KOffice 2.0 Alpha 3 Release Announcement

Sept 6, 2007 (The INTERNET). The KDE Project today announced the release of KOffice version 2.0 Alpha 3, a technology preview of the upcoming version 2.0.

Highlights

This is mainly a technology preview for those that are interested in the new ideas and technologies of the KOffice 2 series. This release has improved OpenDocument support for KPresenter, the presentation application and Kivio, the flowchart modeler. Integration of Flake shapes has improved. Flake shapes make integrating various types of office documents much easier by providing containers for document types, new exciting features in KWord. We have the ongoing commitment to allow users and innovators to keep up to date with progress as we move towards the final 2.0 version that will have various new technologies and concepts which are groundbreaking in the open source world.
KOffice 2 is currently under heavy development. It is not meant as something to be used for any real work and can crash at any point. However, here are some of the highlights of the upcoming KOffice 2 series. Note that not all of the new technologies will be fully implemented in the first release, 2.0.

Also note that although KOffice is included in KDE 4.0 Beta 2, it has its own release cycle, and the first version of the KOffice version 2 series is expected around New Year 2007-2008.

Better Integration Through Flake Shapes

The core of the new improvements is the revolutionary Flake library, which will allow KOffice to use any shape in any application. This allows the same level of functionality in text editing in both the word processor as in any other KOffice application, for instance.

KSpread continues to work on testing and ensuring all its functions follow the ODF standard. The developers have created a suite of tests to make sure the standard will now and in future versions be adhered to. We expect better compatibility with other spreadsheets that also follow the OpenDocument standard.

More generic KOffice2 info can be found in the Alpha2-announcement.

Changes Since the Alpha 2 release a month ago

Almost all KOffice application have received work on stabilizing and bug fixing them, and also a little work on new features. A small list;

• KPresenter and Kivio can now load and save shapes in the ODF document format.
• Porting of WMF vector loading/saving code to reinstate that functionality for all KOffice applications
• Configuration widgets for all vector shapes have been created or improved
• Tabbed toolbar and context aware workspace in Kexi
• KWord adds a usability feature; "when using buttons for increase text size, it becomes all the same size, even if I selected multiple sizes." (Wishlist report)
• KWord implemented a new feature for paragraph numbering that allows us to do a "..., x, y, z, aa, bb, cc, ..." kind of counting. This closes a 6 years old feature request, which was one of the longest open ones for KOffice. (Wishlist report)
• Allow each frame to have a custom run-around that you can edit with the vector tools independent of the actual content. (image)
• Remove the dialog that KWord showed when creating a new shape. We now only show this for text frames.
• Cleanup the user interface of the PathTool options.
• Make path editing a lot more CPU friendly by limiting the parts that are repainted to only what is needed.
• Fix the scale/move/rotate interactions to properly cancel when pressing Escape.
• Work continued on ODF loading/saving in KWord and text in general.
• KWord now properly updates the text when altering either the paragraph or the character styles.
• KSpread sheets can now be duplicated. (Wishlist report)
• Ability to parse and display durations in KSpread. (Wishlist report)
• KSpread can parse error values, like "#REF!"
• New functions in KSpread: GAMMA, SERIESSUM

About KOffice

KOffice is an integrated office suite built on the KDE platform, and utilizes free and open standards like OpenDocument 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 application (Kivio);
• an integrated database application (Kexi);
• a new project management application (KPlato).
• a pixel based image editing and paint application (Krita);
• a vector-drawing application (Karbon14).

Additionally, KOffice includes the following helper applications:

• business quality reporting software (Kugar)
• 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 and all its components (including KDE) are available for free under Open Source licenses from the KDE http and ftp mirrors.

Press Release: Written by Thomas Zander

Trademarks Notices. KDE, K Desktop Environment and KOffice are trademarks of KDE e.V. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Trolltech and Qt are trademarks of Trolltech ASA. 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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