"One of the major complaints regarding Linux as a
feasible alternative to the Microsoft Windows environment on
desktops has been the lack of usable, Linux-based business
productivity software. In corporations, an integrated office suite
offering word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software is
a basic requirement. The Linux-based KOffice suite attempts to fill
that void, but still has a lot of ground to cover before it can
catch up with the de facto corporate standard, Microsoft Office.
KOffice is an integrated office suite designed to run on the K
Desktop Environment under X Windows. Based on a collaborative
effort of volunteers in the Linux community, Version 1.1 of
KOffice, released in August, represents a significant improvement
over the 1.0 release by incorporating four principle applications
and four support programs and fixing numerous bugs.
KOffice's main applications are KWord, a word-processing and
desktop-publishing application; KSpread, a table-oriented
spreadsheet application; KPresenter, a presentation application;
and Kivio, a flow-charting application. The support
applications--Kontour, a vector graphics drawing program; KChart, a
chart-drawing program; KFormula, a formula editor; and Krayon, a
pixel-based image-manipulation program--allow users to edit objects
that can be inserted into other KOffice applications."
