The KOffice team is happy to announce the first and hopefully only release candidate of the upcoming 2.2 release of KOffice. This is the final prerelease before the final release of version 2.2, so we urge our users to try it out and test it.

As usual, this release offers many improvements and bug fixes, as can be seen in the list of changes. Most of the reported bugs on the so called “release blocker list” have been fixed. The rest will be fixed before the final release. A release blocker is a bug that is either a crash that prevents the user to use the application or a bug that leads to unacceptable data loss. They are marked with a special keyword in the bug database. A regression within the unit test suite can also be regarded as a release blocker.

A more thorough description of what is new in KOffice 2.2 in relation to version 2.1 can be seen in the announcement for version 2.2 beta 1.

Readiness for End Users and External Developers

As also mentioned in the 2.2 beta 1 announcement, the KOffice team had hoped to have time to make the user interface and available feature set ready for end users as well as make the underlying engine ready for external extension developers in time for 2.2. Unfortunately time and limited developer resources didn’t permit to reach both of these goals. The libraries have been reorganized and improved, but the user interface does still not reach the level of quality that the team wants to achieve.

Notable exceptions to this are Krita, that has seen much work on the user interface and Karbon that was already usable before.

Sources and Binary Packages

The source code to KOffice 2.2 RC can be downloaded from download.kde.org. Binary packages of KOffice 2.2 RC will be available and announced separately as soon as the respective distribution provides them.

The KOffice team is happy to announce the second beta of the upcoming 2.2 release of KOffice. This release offers many improvements and bug fixes, as can be seen in the list of changes.

A more thorough description of what is new in KOffice 2.2 in relation to version 2.1 can be seen in the announcement for version 2.2 beta 1.

Readiness for End Users and External Developers

As also mentioned in the 2.2 beta 1 announcement, the KOffice team had hoped to have time to make the user interface and available feature set ready for end users as well as make the underlying engine ready for external extension developers in time for 2.2. Unfortunately time and limited developer resources didn’t permit to reach both of these goals. The libraries have been reorganized and improved, but the user interface does still not reach the level of quality that the team wants to achieve.

Notable exceptions to this are Krita, that has seen much work on the user interface and Karbon that was already usable before.

Sources and Binary Packages

The source code to KOffice 2.2 beta 2 can be downloaded from download.kde.org. Binary packages of KOffice 2.2beta 2 will be available and announced separately as soon as the respective distribution provides them.

The KOffice team is happy to announce the first beta of the upcoming 2.2 release of KOffice. This release brings back Kexi, the data management application similar to MS Access. The new beta also offers many new features and improvements, bug fixes, and improved support for Microsoft file formats.

Kexi 2.2 - Form Designer

The 2.2beta1 release of KOffice gives you a preview of what will be new and improved when the final 2.2 version is released in May. As you can see in the list of changes, there are many new features and an old application from KOffice 1 has made a reappearance: Kexi, the data manager in the style of MS Access. Another completely new feature is import filters for the MS OOXML formats, introduced in MS Office 2007.

Readiness for End Users and External Developers

The KOffice team had hoped to have time to make the user interface and available feature set ready for end users as well as make the underlying engine ready for external extension developers in time for 2.2. Unfortunately time and limited developer resources didn’t permit to reach both of these goals. The libraries have been reorganized and improved, but the user interface does still not reach the level of quality that the team wants to achieve.

Notable exceptions to this are Krita, that has seen much work on the user interface and Karbon that was already usable before.

Sponsored Development and OpenDocument Community Work

Release 2.2 will be the first release where external companies and organizations made significant contributions in development. Nokia has sponsored much work on the general improvements and the converters for importing MS file formats for their Maemo office viewers. NLnet has sponsored the work on RDF metadata and change tracking. KO GmbH as well as NLnet have sent participants to the ODF plugfest and OpenOffice.org conference in Orvieto, Italy.

Sources and Binary Packages

The source code to KOffice 2.2 beta 1 can be downloaded from download.kde.org. Binary packages of KOffice 2.2beta1 will be available and announced separately as soon as the respective distribution provides them.

The KOffice team is happy to announce the first release candidate of KOffice 2.1. As usual, the team has worked diligently and has now been able to remove all the release blocker bugs. See the full changelog for the details.

The application that has received the most bugfixes is once again Krita. Also KWord has seen numerous improvements in many places, and the Microsoft Word filter has once again been improved. The same goes for KPresenter and its Powerpoint import filter and KSpread.

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The KOffice team is happy to announce the third beta of the upcoming KOffice 2.1. The plan was originally to release two beta versions followed by a Release Candidate. However, due to the number of outstanding bugs at the time of the second beta it was decided that we would release a third beta version before the first Release Candidate. We simply did not want to release a KOffice 2.1 with too many unsolved bugs.

It is therefore with great pleasure that we look back and see that this extra month has been used very well. The KOffice team has worked overtime and can show a longer list of fixed bugs than ever. See the full changelog for the impressive details.

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The KOffice team is happy to announce the second Beta of the upcoming 2.1 release that implement the KOffice 2 vision. The KOffice community has now switched from adding new features to fixing the remaining bugs. As can be seen in the full changelog the bugfixing is very active in all parts of the suite.

Something that is not obvious from the changelog is that there has been much activity in the MS office import filters, especially for MS Word and Powerpoint. Many new formatting features have been implemented in both these filters.

Coloured Cells in KOffice

This release brings support for viewing tables created in other applications, it also offers editing of cell content.

As was mentioned in the release notes for beta 1, the 2.1 release will contain new features in also most applications, especially KWord, KPresenter and Krita. It also features the come back of the mathematical formula shape.

Since this release includes so many bugfixes, we encourage users that want to help with the process to try it out and report remaining bugs. As usual we are especially interested in bugs that cause data loss or incompatibilities with other office suites such as OpenOffice.org.

Many Linux distributions package KOffice 2.1beta2. Among them are:

• Kubuntu: http://www.kubuntu.org/news/koffice2.1-beta2

If you wish to build KOffice from the source, you can download them at downloads.kde.org. You can find instructions on how to build them on the KOffice wiki..

The KOffice team is happy to announce the first Beta of the upcoming second release that implement the KOffice 2 vision. This release brings many improvements to the user experience, with bug fixes, improved file support handling, as well as new features.

Coloured Cells in KOffice

This release brings support for viewing tables created in other applications, it also offers editing of cell content.

This release also features the come back of a formula shape, support for filters on shape, and many new painting operation in Krita.

Read the full Changelog.