)

klik://koffice ??

Why should anybody want to have a klick://koffice?
Only because I want to do some image manipulation I don't want to downlaod kword, kspread, kexi,...

If I want to test kword I don't need krita, kexi,...

klik is suited very well for testing purposes (svn version,...). If I want to use kword 1.4 or kspread 1.4 I would install the RPMs.

by klik power user (not verified)

## "klik://koffice ??"
----
Yes, why not?

After all, there *is* an integrated KOffice suite, as opposed to single-applications-only. Didn't you know that?? Check it out, it's cool.

## "Why should anybody want to have a klick://koffice?"
----
Silly question, honest.

Silly, because nobody ever demanded *everybody* to wanting to have klik://koffice (learn the spelling, BTW!)

Why should everybody have to download all the single apps individually, if he can have them all in one go?

## "klik is suited very well for testing purposes"
----
Right you are.

## "If I want to use kword 1.4 or kspread 1.4 I would install the RPMs."
----
So be it...

But what if you are a developer, or a translator, or a documentation writer? What if you are running the SVN code anyway, and need quick access to one or more of the previously released versions (without messing with your RPM package manager)??

klik lets you use multiple version of the same software without making your package manager freak out.

I hope you do not intend to dictate what Kurt works on. But I'll talk to him on IRC, and ask if he could also make a set of "klik://single-koffice-apps-for-hans" kliks.

by Hans (not verified)

> ## "klik://koffice ??"
> ----
> Yes, why not?
>
> After all, there *is* an integrated KOffice suite, as opposed to
> single-applications-only. Didn't you know that?? Check it out, it's cool.

I know that koffice is an integrated office suite. And I did check it out.
But this resulted in the experience that (at least I) *never* embed Krita into Kspread or Kword into Konqueror or things like that.

Do you really want to start up the koffice shell if you just want to edit an image with krita?

Do you really want to embed krita into kword?

Integration is nice - but only when it makes sense.

> I hope you do not intend to dictate what Kurt works on.

Did I sound so? Sorry.

> But I'll talk to him on IRC, and ask if he could also make a set of
> "klik://single-koffice-apps-for-hans" kliks.

:-)

by klik power user (not verified)

"Do you really want to start up the koffice shell if you just want to edit an image with krita?"
-----

No, of course not.

But the private klik://koffice Beta package that Kurt made availiable to me has the nice feature that, while it defaults to start "koshell" it can still start each and every of the contained applications in single application mode too. ;-)

I talked to him now (not on IRC, but on the phone), and he said he'll also offer your list of desired kliks as single apps:
klik://kword
klik://kword-svn
klik://kspread
klik://kspread-svn
...
but he had little time currently, can't do it on his own, and he'd need help.

So how/where can he contact you?

by Kurt Pfeifle (not verified)

>> But I'll talk to him on IRC, and ask if he could also make a set of
>> "klik://single-koffice-apps-for-hans" kliks.

He talked to me on the phone (since he didnt succeed to find me responding on IRC).

So yes, it is possible to create all the klik bundles you like. Each and every single one of the KOffice suite. Even an "-svn-nightly" of each.

Help me with that. I can't do it all on my own. You could beoome a recipe maintainer for them. Being a recipe maintainer is very easy. Easy, because we will set up the initial recipe and make it work. You, you will only be looking at user feedback on klik.atekon.de, will maybe help maintain the wiki site for the klik app in question, and will modify the recipe to point to updated version of Debian packages.

How does that sound to you?

An example for you to see how it works and to test is here:

klik://amarok-svn-nightly

(to enable the download, type the recipe maintainer's email [email protected] when prompted for it.) - Look at what the recipe looks like from the maintainer's point of view:

http://klik.atekon.de/maint/
http://klik.atekon.de/maint/recipe.php?package=amarok-svn-nightly

All of what you will need to care for is the field "External URLs". That field describes the input ingredients to the recipe.

