KOffice 2.0 Alpha 7 Release Announcement

May 7, 2008 (The INTERNET). The KDE Project today announced the release of KOffice version 2.0 Alpha 7, 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. The Alpha 7 release is a work in progress. This release introduces improvements in almost all the components as well as in the common infrastructure. All the applications saw big changes, both bugfixes and new features.

KOffice 2 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.

Ongoing polishing

The release notes for alpha6 noted the addition of snap-guides that will guide the user when he or she is placing objects near other objects in any direction, alpha7 adds a bounding-box snapping option for even more powerful snapping options.

This release has also added the option for users to configure shape-shadows in the form of a new dock-widget as well as a whole new set of features in Kexi for its report generator which allows users to create a document based on the data in the database with features like charting and scripting. Krita has received a lot of attention in general polish and bugfixing. Krita has additionally received a new plugin type which will allow both KOffice developers as well as 3rd party developers to create new pixel-generator filters, such as clouds or fractal generators. KPresenter has focussed most on page-effects this release, but has managed to do more work on master page editing as well.

This release is the first to see some results of the OpenDocument Format testsuite being imported into KOffice. The testsuite exists from a lot of little documents that each show one feature in ODF. Automated testing of loading those documents will allow developers to keep on workin on the code without fear of breaking the already working code. This is known as regression testing.
In this release already 23 tests are added into KOffice and the results are visible in much better loading of text documents in KWord.

More information about new KOffice2 technology can be found in the Alpha6-announcement and earlier or in the release notes.

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:

• full-featured charting engine (KChart)
• mathematical formula handling (KFormula)

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

Announcement: Written by Thomas Zander

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 ASA. 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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