Developer(s) | KDE |
---|---|
Initial release | 23 October 2000 [1] (as KOffice) 11 April 2012 (as Calligra 2.4) [2] [3] [4] |
Stable release | |
Repository | |
Written in | C++ (Qt, KDE Platform) |
Operating system | Unix-like, Windows, Android [6] |
Size | ~185 MB (xz-compressed source code), ~20 MB (all translations) [7] |
Available in | 31 languages [8] |
Type | Graphic art and office suite |
License | GPL, LGPL |
Website | calligra |
Calligra Suite is a graphic art and office suite by KDE. [3] [4] It is available for desktop PCs, tablet computers, and smartphones. It contains applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, databases, vector graphics, and digital painting.
Calligra uses the OpenDocument format as its default file format for most applications and can import other formats, such as Microsoft Office formats. [9] Calligra relies on KDE technology and is often used in combination with KDE Plasma Workspaces.
Calligra's main platform is desktop PCs running Linux, FreeBSD, macOS, and Windows, [10] of which Linux is the best supported system. [11]
On desktop systems, the whole range of features is available.
As of 2014 [update] , Calligra's efforts to create touchscreen-friendly versions are centered on reusable Qt Quick components. [12] For smartphone-like formfactors 3rd party documents viewers Coffice for Android [13] and Sailfish Office for Sailfish OS [14] are available that make use of these components. [12]
The Calligra project shipped Krita Sketch/Gemini [15] and the tablet-focused Plasma Active document viewer with Calligra 2.8. [16] Calligra 2.9 ships Calligra Gemini, an enhanced version of Calligra Active with added document editing features and runtime switching between desktop and touchscreen interfaces. [12]
Version | Key feature | Date |
---|---|---|
2.4 [2] | First release | 2012-04-11 |
2.5 [17] | Tablet version | 2012-08-13 |
2.6 [18] | Calligra Author | 2013-02-05 |
2.7 [19] | New toolbox for Words | 2013-08-01 |
2.8 [16] | Krita Gemini | 2014-03-05 |
2.9 [20] | Calligra Gemini | 2015-02-26 |
3.0 [21] | Remove Author, Stage, Flow, Braindump | 2017-01-15 |
3.1.0 [22] | Words, Sheets, Karbon, Gemini, and Plan. | 2018-02-01 |
3.2 [23] | Gemini, Karbon and Stage | 2020-04-29 |
Calligra was created after disagreements within the KOffice community in 2010 – between KWord maintainer Thomas Zander and the other core developers. [24] [25] [26] (See KOffice § History.) Following arbitration with the community members, several applications were renamed by both parties. [27] Most developers, and all but KWord maintainer Thomas Zander, [24] of particular applications joined the Calligra project. Three applications, Kexi, Krita and KPlato and the user interfaces for mobile devices have been completely moved out of KOffice and are only available within Calligra. A new application called Braindump has been added to Calligra after the split and KWord was replaced by the new word processor Calligra Words. [28]
KOffice 2.3, released 31 December 2010, along with subsequent bugfix releases (2.3.1–2.3.3) was still a collaborative effort of both the KOffice and Calligra development teams. [24] According to its developers, this version is stable enough for real use, and Karbon14, Krita and KSpread are recommended for production work. [29]
On 18 May 2011, the Calligra team began releasing monthly snapshots while preparing for the release of Calligra 2.4.
