KOffice heads toward 1.4

The first beta of the KOffice 1.4 release was announced on April 29, so we thought we'd take a look at this release and see how KOffice was shaping up. How does KOffice 1.4 stack up against the competition, namely OpenOffice.org and standalone applications like Gnumeric, Abiword and the Gimp?

Since the release is still in beta, we were checking for features compared to the other suites, but ignored any stability issues. To try out KOffice we downloaded the "Klax" live CD. There are also binary packages and source code. We also compiled KOffice beta1 on Ubuntu "Hoary" with no problems.

Since support for the Open Document Format is one of the big features in KOffice 1.4, we decided to test that out first. Unfortunately, we didn't have much luck. We started by opening a document in OOWriter (from one of the OpenOffice.org 2 preview releases from Ubuntu's package repository) and then saving it in the Open Document Format. KWord refused to open the document, complaining about the paper size. When we tried opening a document from KWord, saved in the Open Document Format, it also failed. KWord had no trouble opening other file types, including Microsoft Word, which is more likely to be found in the wild at the moment anyway.

Next we tried out KSpread and KPresenter using some PowerPoint documents we found online using Google and the Gnumeric testing spreadsheets. Unfortunately, KSpread and KPresenter are a bit less capable than OpenOffice.org or Gnumeric when it comes to handling these documents. The test spreadsheets showed that KSpread doesn't implement many of the functions that are available in Gnumeric and OpenOffice.org Calc. KPresenter had trouble with the Microsoft PowerPoint document, only displaying the text for the slide show and badly mangling the text formatting.

KWord, KSpread and KPresenter are fine for creating original documents, but users may wish to look to OpenOffice.org or Gnumeric and AbiWord for exchanging documents with users of Microsoft Office or OpenOffice.org.

We did like Kivio, the KOffice diagram and flowchart program. It comes with a hefty selection of stencils, and the interface is clean and easy to use. The beta is a bit unstable, but we expect that problem will be taken care of before the final release.

Two applications that make their debut with the 1.4 release are Krita and Kexi. Krita is an image editing application, and Kexi is a database management application. Krita looks promising, though it doesn't seem quite as full-featured as The Gimp just yet. It offers a much different interface than the Gimp and is a bit crowded at first, making it a bit difficult to work on larger images. Krita does allow the user to open new windows with the same image, but this is also a bit less than optimal.

Kexi could be the Access-like application that many Linux users are looking for. It's a bit rough around the edges at the moment, but it could be the answer for many Linux users who want to create simple databases that do not require MySQL or PostgreSQL backend.

KOffice also includes KChart, Karbon14, KFormula and Kugar. Kugar is an application for generating "business quality reports." KChart is, as the name suggests, an application for generating charts. It can be used as a standalone application or within KSpread. It offers a fairly extensive variety of chart types, including bar charts, polar charts, and "ring" charts. Karbon14 is a Illustrator-like application. We didn't get time to test it extensively.

Users who are interested in test-driving KOffice should check out the "Klax" live CD -- it's a relatively small download and offers the full range of KOffice apps and the KDE 3.4 desktop. The final KOffice 1.4 release is slated for June.

In all, it looks like the KOffice 1.4 release will be a significant move forward for KOffice. In some ways, several of the KOffice components are still a way behind the other free office applications in terms of document format support and features, but the suite does provide a usable alternative for Linux users who don't require extensive Microsoft Office compatibility.