KOffice

Last updated
KOffice
Original author(s) KDE, Reginald Stadlbauer
Developer(s) KDE, Thomas Zander (maintainer) [1]
Initial release23 October 2000;23 years ago (2000-10-23) [2]
Final release
2.3.3 [3] [4]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 23 February 2011
Repository
Written in C++ [5]
Operating system Unix-like, Windows
Platform Qt, KDE Platform
Size 72.2  MiB (compressed source code) [6]
Available in27 languages [7]
Type Office suite
License GPL, LGPL
Websitekoffice.org (Redirects to calligra.org) [8]

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.

Contents

KOffice was superseded by Calligra Suite in KDE. The KDE3 version is maintained by the Trinity Desktop project.

After development began in 1997, two major stable releases of KOffice were published: Version 1.0 in 2000 and 2.0 in 2009. Following internal conflicts, the majority of KOffice developers split off in 2010 – resulting in the creation of Calligra Suite. Two years later, in September 2012, the KOffice.org website went offline. [9] It now redirects to Calligra.org.

History

Development Sprints
Year Venue Date Ref.
2000 Erlangen, Germany Sep. 23–25 [10]
2007 Berlin, Germany Oct. 26–28 [11]
2008 Berlin, Germany Nov. 7–9 [12]
2009 Berlin, Germany Jun. 5–7 [13]
2009 Oslo, Norway Nov. 27–29 [14]
2010 Essen, Germany Jun. 11–13 [15]

First generation

Initial work on KOffice development began in 1997, by Reginald Stadlbauer [16] [17] with KPresenter, followed by KWord [18] in 1998.

In 1999, KOffice was cited in testimony in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial by then-Microsoft executive Paul Maritz as evidence of competition in the operating system and office suite arena. [19]

The first official release of the KOffice suite was on 23 October 2000, when it was released as part of K Desktop Environment 2.0. [2] Version 1.1 followed in 2001, [20] 1.2 in 2002, [21] 1.3 in 2004, [22] 1.4 in 2005, [23] and 1.5 [24] and 1.6 both in 2006. [25]

Second generation

KOffice underwent a major transition as part of the release of KDE Software Compilation 4 (SC4). Coinciding with the work on SC4, the KOffice team prepared a major new release – KOffice 2.0 – which used the new KDE Platform 4 libraries. Although version 2.0 was released in 2009, the release was labeled as a “platform release” which was recommended only for testers and developers, rather than production use, since the release was missing key features and applications from the previous stable release series – Kexi, Kivio, and Kugar were not included. [26]

Experimental port of KOffice 2.1 to Haiku Haiku-koffice-kword.png
Experimental port of KOffice 2.1 to Haiku

This continued with version 2.1 in November, 2009. Regular end-users requiring a stable environment were still recommended by developers to use the stable 1.6 release series. [27] This version was also ported to Haiku [28] but the port was later not updated for newer KOffice versions.

In May 2010, version 2.2.0 was released and brought an unprecedented number of new features and bugfixes. Kexi was integrated again. Kivio was not migrated. A new framework for effects on shapes and a new import filters for the Microsoft Office Open XML formats used in MS Office 2007 and later was added. [29]

Community split

The viewer for smartphones was dropped from KOffice. KOffice viewer on Maemo5.jpg
The viewer for smartphones was dropped from KOffice.

In mid-2010, following disagreements between KWord maintainer Thomas Zander and the other core developers, [30] [31] [32] the KOffice community split into two separate communities, KOffice and Calligra. Following arbitration with the community members several applications were renamed by both communities. [33] KOffice forked the KSpread spreadsheet utility to KCells, also the KPresenter presentation tool to KOffice Showcase, and the Karbon14 drawing tool to KOffice Artwork.

The community split coincided with the move from KDE's Subversion repository to git. The Krita painting application, the Kexi database manager, and dedicated mobile platform GUI files were not migrated into the KOffice git repository. [34] [35] [36]

KOffice 2.3, released 31 December 2010, [37] along with subsequent bugfix releases (2.3.1–2.3.3 [38] ) was still a collaborative effort of both the KOffice and Calligra development teams. [39] Kivio was still not integrated [40]

Beginning with KOffice 2.4 the developers aimed to release new KOffice versions every six months in sync with SC4 releases [41] but KOffice had seen no development activity since mid-March 2012. [42] As of September 2013, Calligra has released 2.4 and 2.5 and 2.6 and 2.7. After two minor commits in August 2012 [43] the koffice.org website was replaced by a placeholder in early September 2012. [9] On 22 October 2012 KDE removed KOffice from their Quality Website Tools. [44]

As of 2014 KOffice was declared unmaintained by KDE. [45] [46]