The first version of the Calligra Suite for Windows was released on 21 December 2011. The package is labeled as “highly experimental” and “not yet suitable for daily use”. [30]
The Calligra team was originally scheduled to release the final 2.4 version in January 2012 [31] but problems in the undo/redo feature of Words and Stage required a partial rewrite and caused a delay. [32] Calligra 2.4 was released on 11 April 2012. [2]
Calligra 2.4 launched with two mobile-oriented user interfaces: Calligra Mobile [33] and Calligra Active. Calligra Mobile's development was initiated in summer 2009 and was first shown during Akademy / Desktop Summit 2009 by KO GmbH as a simple port of KOffice to Maemo. Later Nokia hired KO to assist them with a full-fledged mobile version, including a touchscreen-friendly user interface which was presented by Nokia during Maemo Conference in October 2009. [34] The first alpha version was made available in January 2010. [35] Along with the launch of the Nokia N9 smartphone, Nokia released its own Poppler and Calligra-based office document viewer under GPL. [36] [37]
Calligra Active was launched in 2011 after the Plasma Active initiative to provide a document viewer similar to Calligra Mobile but for tablet computers. [38]
In December 2012, KDE, KO GmbH, and Intel released Krita Sketch, a variant of Calligra's Krita painting application, for Windows 7 and 8. [15] [39]
On 24 March 2013, KDE developer Sebastian Sauer released Coffice, a Calligra-based document viewer, for Android. [13]
Jolla continued Nokia's efforts on a smartphone version. In 2013 Jolla launched Sailfish Office. [14] Sailfish Office reuses the Qt Quick components from Calligra Active. [12]
In September 2013 a merger of Krita and Krita Sketch, named Krita Gemini, was launched on Windows 8.1. Development was funded by Intel to promote 2in1 convertible notebooks. [40] [41] [42] On 5 March 2014 Krita Sketch and Gemini were also released as part of Calligra 2.8 for non-Windows platforms. [16]
In April 2014, Intel and KO GmbH extended the promotion deal to Gemini versions of Stage and Words. [43] On 28 August 2014, the first snapshot of Calligra Gemini was released by KO GmbH for Windows. [44] [45] On 21 November 2014, KDE announced that Calligra Gemini would officially be released as part of Calligra 2.9. [12] As with Krita, this Gemini release adds a touchscreen interface to Words and Stage and users can switch between desktop and touch mode at runtime. Calligra Gemini is a continuation of Calligra Active and Sailfish Office developments but with added editing capabilities. [12] On 19 October 2014, a Linux version was presented. [43]
The koffice.org website was replaced by a placeholder in early September 2012. [46] As of 2014 [update] KOffice was declared unmaintained by KDE. [47] [48] The koffice.org domain now redirects to Calligra.org.
In Autumn 2015, Krita was split off into a project independent from Calligra, with the then current 2.9 versions though still developed as part of Calligra 2.9. [49]
Icon | Name | Description |
---|---|---|
Words | A word processor with the ability to edit and save ISO/IEC 26300 OpenDocument Text (.odt) as part of OpenDocument Type ISO standard. | |
Sheets | A spreadsheet program, formerly known as KSpread and Calligra Tables. | |
Stage | A presentation program. It was removed in Calligra 3.0, [50] but returned in Calligra 3.2. [51] | |
Kexi | KEXI is a visual database applications creator. It can be used for designing database applications, inserting and editing data, performing queries, and processing data. Forms can be created to provide a custom interface to your data. All database objects – tables, queries, forms, reports – are stored in the database, making it easy to share data and design. | |
Plan | A project management application that can create Gantt charts. Formerly known as KPlato. | |
Karbon | A vector graphics editor, formerly known as Karbon14. [52] |
Icon | Name | Description |
---|---|---|
Braindump | A digital notetaking tools, similar to Microsoft OneNote. It was removed in Calligra 3.0 [50] | |
Flow | A programmable flowchart drawing program with dynamically loadable stencils, successor of koffice Kivio (though it could not load/import kivio files). It was removed in Calligra 3.0, [50] then was retired and replaced by Karbon in 3.2.0. [54] | |
Krita | A digital painting program with some image editing features. Formerly known as Krayon and KImageshop. It was removed from Calligra 3.0 after becoming an independent product. [50] | |
Author | An e-book authoring application like iBooks Author [55] with EPUB export, introduced with Calligra Suite 2.6. [56] [57] [58] It was removed in Calligra 3.0 [50] |
Initial reception shortly after the 2.4 release was positive. Linux Pro Magazine Online's Bruce Byfield wrote "Calligra needed an impressive first release. Perhaps surprisingly, and to the development team's credit, it has managed one in 2.4", but also noted that "Words in particular is still lacking features". He concluded that Calligra is "worth keeping an eye on". [59]
The German sister publication LinuxUser 10/2012 reviewed Calligra 2.5 on 12 September 2012. Its reception was mostly positive. Negative criticism centered on Words' stability: "During our review no Calligra module was completely free of crashes, however Words' crashes reached an amount that we cannot recommend it for general use." The reviewer Thomas Drilling on the other hand praised Calligra's usability, writing: "The consistent work flow, often stunningly intuitive workflows, and clear menu structure are well received." He then concluded: "The individual modules' quality varies: While Words shows weakness, image editor Krita, spreadsheet application Sheets, and presentation program Stage completely won us over. Flowcharting application Flow allures with its wide range of stencils which makes drawing flow charts come easy." [60]
