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Hi!
KOffice has a great interface, more awesome than these ones of M$ Office, OpenOffice or anyothers. It have not tried to clone M$ Office like OpenOffice and that is the greatest advantage.
But the results are ugly like in these programs.
I don't want to have a LaTeX-editor, but something simple like GNU TeXmacs inside the great KOffice-interface:
-Sourcode which can be easily manipulated manually
-Macros (should be possible using Kross)
-Simple placement using shortcuts like in TeXmacs
-Simple formular-editor using the keyboard
-Macros for toc, bib,...
-packages/document styles

I do not want to have a TeXmacs-clone without the ugly X-interface. KOffice should only adopt such features.
I don't know if this is combinable with odf, but it would be simply great.
With a fixed style you write just the text, insert two macros, type some special keys and you have a professional looking document. That's not so easy with our well-known office-apps. The mentioned mixture of Wysiwym and Wysiwyg is simply more comfortable and controllable.
A combination with odf would be great because odf provides nice things, too:
-compression
-all the possibilities for presentation (effects...)
-there are also some kinds of "macros"
-intuitive placing of images
Maybe there could be something like a macro-based odf.
The current KOffice is simply not the program I would use to write medium sized papers.

The User

I think that this will need a completely new app: IMHO, kword is not intended to write complex books because the "frame based" philosophy is not compatible with highly integrated complex layouts.
I know kword include styles, but this is not enough if you need to manually fix many things, like figure and table positioning.
I fact, I don't agree with the OP about odf's "intuitive placing of images". I wrote some books on Writer and figure positioning is a pain, specially if you use master documents: only LaTeX makes the image positioning easy... most of the time (did you ever try to use images in LaTeX with text flowing around them? That's scaring...)
A "semantic only" text processor is needed. LaTeX is great, but it is showing it age. LaTeX have problems, specially for non English speakers, and you need to be a LaTeX hacker if you want to create a new document-class.
Something that makes the build of complex templates easy, that use the full power of otf fonts, that puts all attention into structured writing and not into direct formatting, with an easy and high quality math editor...
Something to replace LaTeX.(1)
That will be great.

(1) Don't waste your time mentioning LyX, I know that app quite well (I wrote my PhD thesis on it): even if it is a really great app it only solve the "cosmetic" LaTeX problems. The real problems like image format limitations, limited font selections (yes, I know about XeTeX), translation of document classes, ... are still there.

I didn't say KWord, I said KOffice.
For some things Wysiwym is simply ugly. It's a more efficient workflow to see the result and not just some codes. You are certainly right that it's too complicate to create LaTeX-styles. There should be styles which could be modified easily (for styles Wysiwym is ugly). Also frames are often useful. It's terrible in LaTeX if you want to place a picture on a special position and the style does not allow it. Or you want to change a line of a style...
Also in TeXmacs it's not easy to edit styles. But for many things you have Wysiwyg there and that is useful. You may want to look on a formular to rethink about it. Then you don't want to care about compilation and some syntax-errors but you also do not want to see some ugly LaTeX-commands.

Maybe you should take a look at Scribus. The current svn version is written in Qt4 and fits in well with KDE4.
It sounds a bit like you are describing a desktop publishing application just as Scribus. Scripting with python is possible, you can import odf and you can embed latex frames. Typography is well done and it exports pdf. Just to name a few features.

Not sure about the OP intention, but scribus is for different purposes. "The" typesetting tool is LaTeX, which is for a completely different "audience": scribus is oriented to page layout (kword is based on similar concepts), while LaTeX (and to a minor extent, Writer) is oriented to the use of styles and "templates".
In kword and scribus you say: I want this text here, and this object there. This approach is nice for a magazines or a photo book, but it is a madness if you need to write a book plenty of mathematics, figures and cross-references.
In LaTeX and Writer you say: I want a chapter tittle followed by many paragraphs, somewhere near the second paragraph a figure... Then, in a different place, you say: chapter tittles have these characteristics, body text these... the first page of every chapter have this and that characteristic, the following ones these other characteristics... and so on.
In a "professional typesetting tool" you separate content from format. That's what I need.
I know kword have some of those things, but it is not enough.

I think there are three kinds of applications:
-Textprocessors like OpenOffice or M$ Office for writing some texts and placing some figures
-Layout-programs like Scribus, Quark, Indesign or Calamus for designing single pages
-Typesetting-tools like LaTeX or TeXmacs, the use macros and RGB has explained it quite well
For me the results of the first category are simply bad.
The second category is good for some purposes but for longer tests the third category is simply the best.
But in LaTeX it's too complicate to place figures and you have to care about compiler-errors when you just want to see your formula. TeXmacs has an ugly X-interface and it's also complicate to create an own design like in LaTeX.
The "perfect tool" could use a lot existing KDE-technologies:
-Nice interface (KOffice)
-Sourcecode-editor (editor component)
-Editing styles (existing KOffice or maybe scribus editing-technologies)
But there are also other things:
-macros
-formulas
-usage of toc, bib...

The User

Hi,

We've been designing and working on KWord2 (/KOffice2) with the idea that it should be usable by the DTP expert, the TeX junky and everyone in between. So let me open by saying that many of the TeX typesetting helpers and markup separation are certainly on the wishlist for KOffice2.
For those that think TeX features will just get in their way, don't worry! It won't. The trick that KOffice2 is using is plenty-of-plugins.

KWord2 already has much more styling capabilities than KOffice1 did. At least for text. We have named character styles, for starters.
Images and other content will have a positioning scheme thats pretty powerful too. Its somewhat lacking in the UI in 2.0.0, though.

In KOffice2 I made the text component have several plugin-types that basically have total control over the text while typing. After more basic plugins are created its my goal to have a TeX like macro plugin which allows users to do many of the useful things TeX does and exchange those rulesets with friends. Don't hold your breath on that one, though. It might be some time before we get there.
Any volunteers that want to do the work are more than welcome and I invite anyone to contact me if they want to do some coding

Thanks, zander!
Give to the people hierarchical and powerful styles (both paragraph and page styles), an easy way to apply them, a good math editor (that use the stix fonts?) and you, koffice developers, will be my official heroes for the rest of my life.

> Give to the people hierarchical and powerful styles (both paragraph and page styles),
Check.

> an easy way to apply them,
Check (both mouse and keyboard shortcuts)

> a good math editor (that use the stix fonts?)

There is work in progress and a GSoC student that will work full time on this component over summer. I have good hopes for this item in a year or so

> and you, koffice developers, will be my official heroes for the rest of my life.

Happy to hear

Are macro-extensions possible with odf?

I think it would be great to preprocess odf using Kross.

Such modified ODF could easily be exported to normal ODF.
But for creating the files it could be much easier.

Hi,

the reason why I'm using LaTeX if I want a professional result is not LaTeX can position figures better, but because the quality of the text is just better. TeX perfectly justifies text and applies opentype-features (like smaller space between the letters "AV", or the connection between "fi"), which really make the text look better. I think it would be really great to have an office suite supporting those features.

Best regards,
Sven

I think it would be a good first step to enable adding LaTeX-style-shortcuts to the Flake-shapes:
Each shape could specify a shortcut, for example for a formula you could use \formula or $. For a table \table etc.
Then there should be a text-input-mode for some shapes, for example the formulas should add commands for every insertable item and enable the _, ^, { and } keys.
We would not have to remove the frame-based-stuff, there should simply be a fast way to write frames down. (and they would have aligning, border etc. set in the layout)