Sources and Binary Packages

The source code to KOffice 2.3 RC1 can be downloaded from download.kde.org. Binary packages will be available and announced separately as soon as the respective distribution provides them.

Sources and Binary Packages

The source code to KOffice 2.3 beta 4 can be downloaded from download.kde.org. Binary packages will be available and announced separately as soon as the respective distribution provides them.

Sources and Binary Packages

The source code to KOffice 2.3 beta 3 can be downloaded from download.kde.org. Binary packages will be available and announced separately as soon as the respective distribution provides them.

Between 2.3 beta 1 and 2.3 beta 2 there have been 597 commits by 28 different authors.

• All applications have received bug fixes and improvements.  Krita is the application with the biggest team behind it and therefore also the most active one.
• Embedded formulas have had a general shapeup and now loads much larger parts of the mathML specification
• The import filters for Microsoft formats continue to be improved at a furious rate.  We are now starting to see cases where the look of a document in KOffice is better than in any other free office suite.

Sources and Binary Packages

The source code to KOffice 2.3 beta 2 can be downloaded from download.kde.org. Binary packages will be available and announced separately as soon as the respective distribution provides them.

• Krita is now more or less ready for professional artist use. Some bugs remain in the beta, but those are expected to be gone in the real release.
• “text on shapes” which is available for all KOffice applications and makes KOffice able to show text on all shapes that are able to do that in the OpenDocument specification.
• The slide sorter view in KPresenter, which has been greatly missed by some users. There is also a new shape animations feature for KPresenter.

The new beta also offers many new features and improvements, bug fixes, and improved support for reading Microsoft file formats (doc, xls, ppt, docx, xlsx, pptx).

Showing off various brushes in Krita: chalk, deform, hairy, smudge and spray. Also showing general readiness for artist use.

The 2.3 beta1 release of KOffice gives you a preview of what will be new and improved when the final 2.3 version is released in November. As you can see in the list of changes, there are many improvements.

Readiness for End Users and External Developers

There have been a number of improvements, especially to libraries and plugins, which have resulted in most of the OpenDocument standard now being covered for loading, rendering and saving. , which in itself is a big step forward. The most mature productivity application right now is KSpread, which we are willing to recommend for end user production work.

However, for the two other productivity applications KWord and KPresenter, the user interface does still not reach the level of quality that the team wants to achieve. The applications should be stable enough for real use, but there are still many formatting options that cannot be handled through the user interface. For more information about ideas towards this goal for KWord, see our Personas page.

There is also some good news: During the development cycle for version 2.3, we have had the good fortune to get a usability expert, Thomas Pfeiffer, to donate his time and skill. We expect that this will bear fruit for the 2.4 release.

Regarding the creativity applications, the most mature application of KOffice right now is Krita. There are still some bugs in this beta release, but we expect that at the time for the real release of 2.3, Krita will be usable by real artists for their professional needs. Karbon was also already usable in 2.2, and has remained so.

Readiness of Kexi for production work depends on the needs of the users application. It is recommended to test the feature set of Kexi against specific needs. Since version 2.2, which was the first release in the KOffice 2 family, Kexi has improved mostly in terms of stability. There are a number of features from versions 1.x of Kexi that are not present in 2.x releases yet, but which are either planned for addition or are discontinued. For example, forms may need manual rework because of missing Auto Fields.

Sponsored Development and OpenDocument Community Work

Like 2.2, release 2.3 has seen significant contributions in development from external companies and organizations. Nokia has sponsored much work on the general improvements and the converters for importing MS file formats for their Maemo office viewers. KO GmbH as well as NLnet have sent participants to the ODF plugfest and OpenOffice.org conference in Budapest, Hungary.

As usual, Google has arranged the Google Summer of Code programme. This year, KOffice had 6 projects of which 5 are in this release:

• Benjamin Port worked on shape animations for KPresenter.
• Cyril Oblikov worked on the treeview shape that is mentioned in the changelog, but still considered experimental.
• Adam Celarek worked on next-generation color selectors for Krita.
• Marc Pegon made a new transform tool with freeform warping for Krita.
• Dmitry Kazakov created canvas mirror/rotation and a new multi-threaded rendering engine for Krita.
• José Luis Vergara Tolosa made a hatching brush, a bumpmap filter, and the beginning of an impasto feature, also for Krita.

Sources and Binary Packages

The source code to KOffice 2.3 beta 1 can be downloaded from download.kde.org. Binary packages of KOffice 2.3 beta1 will be available and announced separately as soon as the respective distribution provides them.

