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Does anybody use KOffice?

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tuubaaku
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RE: Does anybody use KOffice?

Sat Mar 14, 2009 4:14 pm
Manolete wrote:I use Kword, (version 2 beta 6) just to to see how pretty it looks and how it crashes when opening about 80% doc files...

Are you running the latest libwv2 (0.3.1)? That may help with some of your crashes. Otherwise, if you want to send me any of the documents that crash, I'd be happy to look at them and try to fix the crashes... My gmail address is cricketc, or you can post a message on the wvWare devel forum on sourceforge.


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ash
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RE: Does anybody use KOffice?

Fri Mar 20, 2009 12:24 am
i discovered karbon recently. moved most of my manga drawing and writing basic text docs to it (from openoffice)

its cool but sadly it has a touch of our usability experts know better than you the actual user what is usable and what is not
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LukasT.dev
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RE: Does anybody use KOffice?

Fri Mar 20, 2009 3:57 pm
ash wrote:i discovered karbon recently. moved most of my manga drawing and writing basic text docs to it (from openoffice)

its cool but sadly it has a touch of our usability experts know better than you the actual user what is usable and what is not


What do you think is unusable?


Daylight is coming...
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ash
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RE: Does anybody use KOffice?

Sun Mar 22, 2009 2:37 am
LukasT.dev wrote:What do you think is unusable?


i cant much point at something and say IT is UNusable. but some overall feeling exists

some examples to what gives me that feeling are

basic shapes (rectangle circle etc) mostly not available by single click on the side panel and cannot be customized (though available in a stylish engineered menu). way less frequently used stuff like charts is there htough. and the entire menu cant be just left open (similar to how it had been before the menu introduced)

color chooser is crippled down compared to the standard kde 4 one (and in the bug tracker i get answer like we wont use the standard one cause it does not have color management. heck it has it better than all what i seen in koffice betas and expect in the release)
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Moult
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RE: Does anybody use KOffice?

Sun Mar 22, 2009 1:55 pm
I found trying to work with tables in KWord almost impossible - that turned me away almost immediately.


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john_hudson
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RE: Does anybody use KOffice?

Sun Mar 22, 2009 9:01 pm
Moult wrote:I found trying to work with tables in KWord almost impossible - that turned me away almost immediately.

What do you use/need tables for? I ask because I very rarely use them in a document.


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StefanT
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RE: Does anybody use KOffice?

Mon Mar 23, 2009 2:56 pm
Krita looks good (better interface than GIMP, Filter Layer), but it is buggy... Application doesn't have all features you need right now (filters, brushes, tools), but I think that bugs are bigger problem. If developers in final release make everything work as it should (less buggy, fast, interface tweaks, good final results etc.) than I will probably start using it.

KOffice (and office in general) should have bigger priority than other apps, more developers working on it...
userinScotland
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RE: Does anybody use KOffice?

Mon Mar 23, 2009 5:23 pm
I like KOffice, but am not using it at the moment. (All this is about 1.6.x., mostly KWord & KSpread)
I like:
  • it loads fast and responds better
  • the splash page is intuitive and clear
  • template handling better than OOo
  • I like the Styles dialogues
  • fits nicer with the rest of KDE
I don't like:
  • not as good as OOo with .doc files - this was essential for me, unfortunately
  • ODT inconsistencies (e.g. lists) make me need to stick with 1 program
  • the default styles didn't suit me
  • table handling was maddening
  • no revision tracking
Tables are absolutely essential for some types of documents. Scientific papers, business reports, anything that includes numbers. I look forward to trying KOffice 2 when I move to KDE4. Somehow it feels more right than OOo, like it has the potential to be much better than the big program. Sadly I can't contribute much to the project except love and maybe documentation, echo strongly what StefanT says above. Developers, developers, developers!
;-)
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Angel Blue01
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RE: Does anybody use KOffice?

Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:08 pm
I'm holding off on KOffice 'till probably 2.1 because it looks like there isn't much interest in developing a proper MS Office 2000 format filter right away and this is the most essential feature for word processer/spreadsheet for me.


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Manolete
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RE: Does anybody use KOffice?

Tue Apr 07, 2009 12:53 pm
tuubaaku wrote:
Manolete wrote:I use Kword, (version 2 beta 6) just to to see how pretty it looks and how it crashes when opening about 80% doc files...

Are you running the latest libwv2 (0.3.1)? That may help with some of your crashes. Otherwise, if you want to send me any of the documents that crash, I'd be happy to look at them and try to fix the crashes... My gmail address is cricketc, or you can post a message on the wvWare devel forum on sourceforge.



Excuse I didn't respond before, but I hadn't came back to this post and seen your message.
I haven't been using Kword too much lately, but I'm trying to find some time these days to update to the last Koffice version available and test it and tell you something.
My version of libwv2 is 0.2.3-2; actually the package is called "libwv2-1c2". There aren't higher versions in Debian repos.
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Kubuntiac
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RE: Does anybody use KOffice?

