Sorry this topic sounds like a troll... I'm actually quite serious.

The current release of koffice is labeled as beta2. However all the apps I try out I usually manage to crash within a few operations. There seem to bee too many bugs for general use or even end user testing. I'm not sure I would call it alpha.

What troubles me the most is that Koffice has been like this for as long as I can remember. I "try it out" every so often in the hopes that it has become stable enough to use and it just doesn't seem to be happening. Lots of new interesting stuff is happening of course. But the stability required for it to actually be used for real work is just not there for me. Is it for others?

I am not saying this to slam the developers in any way. However this is something I, as a community member, would love to seem improve. I'm also willing to put time into it... just not sure how best I would allocate my very limited time.

Koffice 2.0 to in beta state !! It needs time to stabilize. Your mission now is to file bug reports (clear and easy to reproduce )

I've just posted 3 crash reports. These also take a long time to do. The gnome people have setup a way to submit a bug directly from the crash handler... makes it much easier.

andre_orwell, as I see you're kubuntu user, actually you should be able to send bug report directly within kde crash handler and apport-kde.

Githzerai wrote:andre_orwell, as I see you're kubuntu user, actually you should be able to send bug report directly within kde crash handler and apport-kde.

It seems that apport-kde does not work.

Hi guys,

I'll just put in a few words here...

From what I can gather, it seems that the good folks at KDE are starting to get pretty damn serious about fixing what was wrong in Koffice 1.x with Koffice 2.x. There are a lot of high hopes riding on this new release.

I will go out on a limb here and state that if successful with all the major bugs fixed (and hopefully all the minor ones as well), Koffice 2.x could surpass Openoffice in terms of actual usability. Wouldn't that be something!

Thanks.

Well that's indeed the goal of 2.x But one should note that 2.0 isn't the release that surpass OOo for users, but it's probably the release that does it for developers. But now, we indeed have a platform on which we can fixes all the major issues of 1.x, and which is hopefully simple and powerful enough to attract more easily developers. Just remember that it is not quiet there, and they are many glitches in 2.0, and also missing features.

I just removed ooo, I am going to try to use Koffice as much as possible. I don't use ooo for much anyway, so the occasional document in koffice should hopefully be doable. I can use google docs for things not opening in koffice for now.

I actually prefer KOffice (especially KWord) to OpenOffice when doing my coursework in College. The reason? Screenshots. I need to add screenshots to the document. In OpenOffice (even in Microsoft Office), manipulating images is just hell. In KWord, I can add an image shape, have it behave exactly as I'd expect and carry on. I got more work done in KWord this last lesson then I did in Microsoft Word or Ooo Writer in hours, because of the way it handles images.

It's the first time I've thoroughly enjoyed using an office application...!

(except I found a niggly bug, see here: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=190939)

Madman wrote:It's the first time I've thoroughly enjoyed using an office application...!

(except I found a niggly bug, see here: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=190939)

Fairly typical experience? The next step is to go use something more stable and revisit koffice from time to time. Not really the most favourable outcome.

This pattern leads me down the following slippery slope:
- OK I'll use open office cause its more stable even though I don't like lots of things about it.
- Open office integrates better with gnome, and gnome works ok even though its ugly
- Gah! MS word does open office much better than open office does
- windows doesn't look so bad now...

IMHO getting koffice into a truely usable state is critical to the success of KDE. After "getting over" the desktop environment you need to use your computer to do stuff (i.e. other than decorating, development and bug reporting). The applications matter. While KDE appears to have a large set of native applications, many fail the test of real world use. Which is a shame because they are often very attractive, well designed and usable.

Please!

If you play with koffice or like the idea of koffice try and contribute (like Madman) in even a small way (though bug reports)! Ultimately this may do more for KDE than a whole bunch of desktop development work. I would love to have a kword that is stable and reliable enough for *real* use.

If you are looking for a way to contribute to KDE, seriously consider one of the koffice projects. Be mindful of the impact a single really useful application can have on people's usage patterns ( I keep coming back to KDE partly because of Kontact - which I love; unfortunately amarok now sucks ).

If you are already a koffice developer - thanks - but please be careful with what you call a release. I was personally dumb-struck by how easy it was to crash the 2.0 beta. I was expecting a lot better given the advertised number and phase.

Lets get behind koffice!

I continue to use KDE simply because it is more intuitively designed then other DEs: when I find a bug, I report it, find a temporary work-around and carry on (though this is only really necessary for not-quite-finished programs like KOffice, now - the rest of the DE seems to work excellently). I really want to see this kind of software become a genuine replacement for other software available, because OpenOffice just drives me mad. Probably because MS Office drives me mad. >.<

... Aaaand I just saw my bug get fixed. Excellent! Seeing as I don't use (or even like) tables, I'll just keep using KOffice, methinks.