Either build yourself the KOffice packages for Debian Sarge to feed klik with. Or find a friendly Debian packager whose work you could make available for klik.

by Antonio (not verified)

I use koffice in house solely, because he is fast, is easy and KOffice integrates best with my desktop:

- Table support in KWord is pretty bad. I'd like easier control over placement & size of table elements, in particular.

I use Kword (SUSE 9.3 with unicode UTF8) in Spanish and have problems with the orthographic corrector
myspell-spanish-20050118-4
ispell-american-3.2.06-463
aspell-0.60.2-3
ispell-3.2.06-463
ispell-spanish-1.5-245
ispell-british-3.2.06-463
myspell-british-20040208-32
aspell-32bit-9.3-7

I have voted by desire 95601, because I believe that it is very good idea
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95601

Kformula is frustrating

Kspreadsheet
It must improve the functions, diagrams and graphs.

It is good idea, to add a function to save the files with password.

by José Suárez (not verified)

I've installed Koffice in my AMD64 Debian sid box because OOffice.org is not ported to AMD64 architecture yet. I was really looking forward to using Koffice as it would look native on my KDE 3.4 desktop.

At the begining it's a bit difficult to find some of the features, as I am acustomed to OO.org's features arrangement.

I find that the exporting module to OASIS files needs some work, especially for Spreadsheet files, because most of the times I have to rewrite most of the formulas in OO.org in my M$ Winsnooze partition.
Moreover, the unstability of Koffice compromises its great features. :(

I suggest that, as OO.org is opensource, the Koffice team should analyse some of the code for exporting and importing M$ Office files, as well as OO.org OpenDocument files, so that the team can get some new ideas or improve the existing code.

Despite these drawbacks, I think that Koffice has a promising future if you keep up the good work. In fact, its main advantage is that it is waaaaaay faster than any office app. :)

KDE rocks! Let's make Koffice rock too! :)

When the AMD64 port of oo.org is ready there is nice package for intergating oo.org with kde http://packages.debian.org/unstable/kde/openoffice.org-kde

by Charles Hill (not verified)

The three main programs we use at home are KWord, KChart and Karbon14.

1. KChart has my biggest gripe. It can't be used if you don't have a color printer. There is no option for hatching or pattern fill, only colors. Not usable if you print to black & white.

2. Karbon14 doesn't allow you to draw non-poly lines. Just a simple point-to-point line is all I want. In polyline mode, you should be able to constrain the segment to vertical or horizontal by using the shift or crtl key (pick one). When picking individual points, holding the CTRL key should allow to add or subtract from my selection. I want to pick 2 points!

3. KWord is mostly good for my light use, and the few items I've encountered have been bugged.

by HP (not verified)

Letters and simple documents are easily done with KWord. It's just that they don't look very professional - but the font spacing problem has already been discussed.

For formulas I still prefer LaTeX and for complex or professional occasions OpenOffice. OpenOffice has direct PDF output while KOffice's PDF output via ps2pdf sometimes has bad fonts (bitmap fonts instead of vector fonts?).

Krita's GUI is just great. It doesn't get in the way (like GIMPs floating windows) and leaves enough space even on small monitors (Krita's GUI is how Karbon _could_ look like)

I did some flowcharting with Kivio to document a software project during an internship in a bank. Kivio was nice to work with, I got things done really quickly and Kivio never crashed or mailfunctioned.

A few times I had to make slides with scientific content: formulas, flowcharts, plots and text with occasional Greek symbols.
To be fair: It wasn't with KOffice 1.4. However back then:
- I couldn't enlarge formulas so I ended up with tiny formulas on large slides. In the end I used Tex -> dvi -> ps -> eps for formulas
- It was uncomfortable to embed images (plots as EPS, formulas as EPS) because KPresenter couldn't remove white borders or cut images
- It was uncomfortable to embed small KOffice objects, e.g. small flowcharts (to abuse Kivio as a clipart gallery): The embedded Kivio area just had the size of the flowchart and was a pain to work with.

