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KOffice

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KOffice
Developer(s)KDE, Thomas Zander
Initial release1998 (1998)
Stable release
2.3.3 / March 1, 2011; 13 years ago (2011-03-01)[1]
Repository
Written inC++ (Qt, KDELibs)
Operating systemLinux, FreeBSD, Windows, Mac OS X
Available inMultilingual
TypeOffice suite
LicenseGPL, LGPL
Websitewww.koffice.org

KOffice is a free open source office suite which is available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X. It contains a word processor (KWord), a spreadsheet application (KCells), an vector graphics-based drawing tool KOffice Artwork and a presentation program (KOffice Showcase).

In late 2010 most KOffice developers formed Calligra Suite that now contains a number of features present in KOffice 2.3 but not later versions.

History

Initial work on KOffice development began in 1997, by Reginald Stadlbauer[2][3] with KPresenter, followed by KWord[4] in 1998.

In 1999, KOffice was cited in testimony in the United States v. Microsoft anti-trust trial by then-Microsoft executive Paul Maritz as evidence of competition in the operating system and office suite arena.[5]

The first official release of the KOffice suite was in 2000 when it was released as part of KDE 2.0.[6] Versions 1.1 followed in 2001,[7] 1.2 in 2002.[8]

KOffice has undergone a major transition in recent years as part of the release of KDE Software Compilation 4 (SC4). Coinciding with the work on SC4, the KOffice team prepared a major new release – KOffice 2.0 – which used the new KDE Platform 4 libraries. Although version 2.0 was released in 2009, the release was labeled as a “platform release” which was recommended only for testers and developers, rather than production use, since the release was missing key features and applications from the previous stable release series.[9]

Experimental port of KOffice 2.1 to Haiku.

This continued with version 2.1 in November, 2009. Regular end-users requiring a stable environment are still recommended by developers to use the stable 1.6 release series.[10] This version was also ported to Haiku[11] but the port was later not updated for newer KOffice versions.

In May 2010, version 2.2.0 was released and brings an unprecedented number of new features and bugfixes. Kexi was integrated again. Kivio has not yet been migrated. A new framework for effects on shapes and a new import filters for the Microsoft XML based office formats that are used in MS Office 2007 and later got added.[12]

In mid-2010, following disagreements between the core developers, the KOffice community split into two separate communities, KOffice and Calligra Suite. Following arbitration with the community members several applications were renamed by both communities.[13] KOffice renamed the KSpread spreadsheet utility to KCells, also the KPresenter presentation tool to KOffice Showcase, and the Karbon drawing tool to KOffice Artwork. The Krita image processing tool and Kexi database manager have been removed from KOffice. Support for by then obsolete mobile platform Maemo 5 was also removed from KOffice.

KOffice 2.3, released 31 December 2010, along with subsequent bugfix releases (2.3.1–2.3.3) was still a collaborative effort of both the KOffice and Calligra development teams.

Beginning with KOffice 2.4 the developers aim to release new KOffice versions every six months in sync with SC4 releases[14] which would result in a late January release of KOffice 2.4.

Features

KOffice was originally written for Linux but, as of version 2, also supports Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. KOffice includes the following components:

KWord A word processor with style sheets and frame-support for DTP-style editing of complex layouts.
KCells A spreadsheet application with multiple sheet support, templates and more than 100 mathematical formulae.
KOffice Showcase A presentation program with image and effect support.
KOffice Artwork A vector drawing application with a variety of drawing and editing tools.

Competition

The main office suite in use today is Microsoft Office.[15] Microsoft Office has been released for Windows and Macintosh but no version to date has been released for Linux. In addition, users of the open source operating system have typically expressed a preference for open source software.

In order to meet the demand for a Linux-based office suite, several projects have produced open source office suites for Linux including LibreOffice, OpenOffice.org, Calligra Suite and KOffice. LibreOffice is likely the most popular office suite for Linux as it ships in the default installs of many popular Linux distributions, like Debian GNU/Linux, openSUSE, Ubuntu, and Fedora. However, OpenOffice.org and its fork LibreOffice have drawn criticism for its speed and memory usage.[16][17]

Technical details

KOffice is designed to work with the KDE Platform, using the Qt and KDE libraries. All its components are released under free software licenses and use OpenDocument as their native file format when possible. KOffice is released separately from KDE SC 4 and can be downloaded at the KOffice homepage.

KOffice is undergoing a large overhaul to use Flake and Pigment as much as possible within applications. KOffice developers plan to share as much infrastructure as possible between applications to reduce bugs and improve the user experience.[18] They also want to create an OpenDocument library for use in other KDE applications that will allow developers to easily add support for reading and outputting OpenDocument files to their applications.[19] Automating tasks and extending the suite with custom functionality can be done with D-Bus or with scripting languages like Python, Ruby, and JavaScript.[20]

See also

References

  1. ^ KOffice 2.3.3 update
  2. ^ http://lists.kde.org/?t=88722491100011&r=139&w=2
  3. ^ http://www.behindkde.org/node/121
  4. ^ http://lists.kde.org/?t=88722654500008&r=180&w=2
  5. ^ http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice&m=92516339527344&w=2
  6. ^ http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-2.0.php
  7. ^ http://www.kde.org/announcements/koffice-1.1.php
  8. ^ http://www.kde.org/announcements/
  9. ^ http://www.koffice.org/2009/05/koffice-200-released//
  10. ^ http://www.koffice.org/news/koffice-2-1-released/
  11. ^ KDE applications available for Haiku!
  12. ^ http://www.koffice.org/news/koffice-2-2-released/
  13. ^ http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/calligra-devel/2011-June/001663.html
  14. ^ http://lists.kde.org/?l=koffice-devel&m=131685359725867&w=2
  15. ^ http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/166123/forrester_microsoft_office_in_no_danger_from_competitors.html?tk=nl_dnx_h_crawl
  16. ^ http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1008867/how-speed-open-office
  17. ^ Ou, George (2005-10-25). "Performance analysis of OpenOffice and MS Office". ZDNet. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on 2010-11-10. Retrieved 2010-11-10. It doesn't matter how fast the CPU is, OpenOffice is simply bloated. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  18. ^ The KOffice Project - KOffice 2.0 Alpha 5 Release Announcement
  19. ^ KOffice ODF Sprint Report
  20. ^ Kross Scripting Framework
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