Many Linux distributions package KOffice 2.2.2. We know that binary packages are ready for various distributions. If you wish to build KOffice from the sources, you can download them at downloads.kde.org. You can find instructions on how to build them on the KOffice wiki.

Many Linux distributions package KOffice 2.2.1. We know that binary packages are ready for at least Kubuntu (10.04 and Maverick, the upcoming 10.10), Fedora F13, and Debian Unstable. If you wish to build KOffice from the sources, you can download them at downloads.kde.org. You can find instructions on how to build them on the KOffice wiki.

Highlights of KOffice 2.2

Kexi is Back

The big news for this release is that Kexi, the data management application, is back. Kexi was last released in KOffice 1.6 and has seen a complete overhaul of the user interface. This means that Kexi has seen over 3 years of developement. Kexi should be ready for production work already.

Kexi is the new data management application in KOffice

Major Enhancements

The biggest enhancement that is available for all applications is a new framework for effects on shapes. From the start there are 11 effects. More effects will come in future releases.

New Import Filters for MS OOXML Formats

KOffice has received new import filters for the Microsoft XML based office formats that are used in MS Office 2007 and later. The filters are still pretty basic, but definitely usable for real documents. At this time there are no plans for export filters for these file formats.

Improvement in the Applications

All Applications

We have improved compatibility with non-X11 platforms like Windows and OSX. There are also many performance improvements and improvements to OpenDocument handling. For the developers and integrators there has been a cleanup of the libraries and API’s.

KWord

KWord can now load and show many new formatting features. Spell checking works again. Change tracking has been improved and there is now a dialog for accepting or rejecting changes. The support for metadata using RDF has been brought up to OpenDocument 1.2 level. The import filter for the Microsoft doc format has been much improved and there is a new docx import filter.

KSpread

KSpread, the spreadsheet application, has received a lot of work. Among the changes are a number of new functions, an improved default layout, rich text in cells. The import filter for Microsoft Excel has been much improved and there is a new import filter for the MS Office 2007 format xlsx.

KPresenter

The biggest improvement in KPresenter, the presentation application, is the new shape animation framework. There is also an improved support for Xinerama setups. Like the other productivity applications, KPresenter has received much work on the import filter for MS Powerpoint, and there is a new import filter for the xml based format pptx.

Karbon

Karbon has gotten better compatibility with SVG, the Scalable Vector Graphics format. There is also new effect filters for shapes. Most of the improvements to Karbon has gone into the common components and libraries and are therefore available to all KOffice applications.

Krita

Krita has received the most changes of all. There are a number of new brush engines, a new brush settings preset system,a new core image handling system and a quick-acces popup palette for recently used colors and brushes. There are also new file filters for xcf, jpeg2000 and OpenEXR.

Krita has a separate announcement on Krita.org, where you can read a comprehensive list of what’s new in Krita 2.2.

Kexi

As mentioned above, Kexi is back in KOffice. The biggest changes against the old 1.6 version is that there is a new user interface and a new reporting framework. This reporting framework is also used in KPlato.

KPlato

KPlato has received a new project scheduler and improved reporting using KoReport (shared with Kexi).

Improvements in Plugins

The charts have received many bugfixes.

There are two new shape plugins: one for vector images, currently supporting WMF and EMF formats, and one for embedded videos.

Suitability for Use

This release should be much more stable and full-featured than 2.1. Version 2.2 has received many enhancements to the layout engine, the libraries and the filters. There are still areas in the user interface that we want to work on before stating that KOffice is fit for the general public. We are, however, at a stage where we think that KOffice can be used for real work by some users.

Sources and Binary Packages

The source code to KOffice 2.2.0 can be downloaded from download.kde.org. Binary packages of KOffice 2.2.0 will be available and announced separately as soon as the respective distribution provides them.

Bug Reports and User Feedback

The developers are very interested in user feedback and bug reports. Please report bugs that you find at bugs.kde.org. In particular, the KOffice Team is interested in bugs in the following areas:

• OpenDocument support
• Crashes
• Errors on non-X11 platforms since most developers run Linux and may overlook these.

Trademarks Notices. KDE, K Desktop Environment and KOffice are trademarks of KDE e.V. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Qt is a trademark of Nokia. 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.

Press Contacts

As was noted in the announcement for 2.1.0, KOffice 2.1.2 is probably still not usable for production work.

Many Linux distributions package KOffice 2.1.2. A Windows version is expected within a month. 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.

As was noted in the announcement for 2.1.0, KOffice 2.1.1 is probably still not usable for production work.

Many Linux distributions package KOffice 2.1.1. A Windows version is expected within a month. 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.