LinuxUser reviewed Calligra 2.6 in issue 3/2013. Reviewer Vincze-Aron Szabo reiterated positive criticism about Calligra's user interface and noted increased stability of Words compared to Calligra 2.5. Szabo's major point for negative criticism was Author's and Word's handling of long documents, resulting in decreased performance and crashes. The other reviewed components – Plan, Stage, Sheets, and Krita – were praised in terms of stability and intuitiveness. [61]
Calligra 2.7 was reviewed by LinuxUser in its October 2013 issue. Thomas Drilling, the reviewer, drew a positive conclusion overall. Among the positive aspects he pointed out were better .docx file import than LibreOffice and the amount of new features gained by the new version of the suite. Source for negative criticism was once again Words' stability, although Drilling noted improvements in this regard. [62]
Network World editor Bryan Lunduke wrote about Calligra 2.8 in March 2014: “Karbon is an astoundingly nice vector design tool, and Flow, a diagramming tool, is incredibly handy from the design point of view as well. […] And Words is a great word processor.” [63] In August 2014 he wrote: “Calligra Suite has become a staple of my workflow even on non-KDE desktops.” Linux Insider also reviewed Calligra 2.8, concluding “Calligra Suite is a solid offering that has grown considerably since branching out from its traditional KOffice roots. It has something for everyone. Its tools fills the needs of writers, artists, content designers and office workers.” [64]
In 2017, sempreupdate.com.br wrote: “[If you do not] depend on proprietary formats [...] especially .xls, .xlsx and .doc [...] and you use KDE it's worth trying. Yes, regarding LibreOffice Calligra is still two steps behind [but] it also brings small differentials that would be welcomed in LibreOffice.“ [65]
Calligra is written with dependencies on KDE Frameworks 5 and Qt 5. Older versions depend on KDE Platform 4 and Qt 4, and even older versions of KOffice depend on KDElibs and Qt 3. Despite that Calligra Suite is released independently of the KDE Software Compilation or of the KDE Applications.
All components of the Calligra Suite are released under free software licenses and use OpenDocument as their native file format when applicable.
The developers of Calligra plan to share as much infrastructure as possible between applications to reduce bugs and improve the user experience. [66] This is done by common technologies like Flake and Pigment. Flake provides a way to handle shapes, which can contain text, images, formulas (via KFormula), charts (via KChart) or other objects, in a consistent way across all applications. The Calligra team also wants to create an OpenDocument library for use in other KDE applications that will allow developers to easily add support for reading and outputting OpenDocument files to their applications. [67] Automating tasks and extending the suite with custom functionality can be done with D-Bus or with scripting languages like Python, Ruby, and JavaScript through the Kross scripting framework.
KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the Plasma Desktop, KDE Frameworks, and a range of cross-platform applications such as Amarok, digiKam, and Krita that are designed to run on Unix and Unix-like operating systems, Microsoft Windows, and Android.
Calligra Words is a word processor, which is part of Calligra Suite and developed by KDE as free software.
Qt is cross-platform application development framework for creating graphical user interfaces as well as cross-platform applications that run on various software and hardware platforms such as Linux, Windows, macOS, Android or embedded systems with little or no change in the underlying codebase while still being a native application with native capabilities and speed.
In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphical shell. The desktop environment was seen mostly on personal computers until the rise of mobile computing. Desktop GUIs help the user to easily access and edit files, while they usually do not provide access to all of the features found in the underlying operating system. Instead, the traditional command-line interface (CLI) is still used when full control over the operating system is required.
Calligra Stage is a free presentation program that is part of the Calligra Suite, an integrated office suite developed by KDE.
Kexi is a visual database applications creator tool by KDE, designed to fill the gap between spreadsheets and database solutions requiring more sophisticated development. Kexi can be used for designing and implementing databases, data inserting and processing, and performing queries. It is developed within the Calligra project but is released separately.
Krita is a free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital art and 2D animation. Originally created for Linux, the software also runs on Windows, macOS, Haiku, Android, and ChromeOS, and features an OpenGL-accelerated canvas, colour management support, an advanced brush engine, non-destructive layers and masks, group-based layer management, vector artwork support, and switchable customisation profiles.
KDE Software Compilation 4 was the only series of the so-called KDE Software Compilation, first released in January 2008 and the last release being 4.14.3 released in November 2014. It was the follow-up to K Desktop Environment 3. Following KDE SC 4, the compilation was broken up into basic framework libraries, desktop environment and applications, which are termed KDE Frameworks 5, KDE Plasma 5 and KDE Applications, respectively.
