KOffice 1.5.1 Announcement

May 22, 2006 (The INTERNET). The KDE Project today announced the release of KOffice 1.5.1.

KOffice is an integrated office suite for KDE which utilizes free and open standards for its document formats, component communication and component embedding.

This release includes:

• a frame-based, full-featured word processor (KWord);
• a spreadsheet application (KSpread);
• a presentation application (KPresenter);
• a flowchart and diagramming application (Kivio);
• an integrated database application (Kexi);
• a pixel based image editing and paint application (Krita);
• a vector-drawing application (Karbon14).
• a technology preview of a new project management application (KPlato).

Additionally, KOffice includes robust embeddable objects:

• report generator (Kugar)
  Note: Kugar is deprecated in this release and will be replaced with another solution. It's only included since there are users that are already using it.
• full-featured charting engine (KChart)
• mathematical formula handling (KFormula)

as well as a built-in thesaurus (KThesaurus) and support for many different file formats.

KOffice is a subproject within KDE, a powerful and easy-to-use Internet-enabled desktop for Linux and other UNIXes. Together, KDE and KOffice constitute the only Free Software project to provide a complete desktop and productivity environment for Linux/UNIX.

KOffice and all its components (including KDE) are available for free under Open Source licenses from the KDE http and ftp mirrors.

Major Improvements in this release are:

• Improved OASIS OpenDocument Support, especially in KSpread
• Rotating large images and scaling of images now works correctly in Krita
• Various other bugfixes

Known issues:

• Two issues with Kexi forms. Forms may not appear in Kexi (1.0.0 version was affected as well). No existing data or design can be lost, though. SUSE and Debian packages are not affected. Please read the details. If your binary package does not contain the fixes, and forms do not appear (it may be false alarm on some platforms), you may want to wait with Kexi upgrade to KOffie 1.5.2 release (Kexi 1.0.2). It which will be released in about a month.
• Krita crashes when saving an image containing exif information to .kra twice

A more complete list of changes is available at the KOffice web site.

Installing KOffice 1.5.1 Binary Packages

Binary Packages: Some Linux/UNIX OS vendors have kindly provided binary packages of KOffice 1.5 for some versions of their distribution, and in other cases community volunteers have done so. Some of these binary packages are available for free download from KDE's http and ftp mirrors. Additional binary packages, as well as updates to the packages now available, may become available over the coming weeks.

Please note that the KDE Project makes these packages available from the KDE web site as a convenience to KDE users. The KDE Project is not responsible for these packages as they are provided by third parties - typically, but not always, the distributor of the relevant distribution - using tools, compilers, library versions and quality assurance procedures over which KDE exercises no control. If you cannot find a binary package for your OS, or you are displeased with the quality of binary packages available for your system, please read the KDE Binary Package Policy and/or contact your OS vendor.

Library Requirements / Options: The library requirements for a particular binary package vary with the system on which the package was compiled. Please bear in mind that some binary packages may require a newer version of Qt and other libraries than was shipped with the system (e.g., LinuxDistro X.Y may have shipped with Qt-3.3.0 but the packages below may require Qt-3.3.2). For general library requirements for KDE, please see the text at Source Code - Library Requirements below.

Package Locations: At the time of this release, pre-compiled packages are available for:

• SuSE Linux 10.0 and 10.1
• Kubuntu

MS Windows Version: Kexi installation package from OpenOffice Polska is available for MS Windows.

Please check the servers periodically for pre-compiled packages for other distributions. More binary packages might become available over the coming days and weeks.

Compiling KOffice 1.5.1

Library Requirements: KOffice 1.5.1 requires the following libraries:

• kdelibs 3.3, 3.4 or 3.5, which can be downloaded following the instructions at the KDE website (for more information on these kdelibs releases, please see the KDE 3.5 press release);
• Qt-3.3, which is available in source code from Trolltech as qt-x11-free-3.3.0.tar.gz (qt-x11-free-3.3.5.tar.gz is recommended); and
• for reading help pages and other KOffice documentation, libxml2 >= 2.4.9 and libxslt >= 1.0.7.

Compiler Requirements: Please note that KOffice 1.5.1 will not compile with older versions of gcc/egcs, such as egcs-1.1.2 or gcc-2.7.2. At a minimum gcc-2.95-* is required.

Source Code: The complete source code for KOffice 1.5.1 is available for free download via one of the KDE http or ftp mirrors.

Further Information: For further instructions on compiling and installing KOffice, please consult the KOffice installation instructions. For problems with SRPMs, please contact the person listed in the applicable .spec file.

Corporate KOffice Sponsors

Besides the valuable and excellent efforts by the KOffice developers themselves, significant support for KOffice development has been provided by MandrakeSoft (which sponsors KOffice developer Laurent Montel), Trolltech (which sponsors KOffice developer David Faure), theKompany.com (which has contributed Kivio and Kugar to KOffice), Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB (which has contributed KChart to KOffice), OpenOffice Polska which employs Kexi developer Jarosław Staniek and sponsored KDElibs for win32 project which enabled porting KOffice applications to MS Windows. In addition, individual sponsors (donate), provide significant support for KDE and KOffice. Thanks!

About KOffice/KDE

KOffice is part of the KDE Project. KDE is an independent project of hundreds of developers, translators, artists and professionals worldwide collaborating over the Internet to create and freely distribute a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop and office environment employing a flexible, component-based, network-transparent architecture and offering an outstanding development platform. KDE provides a stable, mature desktop, a full, component-based office suite (KOffice), a large set of networking and administration tools and utilities, and an efficient, intuitive development environment featuring the excellent IDE KDevelop. KDE is working proof that the Open Source "Bazaar-style" software development model can yield first-rate technologies on par with and superior to even the most complex commercial software.

Please visit the KDE family of web sites for the KDE FAQ, screenshots, KOffice information and developer information. Much more information about KDE is available from KDE's family of web sites.

Announcement: Written by Inge Wallin.

Trademarks Notices. KDE, K Desktop Environment and KOffice are trademarks of KDE e.V. Incorporated. Adobe Illustrator and PostScript are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems dBASE is a registered trademark of dBASE Inc. Corel, Quattro Pro and WordPerfect are registered trademarks of Corel Corporation or Corel Corporation Limited. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Trolltech and Qt are trademarks of Trolltech AS. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. All other trademarks and copyrights referred to in this announcement are the property of their respective owners.

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