KOffice 2.0 Alpha 2 Release Announcement

Aug 2, 2007 (The INTERNET). The KDE Project today announced the release of KOffice version 2.0 Alpha 2, a technology preview of the upcoming version 2.0.

Highlights

This is mainly a technology preview for those that are interested in the new ideas and technologies of the KOffice 2 series. KOffice 2.0 is currently under heavy development. It is not meant as something to be used for any real work and can crash at any point. However, here are some of the highlights of the upcoming KOffice 2 series. Note that not all of the new technologies will be fully implemented in the first release, 2.0.

Also note that although KOffice is included in KDE 4.0 Beta 1, it has its own release cycle, and the first version of the KOffice version 2 series is expected around New Year 2007-2008.

Better Integration Through Flake Shapes

The core of the new improvements is the revolutionary Flake library, which will allow KOffice to use any shape in any application. A Flake shape can be something as simple as a circle or something as complex as a complete spreadsheet. It is also extremely simple to create new shapes, something that is demonstrated by the Google-sponsored Summer of Code project Music Notation flake, in which a student creates a music notation plugin in just 6 weeks.

All Flake shapes are plugins, so the user can install new shapes independently of the installed KOffice. This makes KOffice one of the most extensible office suites. We expect many third-party extensions to appear, given the ease of use of the Flake plugin API.

Uses Qt4 and KDE 4 Technologies

The changes to the infrastructure are enormous, with most of the internals having been rewritten or changed. KOffice version 2 series will take full advantage of the improved Qt 4 and kdelibs 4 technologies, giving it new features like text directionality and improved layouting. The text rendering is also much improved, giving it professional quality text layout if the fonts support it.

Other KDE4 technologies that KOffice 2 will eventually take advantage of are Phonon for multimedia, Decibel for instant messaging and collaboration and Sonnet for automatic language recognition.

Ports to Windows and MacOS X

Since Qt4 and kdelibs4 are portable to Windows and MacOS X, KOffice 2 will be too. Due to Qt4, KOffice will have a native look and feel on all platforms, making it a well-behaved citizen everywhere.

Scripting For All Components

KOffice will be scriptable in at least Python, Ruby, Javascript and Java through the KDE-wide Kross solution. In this alpha release, this is implemented for KWord, KSpread and Krita.

About KOffice

KOffice is an integrated office suite built on the KDE platform, and utilizes free and open standards like OpenDocument for its document formats, component communication and component embedding.

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 the following helper applications:

• 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.

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

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 KDChart to KOffice), OpenOffice Polska which employs Kexi developer Jarosław Staniek and sponsored the KDElibs for win32 project which enabled the porting of KOffice applications to MS Windows, Google which through the "Summer of Code" program supports Alfredo Beaumont to work on OpenDocument and MathML support for KFormula and Emmanuele Tamponi to work on a framework for curves in Krita. In addition, individual sponsors (donate), provide significant support for KDE and KOffice. Thanks!

Press Release: Written by Inge Wallin

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