KOffice 1.4.2: Improved OpenDocument Support [LWN.net]

KOffice 1.4.2: Improved OpenDocument Support

Posted Oct 12, 2005 5:57 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

I am a Gnome user usually and I am supremely lazy so I just use the default applications for most things. The gnome office stuff for instance... Abiword, Gnumeric, et al.

But one thing that I am impressed about with KDE is the width and breadth of their office suite. It simply has everything there.

One little promising app not yet in the Koffice suite, but part of the project is a painting program called Krita. For people tired of Gimp or want a program to create raster images in (rather then edit them, which is Gimp's speciality), then check out Krita.

It's a very special buddy that I want to check out soon. (a bit busy lately).

It has support for 16bit per channel color, support for color management (ie icc color profiles) thru Little CMS (most common library for this stuff), support for CYMK color profiles, support for OpenEXR HDR format. (standard 'high-def' digital imaging format from Industrial Light and Magic)

From OpenEXR.com
OpenEXR is used by ILM on all motion pictures currently in production. The first movies to employ OpenEXR were Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone, Men in Black II, Gangs of New York, and Signs. Since then, OpenEXR has become ILM's main image file format.

Woot.

I mean seriously (well only semi-seriously, (well not that seriously))... How can MS Office hold a candle Koffice? What average person can give a crap about MS Access when you can have Krita or Karbon14 in addition to all the 'standard' office productivity apps that Koffice and MS Office provides?!!

If it wasn't for the all the years and years of people using MS Office and MS Office being a core part to a large number of (very expensive) CMS/SCR (or whatever they are called) solutions I couldn't imagine a reason why a sane person would want to pay 300 dollars for MS Office to go with the 300 dollars that they paid for MS Windows. But reality being what it is, that's what it is.

Glad I don't have to deal with that personally. :)

KOffice 1.4.2: Improved OpenDocument Support

Posted Oct 12, 2005 5:58 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Oh ya. I mispoke. Krita is now in this version of Koffice.

KOffice 1.4.2: Improved OpenDocument Support

Posted Oct 12, 2005 7:52 UTC (Wed) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

But not yet with CMYK, openEXR and 16 bit channel support I'm afraid...
That will be in the 1.5 release of KOffice which is planned for the end
of January 2006.

KOffice 1.4.2: Improved OpenDocument Support

Posted Oct 12, 2005 12:30 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Ah, my mistake.

Is that all aviable in cvs currently though?

KOffice 1.4.2: Improved OpenDocument Support

Posted Oct 12, 2005 13:13 UTC (Wed) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

Yes, certainly. There's still stuff that needs to be implemented of
course, and color adjustments are broken at the moment, but the cmyk, the
16 bit/channel, the openexr, the color management are all done.

KOffice 1.4.2: Improved OpenDocument Support

Posted Oct 12, 2005 12:41 UTC (Wed) by cpm (subscriber, #3554) [Link]

"How can MS Office hold a candle Koffice?"

realisticly, there are a few ways.

First that comes to mind, is that Koffice doesn't run on Windows.
Second, Dell doesn't include it at a deep discount, in fact, Dell
doesn't include it at all.
Thirdly, Koffice doesn't run on Mac without a lot of extra fiddling.
Fourth, Apple computer doesn't bundle it at a deep discount, in fact
they don't bundle it at all.
Fifth, It's not what folks use "At Work".
Sixth, It's not what folks use "At School".
Seventh, I've yet to see a "knowedgebase.net" article published
with Koffice, but Word documents abound.
Eighth, I see Word documents all over government websites,

and on and on. But this is all elementary. Mass has been the first
state to grow a pair, and are coming under intense heat over
it. Would be nice if someone were to step up and actually enforce
our fair trade and antitrust laws.

KOffice 1.4.2: Improved OpenDocument Support

Posted Oct 12, 2005 20:32 UTC (Wed) by job (subscriber, #670) [Link]

The ports to Win32 (almost certain) and Mac (probable) are not that far away anymore, look for them sometime after KDE 4.

KOffice 1.4.2: Improved OpenDocument Support

Posted Oct 13, 2005 14:49 UTC (Thu) by Blaisorblade (guest, #25465) [Link]

> Eighth, I see Word documents all over government websites,
Yes, biggest problem. They should also improve their MS-Office support (using perhaps OpenOffice.org code).
But this is changing. In Massachussets the new law prohibits that. Let's hope the situation improves - and frankly, except perhaps Palladium, I've never seen in the last years the situation become worse.