KOffice 1.4 RC Announcement

June 02, 2005 (The INTERNET). The KDE Project today announced the immediate release of KOffice 1.4rc1, the first release candidate release for KOffice 1.4, scheduled for release later this month. 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 is principally a public testing and developer solicitation release (more help is welcome!).

This release 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); a new integrated database client (Kexi); a new image editing application (Krita); and a vector-drawing application (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 1.4rc1 complements the release of KDE 3.4 last month. KDE is a powerful and easy-to-use Internet-enabled desktop for Linux and other UNIXes, and together with KOffice constitutes 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 and can also be obtained as a x86 Live CD.

Principal Improvements

The principal improvements over KOffice 1.3 are:

• Krita: Krita is an image editor and paint application with a wide range of applications, from photo editing to the creation of original artwork. Sporting a clear and uncluttered interface (for a paint app...) it makes the features it delivers accessible and intuitive to use. This is the first public release of Krita and while it provides a coherent set of features, it is only the first stepping stone towards a flexible paint application for artists and image editors. For a list of features supported by Krita, see the krita information page.
• Kexi. KOffice 1.4 is the first official release to include Kexi. Kexi is an integrated environment for creating and managing databases. It can be used for creating database schemas; inserting data; performing queries, and processing data. Forms can be created to provide a custom interface to your data. All database objects - tables, queries and forms - are stored in the database, making it easy to share databases. Kexi is considered as a long awaited Open Source competitor for MS Access, Filemaker and Oracle Forms. Its development is motivated by the lack of Rapid Application Development (RAD) tools for database systems that are sufficiently powerful, inexpensive, open standards driven and portable across many OSes and hardware platforms. For a list of features supported by Kexi, see the kexi website.
• OASIS OpenDocument support: Most KOffice applications now support the OASIS OpenDocument file format. KOffice developer David Faure is part of the OASIS technical committee and was able to participate in the discussions that led to the creation of this standard file format.

KWord (Word Processor):

• rewritten spell-checking support which is much faster and solves many problems (e.g. KOffice-1.3's right-click-menu sometimes hanging); with aspell, spell-checking is available in more than 70 languages.
• word completion with tooltip;
• a new WordPerfect import filter, based on an external library, libwpd;

KPresenter (Presentation Tool):

• a master page concept;
• reworked dialogs (property editor, object and page effects); and
• customizable slide order and selection for slide show.

KSpread (Spreadsheet):

• Support for right-to-left spreadsheets;
• much improved value parsing and formatting;
• a calendar plug-in;
• additional options for cell validity, 5 new functions, and
• a new Microsoft Excel import filter.

KChart (Graph and chart drawing tool):

• New, much improved, data editor;
• linear or logarithmic scale;
• printing support;
• support for data as rows or columns; and
• export to PNG and SVG formats.

Kivio (Flow-charting application):

• New stencils: Nassi Schneiderman;
• a docker for adding stencils to the document;
• a tool for adding connector targets to stencils; and
• a poly-line connector.

A complete list of changes since KOffice-1.4-beta1 is available at the KOffice web site.

Installing KOffice 1.4rc1 Binary Packages

Binary Packages: At the time of this release, there are no pre-compiled packages. The final release will include pre-compiled packages for most Linux distributions.

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.

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 1.4rc1

Library Requirements: KOffice 1.4 requires the following libraries:

• kdelibs 3.3 or 3.4, which can be downloaded following the instructions at the KDE website (for more information on these kdelibs releases, please see the KDE 3.4 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-3.3.4.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 1.4rc1 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 1.4rc1 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.

Press Release: Written by David Faure.

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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