KOffice 1.2 Beta2 Announcement

June 26, 2002 (The INTERNET). The KDE Project today announced the immediate release of KOffice 1.2beta2, the second beta preview release for KOffice 1.2, scheduled for release this August. KOffice is an integrated office suite for KDE, the leading desktop for Linux. KOffice utilizes free and open standards for its document formats, component communication and component embedding. This release is principally a public testing and developer solicitation release (more help is welcome!).

This release, which is available in 56 languages, includes a frame-based, full-featured word processor (KWord); a presentation application; (KPresenter); a spreadsheet application; (KSpread); a flowchart application; (Kivio); business quality reporting software; (Kugar); and two vector-drawing applications (alpha) (Kontour and Karbon14). Additionally, KOffice includes robust embeddable charts (KChart) and formulas (KFormula) as well as a built-in thesaurus (KThesaurus) and numerous import and export filters.

KOffice 1.2beta2 complements the release of KDE 3.01, last month. KDE is an international, powerful and easy-to-use Internet-enabled desktop for Linux and other UNIXes, and together with KOffice constitutes the only Open Source project to provide a complete desktop and productivity environment for Linux/UNIX.

"With this release we are starting to build from the mature and stable framework we have been building over a long period of time," stated Thomas Zander, a core KOffice developer. "The effort put into this framework is now really starting to pay off, as new features can be added to KOffice components with incredible ease. The maturity and simplicity of the KOffice framework also makes this an ideal juncture for new developers to join the most promising office suite for UNIX."

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

Principal Improvements

The principal improvements over KOffice 1.2beta1 are as follows:

Text Widget

Both KWord and KPresenter share the same text widget. Thus, the following improvements apply to both of those components:

• The find / replace function now has support for searching for formatting text and replace matches with formatted text (bold, Times font, etc.).
• A new "apply auto-correction" feature for applying the auto-correction settings (spelling, symbols, etc.) to the entire document, rather than just when data is being entered. Auto-correction rules can also be changed (e.g., to use a different spoken language).
• The current selection's text and paragraph formatting can now be directly saved as a style.

KWord

• KWord now has footnotes! Configurable numbering and main frame / footnote separator are included.
• Improved header and footer grouping allows different formats for both the first and other pages as well as for the even and odd pages.
• Paragraphs can be selected by clicking on the left of the text frame.
• Default tab widths are adjustable.
• KWord filters have improved.
• Frames now have their own styles (borders, margins (new!), background color, etc.). A new style can be created based on the formatting of the selected frame.
• Tables also have their own styles and templates. Table styles are based on a combination of frame and paragraph styles. Table templates are based on a combination of table styles (for example, a different style can be applied to the table header row, or columns can have alternating colors.)
• Frame contents, sizes and positions can be "locked" to prevent inadvertent changes. Frame, table and text / paragraph styles can be imported from other documents.
• Text can be set to flow to the left, right or largest side of a frame.
• Images can be saved directly to disk.
• Other KWord documents can be loaded into the current document.
• Embedded documents and KOffice-1.0 images are handled better.
• The cursor position is now restored when a document is loaded.

KSpread

• KSpread now has templates!
• Headers and footers can be defined separately for each sheet in the workbook. A <pages> code can be inserted in the header or footer for printing the page number.
• Data can now be loaded directly from an SQL database or read from a text file.
• Ranges can be defined for printing. Selected rows and/or columns can be repeated after page breaks (for headings and descriptions). The page layout can be set separately for each sheet in the workbook.
• The range for a named area can now be changed, effectively converting such names into variables (cells which reference the named areas will reference the new range rather than the range defined when the named area was added to the cell).
• A spreadsheet can now have Multiple views, with each view able to select or modify different portions of the same sheet independently.
• Preliminary zoom support.
• Formatted data can be pasted from the clipboard.
• A new "formula indicator" indicates when a cell contains a formula (a small blue rectangle is placed in a corner of the cell).
• Up to three rows or columns can be sorted together. The sorted results can be stored somewhere else to keep the original data intact. The layout / formatting of the data can optionally be applied to the new location, and a row header outside the sort range may also be copied to the new location.
• Many new functions and "Goal Seek" have been added. And more functions are compatible with the Excel® equivalents.

KPresenter

• The popular "Snap to Grid" feature is now implemented. In addition, holding the Shift key while creating a line object snaps to the vertical or horizontal planes.
• Objects can be aligned vertically. They can also have a new "keep ratio" property.
• Polyline objects can be flipped.
• Images (including the background images) can be saved directly to disk.

Kugar

• Kugar comes with a GUI Report Designer.
• Users can add as many detail bands to the report as needed, this can be useful if we print report with data, arranged according the master-detail relationship.

A more complete list of changes and notes about the release are available at the KOffice web site.

Installing KOffice 1.2beta2 Binary Packages

Binary Packages. Some Linux/UNIX OS vendors have kindly provided binary packages of KDE 3.0 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 or 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-3.0.0 but the packages below may require Qt-3.0.3). 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:

• Mandrake Linux
  • 8.2: Intel i586
  • 8.1: Intel i586
  • 8.0: Intel i586
  Download the appropriate translation(s) from the noarch directory.
• SuSE Linux:
  • 8.0: Intel i386
  • 7.3: Intel i386, PowerPC and Sun Sparc
  • 7.2: Intel i386
  • 7.1: Intel i386
  • 7.0: Intel i386, IBM S390
  Download the appropriate translation(s) from the noarch directory.

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

Compiling KOffice 1.2beta2

Library Requirements. KOffice 1.2beta2 requires the following libraries:

• kdelibs 3.0, though kdelibs 3.0.1 is recommend. Both release can be downloaded following the instructions in the respective press releases (3.0, 3.0.1) at the KDE website. For more information on these kdelibs releases, please see the KDE 3.0 press release.
• Qt-3.0.3, which is available in source code from Trolltech as qt-x11-3.0.3.tar.gz. and
• For reading help pages and other KOffice documentation, libxml2 >= 2.4.9 and libxslt >= 1.0.7.

Compiler Requirements. Please note that some components of KOffice 1.2beta2 (such as the Quattro Pro import filter and KChart) 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/SRPMs. The complete source code for KOffice 1.2beta2 is available for free download via one of the KDE http or ftp mirrors. Additionally, source rpms are available for the following distributions:

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 developers David Faure and Laurent Montel), theKompany.com (which has contributed Kivio and Kugar to KOffice), and Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB (which has contributed KChart to KOffice). In addition, the members of the KDE League, as well as 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.

Release Coordinator: Thanks to David Faure for his excellent services as release coordinator.

Press Release: Written by Andreas Pour from the KDE League, with the invaluable assistance of numerous gifted volunteers from the KDE Project.

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.