Maemo is a software platform originally developed by Nokia, now developed by the community, for smartphones and Internet tablets. The platform comprises both the Maemo operating system and SDK. Maemo played a key role in Nokia's strategy to compete with Apple and Android, but ultimately failed to surpass both companies.Maemo is mostly based on open-source code and has been developed by Maemo Devices within Nokia in collaboration with many open-source projects such as the Linux kernel, Debian, and GNOME. Maemo is based on Debian and draws much of its GUI, frameworks, and libraries from the GNOME project. It uses the Matchbox window manager and the GTK-based Hildon framework as its GUI and application framework.
A desktop environment is a collection of software designed to give functionality and a certain look and feel to an operating system.
Kross is a scripting framework for KDE Frameworks. Originally Kross was designed for use in KOffice but eventually became the official scripting framework in KDE Software Compilation 4. Kross is designed to provide full scripting power for users of KDE applications, with a language of their own choice; and make it easy for developers targeting the KDE platform to enable their application with support for multiple scripting languages.
Flake or a Vector Shape is a programming library that is used in Calligra Suite and the KOffice 2 series. Flake provides the basic concept of a "shape". To the end user a shape appears as some piece of content such as an image or a text. A shape can be in any form and contain any kind of media since the Shape is responsible for drawing itself. All components of KOffice are being overhauled to use Flake as much as possible.
MeeGo is a discontinued Linux distribution hosted by the Linux Foundation, using source code from the operating systems Moblin and Maemo. MeeGo was primarily targeted at mobile devices and information appliances in the consumer electronics market. It was designed to act as an operating system for hardware platforms such as netbooks, entry-level desktops, nettops, tablet computers, mobile computing and communications devices, in-vehicle infotainment devices, SmartTV / ConnectedTV, IPTV-boxes, smart phones, and other embedded systems.
KOffice was a free and open source office and graphics suite developed by KDE for Unix-like and Windows systems. KOffice contains a word processor (KWord), a spreadsheet (KSpread), a presentation program (KPresenter), and a number of other components that varied over the course of its development.
KWord is a deprecated word processor and a desktop publishing application, part of the KOffice suite. It has been obsoleted by Calligra Words of the Calligra Suite.
Sailfish OS is a Linux-based operating system based on free software, and open source projects such as Mer as well as including a closed source UI. The project is being developed by the Finnish company Jolla.
KDE Frameworks is a collection of libraries and software frameworks readily available to any Qt-based software stacks or applications on multiple operating systems. Featuring frequently needed functionality solutions like hardware integration, file format support, additional graphical control elements, plotting functions, and spell checking, the collection serves as the technological foundation for KDE Plasma and KDE Gear. It is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
The KDE Gear is a set of applications and supporting libraries that are developed by the KDE community, primarily used on Linux-based operating systems but mostly multiplatform, and released on a common release schedule.
KDE Projects are projects maintained by the KDE community, a group of people developing and advocating free software for everyday use, for example KDE Plasma and KDE Frameworks or applications such as Amarok, Krita or Digikam. There are also non-coding projects like designing the Breeze desktop theme and iconset, which is coordinated by KDE's Visual Design Group. Even non-Qt applications like GCompris, which started as a GTK-based application, or web-based projects like WikiToLearn are officially part of KDE.
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: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)Unmaintained Projects » KOffice
So lets make it official and written down what was done in practice anyway: drop the 14 from the name.
Keine Calligra-Komponente verschonte uns im Test gänzlich von Abstürzen, jedoch nahm deren Häufigkeit bei Words ein Ausmaß an, das uns veranlasst, Ihnen das Programm nicht für den Alltag zu empfehlen.
Das über fast alle Komponenten hinweg einheitliche Bedienerkonzept und die oft verblüffend intuitiven Workarounds sowie die übersichtliche Menüstruktur gefallen dagegen gut. Die Qualität der einzelnen Module bewegt sich allerdings auf sehr unterschiedlichen Niveau: Während Words deutlich schwächelt, überzeugen der Bildbearbeiter Krita, die Tabellenkalkulation Sheets und das Präsentationsprogramm Stage auf ganzer Linie. Der Flowcharter Flow lockt mit seiner großen Auswahl an Schablonen, die das Zeichnen von Flussdiagrammen schnell von der Hand gehen lässt.