KOffice 1.5 Beta2 Announcement

March 10, 2006 (The INTERNET). The KDE Project today announced the immediate release of KOffice 1.5-beta2, the second beta release for KOffice 1.5, scheduled for release this March.

KOffice is an integrated office suite for KDE which utilizes free and open standards for its document formats, component communication and component embedding. This is the last beta release before the release candidate.

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 robust embeddable objects:

• a 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.

Developed by a team of volunteers, KOffice and all its components (including KDE) are available for free under Open Source licenses from the KDE http and ftp mirrors.

Principal Improvements

The principal improvements over KOffice 1.5 beta1 are:

• OASIS OpenDocument support in KChart, OpenDocument improvements in KWord, KSpread, KPresenter and Karbon :

  With beta2, KChart not only got a new charting engine donated by Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, but also start of support for loading and saving charts in the OASIS OpenDocument file standard. KPresenter, KSpread, KWord and Karbon14 all have received improvements and fixes to their OpenDocument code.

  The spreading of the OpenDocument file format is widely regarded as one of the most important developments in the whole IT industry right now. It will give users world-wide the possibility to control their own documents and also ensure that all documents will always be possible to read at any time in the future.

  KOffice was the first office suite that announced support for OpenDocument and now the second to announce it as the default file format after OpenOffice.org. This makes KOffice a member of a very select group and will lead to new deployment opportunities. Great care has been taken to ensure interoperability with other office software that also use OpenDocument.

• Performance and stability improvements in Krita :

  Thanks to strong user testing, Krita received over 500 fixes, and as a result is now much more stable and polished. The Krita developers also worked hard on improving the speed of loading and rendering large and complex images, painting gradients and previewing filter effects. The quality of the raw image input filter has been much improved and Krita is now compliant with the CREATE project.

• KPlato user interface, manual and recalculation :

  KPlato has been improved beyond recognition through the immense improvement of the recalculation engine. Not only that, but KPlato now has a complete manual and work has continued on improving KPlato's user interface. KPlato is now ready for intensive user testing!

KWord (Word Processor):

• Many improvements in the OpenDocument suppport
• Much improved mouse handling, especially in Text mode
• User interface polish and many bug fixes

KSpread (Spreadsheet):

• Improvements to OpenDocument handling
• Object handling now conforms to the KOffice standard
• Brace highlighting in the formula editor
• Performance optimizations
• Stability improvements

KPresenter (Presentation Tool):

• Save/load images in the master slide in the OASIS format
• Fix custom slideshow
• Stability fixes

Kivio (Flow-charting application):

• Improvements in connector handling

Kexi (Database application):

• Fixes for data handling in MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite database drivers, and for data import/export
• CopyCenter script package
• Usability polish all over the place
• Stability fixes

Krita (Pixel based graphics editor):

• Many performance improvements, especially in loading rendering images, drawing gradients, rendering filter previews.
• Fix the image overview palette
• Many fixes and improvements for Adjustment layers. You can actually save and load most filters now.
• Enable scrollwheel and pan in the preview view
• Many stability improvements.
• Exif support (although saving tiff is currently broken.)

Kugar (Business Report Generator):

• Disabled from the koshell since it is not an interactive program.

KChart (Graph and chart drawing tool):

• Start of OpenDocument implementation
• New chart engine

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

Installing KOffice 1.5-beta Binary Packages

Binary Packages: Some Linux/UNIX OS vendors have kindly provided binary packages of KOffice 1.5 beta2 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, pre-compiled packages are available for:

• SuSE Linux 9.3 and 10.0
• Kubuntu
• Debian Sid

MS Windows Version: Kexi installation package from OpenOffice Polska is available for MS Windows.

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 1.5-beta2

Library Requirements: KOffice 1.5-beta2 requires the following libraries:

• kdelibs 3.3, 3.4 or 3.5, which can be downloaded following the instructions at the KDE website (for more information on these kdelibs releases, please see the KDE 3.5 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-3.3.5.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 1.5-beta2 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 1.5-beta2 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/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 Inge Wallin.

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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