Tue Apr 14, 2009 4:22 am
I use Krita (in addition to the Gimp) because it can work with CMYK color managed documents, which is a must if you're going to print. I've always loved the lightweight speed of Koffice, although like many others, am looking forward to greater stability. Wanting stability though is the *reason* to use Koffice though. I want it stable, which means using it as much as possible to pick up, understand and file reports on it's quirks. I don't mind admitting I use other apps a fair bit as well (especially Kate) so I'm staying productive enough at the same time, but I love the feel of the Koffice apps, the layout (learn from Krita on this Gimp developers - PLEASE!) and the promise of a fast, flexible, integrated, sexy looking, KDE based suite to mix it with the best of them.

Now we all know Koffice needs more devs (more than most projects). The question is, what parts of Koffice would be fun or enticing enough to lure them in if shared publicly, like on the planets?
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Madman
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RE: Does anybody use KOffice?

Wed Apr 29, 2009 10:00 am
Moult wrote:Right. Due to ebuild problems I cannot install the entire KOffice, however I have installed KWord.

My first impression was that it started up faster. I tried adding a table. Eww. Sorry, that's not intuitive at all. Neither is adding pictures. Bullet pointing and lists were fine though. I didn't find an easy way to change font/font size to a specific value either. It seems as though almost everything in KWord has a frame around it - and all of these frames have handles which give me the false impression that I can modify them. How dare they.

Sorry, not a very good impression so far. Am I missing something?


Moult wrote:I found trying to work with tables in KWord almost impossible - that turned me away almost immediately.


I'm pretty certain that the KOffice devs have said that table support is appalling. Again, this isn't a problem with the programs - they're getting basic functionality done first, as they should - but with communication. Even worse, they are saying that these are development releases, but people are expecting much more then they should seeing as KOffice has been rebuilt from the ground up. If you're getting development status programs, the developers expect you to help with development, which includes researching the state of the office suite and communicating with developers.

It annoys me that people are, once again, expecting full usability from development versions and are, once again, leaving the development versions instead of reporting bugs and tracking the progress.

P.S. In the latest RC of KOffice, I found the handles were fully-functional - resizing, rotating and moving all worked fine (in a new document). Of course, I'm reporting bugs as I find them and continue to use KOffice, in the hope of replacing OpenOffice for good. What annoys me is that people expect it to be able to do it right now - when the developers are fully aware and have already explained that it can't.

Last edited by Madman on Wed Apr 29, 2009 10:06 am, edited 1 time in total.


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zander
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RE: Does anybody use KOffice?

Sat May 02, 2009 9:02 pm
Actually, madman, I'm pretty sure you quoted someone working on KWord1.6 since the 2.0RC doesn't have handles on tables. It doesn't really have tables at all...

I surely agree with a lot said here, and the development is taking most of it into account. I hope people will come back and try out koffice from time to time since we are addressing them. Giving us pointers in how we are doing and how the direction we are going is the way you want us to go.
Extra thanks to member madman for telling us what he likes so we know we are going in the right direction here :)


Thomas Zander
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f1r3br4nd
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Re: Does anybody use KOffice?

Thu Apr 07, 2011 1:43 pm
LOL, no.

Half the point of using an office suite rather than something more powerful like LaTEX or Emacs is so that you can collaborate with coworkers who use Microsoft products. OpenOffice at least attempts to do that. I took one look at what KOffice does to PowerPoint files, read the developer site about the issue, and uninstalled it immediately.

As far as I can tell, and I hope someone less jaded can prove me wrong, KOffice amounts reinventing the wheel but badly and in a platform-specific manner just so you can call it a KWheel.
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TheBlackCat
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Re: Does anybody use KOffice?

Thu Apr 07, 2011 6:51 pm
First, KOffice predates OpenOffice by years. I am pretty sure it is the oldest existing full open-source office suite. So the ones who

Second, KOffice (and Calligra) have a lot of new ideas and a substantially new and distinctive underlying architecture that is gives it much more flexibility and a lot better performance. This is why you can just pull of the desktop UI and replace if with a smartphone UI. You simply cannot do that with OpenOffice/LibreOffice, both because of how the software is designed and because of the massive resources it takes.

Third, there are a lot of problems with the OpenOffice/LibreOffice code base. It is extremely complex, hard to maintain, and hard to improve. KOffice underwent a near-rewrite a few years ago, yet it is already approaching the level where it can be used as a complete office suite. This is extremely fast compared to the pace of OpenOffice/LibreOffice development, which says a lot about the quality and power of the code base.

Before your criticize KOffice for doing such a major reworking, I should point out that there is talk amongst LibreOffice developers to do a reworking as well, now that Sun is no longer preventing it. They have also been complaining about how poor and how broken their code base is. But back when the new KOffice reworking was being done, Sun still controlled OpenOffice and was preventing any major changes from occurring.

Fourth, a lot of work is going in to properly rendering MS Office files, but it takes time. KOffice recently underwent a major overhaul, which has made good support for MS Office files possible, but it will take some work to do so fully. KOffice already renders some aspects of MS Office files, like complex Word tables, better than OpenOffice.


Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
-NASA in 1965


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