But even if it's not perfect (yet), KOffice is needed: It's small and fast, it's pure KDE and the GUI's of its apps are all alike so you feel "at home".

by Piotr (not verified)

Koffice is nice. It runs much faster than OOffice and it's great for most of the office work but... better MS Office documents support would be nice. I study chemistry and we use Excel for some calculations. KSpread have problems here:
- find result: fails on simple formula here the X is twice (or more?) in the formula...
- charts: should be like in MS Office (look, high IQ when getting data :P)

by Patrick (not verified)

Since my personal spreadsheets are very simple (no graphics, only data and math), it works very well. And I love its speed. I'm not very confortable the way KWord works but, in general, I do prefer KOffice over OO.

Thank you very much, KOffice developers!

by MasterMind (not verified)

I use KOffice mainly because it's integrated into KDE. The main problems that I'm having is in KWord and KChart. In KWord I don't know how to make 2 or more columns by a simple way (also in the footer/header). And in KChart is with making graphs.

I think that KOffice still has some problems, but it's going to get better with time, because of it's great developers that are sacrificing their free time programming it.

by Inge Wallin (not verified)

Making graphs as in mathematical plots, or are there other stuff that you want to do, but can't?

by MasterMind (not verified)

Like in Electronics. For example if you are doing an graph of a characteristic of diode. You have Current and Voltage, and you have to get a graph that starts from zero. (X axis is Voltage and Y axis is current). But I haven't managed to do this. I only could change the label for X axis, but it wasn't right. If you know what I mean :P

by Richard Horlings (not verified)

I like KWord and I use it every day. There are two things that I think need to be done to improve KWord:
1. more stability in general
2. fix the footnotes! I write may academic papers, and whenever I write long papers with many footnotes, the footnotes display incorrectly. This bug alone makes KWord unusable for many of my papers sadly.

by jameth (not verified)

Although I currently mostly don't use KOffice due to the fact that all my files are used every day in Windows, OS-X, and Linux, so I need OOo's .doc format output, there is something I'd really like KOffice to add:

Screenwriting tools

Currently, the best open-source screenwriting tool is celtx [1], and that's a program written for the Mozilla Application Framework, so it has quite a lot of limitations. Once a system supports as much as KWord does, the transition to being able to do Screenwriting is relatively small, so it has always amazed me that there is so little in the way of OpenSource tools available for it.

Since KOffice already has, far and away, the most tools of any office suite, I'd kinda like to see this one added as well. Also, screenwriting tools hit a market that can really benefit from open-source: poor people trying to get a first screenplay picked up and can't afford to pay $200 for a standard screenwriting tool.

[1] http://www.celtx.com/

by raphael (not verified)

I'm administrating the computer infrastructure of a local company with 4 computers. They are using KOffice, and in particular KSpread, for their usual office documents.

The main reason for using KOffice is because it really integrates very nicely into the desktop, provides the familiar look and feel, can utilize lot's of KDE's infrastructure and is not very bloated. Common tasks can be done easily.

There are currently two aspects that should further improve in KOffice to make it even more usable:

1) Cell format (especially border styles and cell merging) handling in KSpread.

2) We are very happy that KOffice rapidly moves towards the OpenDocument Format, as it increases compatibility to the industry standard a lot. Since MS Office basically has to support this standard as well, the document exchange with MS Office will be just as easy as it is with OpenOffice.org.

I'm also working together with a larger company (about 50 people) who is considering moving to a more open office suite in the future. If KOffice turns out to be the best of breed at that time it will be chosen.

by raphael (not verified)

correction in last paragraph: ... company (...) which is considering ...

I use Kubuntu Breezy for AMD64 , I try to use OpenOffice 2 but crashing a lot in an AMD64 system.

But KOffice works like charm in an AMD64 system , good work !!!

by hr (not verified)

I'm working in the EMS-area and am looking for a database-gui to replace the msaccess-thing we use up to now.
Since more than a year I'm waiting for kexi to become useful. Looks good, but is not useful yet.
Thanks
HJ