KOffice 1.4 Announcement

June 21, 2005 (The INTERNET). The KDE Project today announced the immediate release of KOffice 1.4 for Linux and Unix operating systems. KOffice is an integrated set of free office applications based on 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. In fact the KOffice 1.4 release is a large step towards embracing the OASIS OpenDocument file format which has become an approved standard for office file formats. This format is also used by the upcoming OpenOffice.org 2.0, thus providing high interoperability.

KOffice 1.4 consists of the following applications:

New applications in the 1.4 release:

• Krita - A pixel based image manipulation application
• Kexi - An integrated data management application

Improved existing 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

This full set of integrated components makes KOffice one of the most complete office suites available.

The greatest highlights in the 1.4 release are:

• Krita and Kexi, two new applications.
• Integration of the OASIS OpenDocument file format, which has become an accepted standard.

Other major improvements include a completely rewritten Excel filter which can import Microsoft Excel files very well. KChart has received many improvements, making it much more usable and functional than before; KPresenter now supports master pages and custom slide orders; KWord now offers much faster spell checking, a new Word Perfect import filter and tooltip based autocompletion. And Kivio has improved stencil support.
There were also many bugs fixed with notable ones like printing bugs in KSpread as well as many more.

KOffice is the first office suite supporting the OASIS OpenDocument to a large extent.
These filters are provided for thorough testing while still using the KOffice native format as a solid and known to work choice for documents. Switching to the OpenDocument format as the new native format is planned for the next release when these filters are known to be rock solid and functional. With this in mind the current KOffice release provides the OASIS OpenDocument filters.

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-1.3 is available at the KOffice web site.

Can't wait to see the new KOffice? Fetch the KOffice 1.4 Live-CD.

Installing KOffice 1.4 Binary Packages

Binary Packages: Some Linux/UNIX OS vendors have kindly provided binary packages of KOffice 1.4 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, there are no pre-compiled packages. The final release will include pre-compiled packages for most Linux distributions. pre-compiled packages are available for:

• Mandriva Linux 10.2
• Kubuntu
• RedHat 9, Red Hat Enterprise 3 and Red Hat Enterprise 4
• Fedora Core 3, Fedora Core 4

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 1.4

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.
• libwv2 >= 0.1.9 for KWord's MS Word import filter
• libwpd >= 0.8 for KWord's Word Perfect import filter
• littlecms >= 1.12 for Krita
• imagemagick 6 for Krita's import/export filter

Compiler Requirements: Please note that KOffice 1.4 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 1.4 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 Mandriva (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 and KDE

KOffice is part of the KDE Project. KDE is an award-winning, independent project of hundreds of developers, translators, artists and other 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 including a state-of-the-art browser (Konqueror), a personal information management suite (Kontact), a full office suite (KOffice), a large set of networking application 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.

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

Press Release: Written by Raphael Langerhorst.

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