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KDE.org: KOffice 1.2 Released

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The KDE Project today announced the immediate release of KOffice
1.2, the third major release of KDE’s free, integrated office
suite. KOffice utilizes free and open standards for its document
formats, component communication and component embedding, and
provides a variety of filters to interoperate with other popular
office suites.

“This new version of KOffice features an incredible number of
improvements over KOffice 1.1”, explained David Faure, a KOffice
developer and release coordinator. “KWord and KPresenter, for
instance, provide WYSIWYG on-screen display, bi-directional text
editing and spell-checking. KWord has an advanced English thesaurus
based on WordNet, mail merge, footnotes and more. KSpread
improvements include powerful new database connectivity, sorting
and printing options. Kugar has a new report template designer.
Filters have improved greatly. Overall, I think users will be very,
very pleased with this upgrade.”

“KOffice has achieved a high level of integration with the rest
of KDE and its technologies”, added Andreas Pour, Chairman of the
KDE League. “With the advanced KDE printing system, users can
easily generate high-quality, cross-platform PDF documents. In
addition, the file manager Konqueror can now embed a KOffice
document viewer for quick browsing, and can also display thumbnail
previews of KOffice documents. With KDE’s DCOP scripting
technology, KOffice documents can be created or edited using
scripts or other applications.”

This release, available in 37 [http://i18n.kde.org/teams/distributed.html]
languages, includes a frame-based, full-featured word processor
(KWord) [http://www.koffice.org/kword/];
a presentation application (KPresenter) [http://www.koffice.org/kpresenter/];
a spreadsheet application (KSpread) [http://www.koffice.org/kspread/];
a flowchart application (Kivio) [http://www.thekompany.com/projects/kivio/];
and business reporting software (Kugar) [http://www.thekompany.com/projects/kugar/].
Additionally, KOffice includes robust embeddable charts (KChart)
[http://www.koffice.org/kchart/]
and formulas (KFormula) [http://www.koffice.org/kformula/]
as well as a new built-in English thesaurus (KThesaurus) and
numerous import and export filters [http://www.koffice.org/filters/]
for document exchange with other office suites. The vector-drawing
application Karbon14 [http://www.koffice.org/karbon/]
is scheduled for its inaugural stable release with KOffice 1.3.

KOffice 1.2 complements the release of KDE 3.0.3 [http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-3.0.3.html]
last month. KDE, the leading desktop for Linux and other UNIXes, is
an international, powerful and easy-to-use Internet-enabled
desktop.

KOffice and all its components and requirements (including KDE)
are available for free under Open Source licenses. KOffice can be
freely downloaded from the KDE http [http://download.kde.org/stable/koffice-1.2/src/]
or ftp [http://www.kde.org/ftpmirrors.html]
mirrors.

Principal Improvements

KOffice 1.2 is a stable release which offers a number of
important feature additions and improvements compared to KOffice
1.1:

Highlights

  • KThesaurus. KThesaurus, an English thesaurus based on WordNet,
    [http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~wn/]
    is a new KOffice component which can also be used on a stand-alone
    basis (screenshot [http://www.danielnaber.de/tmp/art/thesaurus_screen3.png]).
    WordNet is a lexical reference system inspired by current
    psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory. Thanks to
    Princeton University [http://www.princeton.edu/] and the
    WordNet team for their productive research and for making this
    excellent tool freely available for KOffice and other
    projects.
  • Konqueror Embedding / Preview. All KOffice components feature a
    new read-only Konqueror plugin for previewing KOffice documents. In
    addition, KDE’s file manager (Konqueror) can now display thumbnail
    previews of KOffice documents.
  • DCOP (Remote control). All KOffice components have a greatly
    enhanced DCOP scriptability. For example, DCOP can be used to
    insert or reformat text in KWord and KPresenter.
  • Unicode / BiDi. KWord, KSpread and KPresenter accept non-latin1
    Unicode fonts. KWord and KPresenter now feature full support for
    reading and writing bi-directional text, such as Arabic and Hebrew
    (screenshots: http://www.koffice.org/kword/pics/kword-bidi.png,
    http://www.koffice.org/kword/pics/kword-arabic.png)
  • Other. WYSIWYG screen display, database connectivity, mail
    merge, footnotes, sound, template designer, sorting and printing
    highlights are listed below.

