KOffice 1.3 Announcement

On January 27th, the KDE Project released KOffice 1.3 for Linux and Unix operating systems. KOffice is a free set of office applications that integrate with the award winning KDE desktop. KOffice is a light-weight yet feature rich office solution and provides a variety of filters to interoperate with other popular office suites such as OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office.

KOffice 1.3 consists of the following applications:

• KWord - A frame-based word processor
• KSpread - An advanced spreadsheet application
• KPresenter - A full-featured presentation program
• Kivio - A Visio®-style flowcharting application
• Karbon14 - A vector drawing application
• Kugar - A tool for generating business quality reports
• KChart - An integrated graph and chart drawing tool
• KFormula - A powerful formula editor

Big improvements have been made in KOffice 1.3 with respect to interoperability with other office file formats. It is now for example possible to import as well as export OpenOffice.org documents. Also new is the ability to import PDF files into KWord and make changes to the document. Support for Microsoft document- formats has improved as well.

"Many people have been asking for improved support for the Microsoft document-formats and we have made significant improvements in that area for this release," says David Faure, a KOffice developer for Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB. "Especially the support for Microsoft Word 95/97/2000/XP documents has become much better."

Principal Improvements

The principal improvements over KOffice 1.2 are:

KWord (Word Processor).

• support for automatic hyphenation;
• a new MS Word import filter;
• support for pictures, tables and footnotes in the RTF export filter (which has been re-written);
• support for pictures and footnotes in the LaTeX export filter;
• a new MS Write export filter and a re-written MS Write import filter;
• support for bookmarks;
• text sorting;
• new character attributes, such as word-by-word underlining and relative font sizes; and
• improved spell checking (selection only; ignore words; etc.).

KPresenter (Presentation Tool).

• support for automatic hyphenation;
• an improved slide transition dialog, featuring a preview of the slide effect;
• drawing images with alpha channels;
• customizable printing of slide notes; and
• improved HTML export as well as usability enhancements to the HTML export wizard.

KSpread (Spreadsheet).

• over 100 new formulas (date/time, math, statistical, financial and more);
• an OpenCalc import and export filter;
• a new LaTeX export filter;
• enhancements to the CSV import and export options;
• new date and time formats;
• a subtotal dialog and formula; and
• default cell styles.

Kugar / Kugar Designer (Business Reporting).

• redesigned to better integrate into the KOffice environment;
• enhanced handling of items in the designer (cut / copy / paste; undo / redo; manual z-ordering; etc.);
• support for printing reports from the command line / scripts; and
• a DCOP interface.

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

Installing KOffice 1.3 Binary Packages

Binary Packages. Some Linux/UNIX OS vendors have kindly provided binary packages of KOffice 1.3 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:

• SUSE Linux
• Slackware Linux

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 1.3

Library Requirements. KOffice 1.3 requires the following libraries:

• kdelibs 3.1, which can be downloaded following the instructions at the KDE website (for more information on these kdelibs releases, please see the KDE 3.1.5 announcement);
• Qt-3.1, which is available in source code from Trolltech as qt-x11-free-3.1.0.tar.gz (qt-x11-free-3.1.2.tar.gz is recommended); and
• for reading help pages and other KOffice documentation, libxml2 >= 2.4.9 and libxslt >= 1.0.7.

Compiler Requirements. At a minimum gcc-2.95-* is required.

Source Code. The complete source code for KOffice 1.3 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), theKompany.com (which has contributed Kivio and Kugar to KOffice), Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB (which partially sponsors KOffice developer David Faure and has contributed KChart to KOffice) and SUSE AG which employs Lukáš Tinkl, the current KOffice release manager. In addition, a large number of individual sponsors (donate) have provided 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 Lukáš Tinkl for his excellent services as release coordinator.

Trademarks Notices. KDE, K Desktop Environment and KOffice are trademarks of KDE e.V. Incorporated. 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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