Filters

  • New filters.
    • All KOffice components are capable of exporting to PDF using
      KDE’s printing system.
    • KWord has a number of new filters for enhanced compatibility
      with other office suites: WordPerfect (limited import / export);
      RTF (substantial import); Unicode text (substantial import /
      export); WML (limited import / export); MSWrite (limited import);
      PalmDoc (substantial import / export); Lotus AmiPro (limited
      import); and XSLT (limited support for mapping to other XML-based
      office formats).
    • KSpread has a new dBASE import filter.
  • Improved filters. KWord has a number of improved filters for
    enhanced compatibility with other office suites, including new
    image support for AbiWord, HTML and AbiWord (import / export); RTF
    (export); LaTeX (import / export); HTML (import / export – the HTML
    import engine has been completely rewritten); and plain text
    (import / export).

KOffice / General

  • WYSIWYG. KWord, KPresenter and the formula objects have
    received an overhaul in the presentation: on-screen text layout and
    painting have been redesigned around the popular and intuitive
    WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) design concept.
  • Document format. KOffice has switched to zip (instead of tar
    and gzip) for archiving / compressing its native file format and to
    using “relative paths” for objects included in the archive (such as
    images or embedded components). This provides greatly improved
    document compatability with other Open Source office suites, while
    enhancing performance. KOffice 1.1 document format support is
    retained.
  • SVG support. KOffice components can now handle many SVG images
    (animation is not yet supported).
  • Word completion. KWord and KPresenter offer a word completion
    feature. By using a key shortcut, these office applications will
    try to complete the word using a word-list, consisting of the words
    in the current document or compiled from another document.
  • Spell checking. KPresenter and KSpread now have a spell
    checker.

KWord (Word Processing)

  • Mail merge. KWord can create multiple documents from a single
    template, where only some fields change. The data can come from an
    SQL database, or can be stored in the document itself.
  • Footnotes. KWord now has footnotes. Configurable footnote
    (line) separators are included.
  • Tables and frames. KWord has improved tables, including proper
    table borders, variable-width table sizing, customized table styles
    and templates, and frames, including inline frame positioning,
    frame layering, frame styles, adjustable margins and configurable
    text flow.
  • Text handling. KWord now supports double underline, text
    shadow, soft hyphens, non-breaking spaces and a text background
    color, as well as commented text and hyperlinks.
  • Headers / footers. KWord allows different formats for both the
    first and other pages as well as for the even and odd pages.
  • Image handling. KWord now permits replacing images in a frame
    and can load KWord 1.0 images.

KPresenter (Presentations).

  • Transition effects. New KPresenter transition effects include
    Blinds, Box In / Out, Checkboard, Cover, Uncover, Dissolve, Random
    and others. Moreover, sounds can now be included in
    transitions.
  • Objects. KPresenter supports several new objects for creating
    professional presentations have been added: freehand, polyline,
    quadric bezier curve, cubic bezier curve and convex / concave
    polygon. New “guide lines” and “guide points” as well as vertical
    alignment help with object layout.
  • Thumbnail views. KPresenter displays thumbnail views of each
    page in the sidebar.
  • Styles. Styles have been added to KPresenter for text and
    paragraph formatting.
  • Comments. A new note bar in KPresenter allows you to add
    comments to each page of a presentation.

KSpread (Spreadsheet).

  • Data import / database connectivity. KSpread can load data
    directly from an SQL database or read data from a text file.
  • Printing. KSpread printing has been greatly enhanced with the
    capability to define ranges for printing; and to repeat specified
    rows and columns on each page (for headings and descriptions).
  • Sorting. KSpread can now sort up to three rows or columns
    together; can store the sorted results somewhere else, to keep the
    original data intact; and can apply the layout / formatting of the
    original data to the new location, including adding a row header
    outside the sort range at the new location.
  • Templates. KSpread now supports templates.
  • Functions. KSpread has 37 new built-in functions, including
    Euro conversion functions, and now supports “Goal Seek”. KSpread
    function names are now case-insensitive and provide greater
    compatability with Excel functions.
  • Views. KSpread spreadsheets can now have Multiple views, with
    each view able to select or modify different portions of the same
    sheet independently.
  • Sheet layouts. KSpread now allows different header and footer
    formats, as well as separate layouts, for each separate sheet in a
    workbook.

Kugar (Business Reporting Tool).

  • GUI report template designer. Kugar has a new flexible, WYSIWYG
    report template designer, which among other things can create, load
    and save report templates for the report engine and automatically
    create report bands (such as headers, footers and details).
  • Report engine. Kugar features a new report engine, with support
    for reports with complicated structures (e.g., master-detail
    reports) and detail header and footer bands.

A more detailed list of changes
[http://www.koffice.org/announcements/changelog-1.2.phtml]
and notes about the release [http://www.koffice.org/releases/]
are available at the KOffice web site [http://www.koffice.org/].

Installing KOffice 1.2 Binary Packages

Some Linux / UNIX OS vendors have kindly provided binary
packages of KOffice 1.2 for some versions of their distribution,
and in other cases community volunteers have done so. Some of these
binary packages are available for free download from KDE’s http
[http://download.kde.org/stable/koffice-1.2/]
or ftp [http://www.kde.org/ftpmirrors.html]
mirrors. Additional binary packages, as well as updates to the
packages now available, may become available over the coming
weeks.

Please note that the KDE Project makes these packages available
from the KDE web site as a convenience to KDE users. The KDE
Project is not responsible for these packages as they are provided
by third parties – typically, but not always, the distributor of
the relevant distribution – using tools, compilers, library
versions and quality assurance procedures over which KDE exercises
no control. If you cannot find a binary package for your OS, or you
are displeased with the quality of binary packages available for
your system, please read the KDE Binary Package Policy [http://www.kde.org/packagepolicy.html]
and/or contact your OS vendor.

The library requirements for a particular binary package vary
with the system on which the package was compiled. Please bear in
mind that some binary packages may require a newer version of Qt
and other libraries than the applicable vendor shipped with the
system (e.g., LinuxDistro X.Y may have shipped with Qt 3.0.0 but
the packages below may require Qt 3.0.3). For general library
requirements for KDE, please see the text at Source Code – Library
Requirements [#source_code-library_requirements] below.

At the time of this release, pre-compiled packages are available
for:

Binary packages contributed by users rather than the relevant OS
vendor are located in the contrib
[http://download.kde.org/stable/koffice-1.2/contrib/]
directory. If packages have not been provided for your system and
you would like to volunteer to build tested packages for others,
please notify the KDE Packager mailing list
[http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-packager].

Updates. Additional or updated binary packages will likely
become available over the coming days and weeks; please check the
servers [http://download.kde.org/stable/koffice-1.2/]
periodically for updates and pre-compiled packages for other
distributions.

Compiling KOffice 1.2

KOffice 1.2 requires the following libraries:

Please note that some components of KOffice 1.2 (such as the
Quattro Pro import filter and KChart [http://www.koffice.org/kchart/])
will not compile with older versions of gcc/egcs [http://gcc.gnu.org/], such as egcs-1.1.2
or gcc-2.7.2. At a minimum gcc-2.95-* is required.

The complete source code for KOffice 1.2 is available for free
download via one of the KDE http [http://download.kde.org/stable/koffice-1.2/src/]
or ftp [http://www.kde.org/ftpmirrors.html]
mirrors. These source packages have been digitally signed with
GnuPG [http://www.gnupg.org/]
using the David Faure PGP Key (available from the KOffice Signature
page [http://www.koffice.org/signature.phtml]
or public key servers), and their respective MD5 sums are listed on
the KOffice 1.2 Info Page [http://www.koffice.org/releases/1.2-release.phtml].

Additionally, source rpms are available for the following
distributions:

Further Information. For further instructions on compiling and
installing KOffice, please consult the KOffice installation
instructions [http://www.koffice.org/install-source.phtml].
For problems with SRPMs, please contact the person listed in the
applicable .spec file.

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