Components

The last formally released version of KOffice included the following components:

KWord Application Logo.svg
KWord A word processor with style sheets and frame-support for DTP-style editing of complex layouts.
KSpread Application Logo.svg
KSpread A spreadsheet application with multiple sheet support, templates and more than 100 mathematical formulae.
KPresenter Application Logo.svg
KPresenter A presentation program with image and effect support.
Kexi Application Logo.svg
Kexi An integrated data management application, designed as a Microsoft Access or FileMaker competitor. It can be used for designing and implementing databases, inserting and processing data and performing queries. It has limited compatibility with the MS Access file format.
Karbon14 Application Logo.svg
Karbon14 A vector drawing application with a variety of drawing and editing tools – formerly known as Kontour and KIllustrator. [2]
Krita Application Logo.svg
Krita A digital painting program, with some image processing features – formerly known as Krayon and KImageshop.
KChart Application Logo.svg
KChart Integrated report and chart generator.
KFormula Application Logo.svg
KFormula An integrated mathematical formula editor.
KPlato Application Logo.svg
KPlato A project management application that can create Gantt-style charts.

Technical details

KOffice applications were developed using Qt and KDE Platform. All its components are released under free software licenses and use OpenDocument as their native file format when possible. KOffice was released separately from KDE SC 4 and can be downloaded from KDE's FTP server.

KOffice 2 underwent a large overhaul to use the Flake system of components and Pigment color system, as much as possible within applications. KOffice developers planned to share as much infrastructure as possible between applications to reduce bugs and improve the user experience. [47] They also wanted 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. [48] Automating tasks and extending the suite with custom functionality can be done with D-Bus or with scripting languages like Python, Ruby, and JavaScript. [49]

See also

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. ↑ "KOffice Overview". KDE. Archived from the original on 4 May 2012. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  2. 1 2 3 "KDE 2.0 Release Announcement". KDE. 23 October 2000. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  3. ↑ "KOffice 2.3.3 Update". 24 June 2011. Archived from the original on 30 June 2011.
  4. ↑ "Mirrorlist /Attic/koffice-2.3.3/koffice-2.3.3.tar.bz2". 23 February 2011. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  5. ↑ SVAKSHA (7 September 2010). "KDE-Koffice seeks code contributors". Archived from the original on 27 October 2017. Retrieved 20 September 2013.
  6. ↑ "KDE Archive Mirrorlist /Attic/koffice-2.3.3/koffice-2.3.3.tar.bz2". download.kde.org. 23 February 2011. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  7. ↑ "KOffice v2.3.1". Ithov.com. 21 January 2011. Archived from the original on 20 December 2016. Retrieved 19 September 2013. This version of KOffice is translated to no less than 27 languages.
  8. ↑ "KOffice.org". Archived from the original on 21 August 2012. Retrieved 8 August 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  9. 1 2 "Archived copy of KOffice.org placeholder page". Archived from the original on 9 September 2012. Retrieved 20 September 2013.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  10. ↑ Dre (30 September 2000). "German-Sponsored KOffice Meeting Report". KDE. KDE.News. Archived from the original on 2 July 2011. Retrieved 21 May 2011.
  11. ↑ Wallin, Inge; Rempt, Boudewijn (30 October 2007). "Second KOffice Sprint in Berlin Focuses on Release, Polish". KDE. KDE.News. Retrieved 16 March 2011.
  12. ↑ Poortvliet, Jos (11 November 2008). "KOffice Sprint 2008". KDE. KDE.News. Retrieved 16 March 2011.
  13. ↑ Rempt, Boudewijn (13 June 2009). "KOffice 2009 Sprint In Berlin". KDE. KDE.News.
  14. ↑ Poortvliet, Jos (29 November 2009). "Second KOffice Developer Sprint 2009 Kickoff". KDE. KDE.News. Retrieved 16 March 2011.
  15. ↑ Rempt, Boudewijn (25 June 2010). "KOffice 2010 Summer Sprint Report". KDE. KDE.News. Retrieved 16 March 2011.
  16. ↑ "koffice/kpresenter". KDE. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  17. ↑ "Reginald Stadlbauer". Behind KDE. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  18. ↑ "koffice/kword". KDE. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  19. ↑ "Microsoft's 3rd man speaks out fear of KOffice". KDE. 30 January 1999. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  20. ↑ "KOffice 1.1 Release Announcement". KDE. 28 August 2001. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  21. ↑ "KDE Ships KOffice 1.2, an Integrated Office Suite for Linux/Unix". KDE.News. Archived from the original on 2012-07-10. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  22. ↑ "KOffice 1.3 Released". KDE.News. 27 January 2004. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  23. ↑ "KOffice 1.4 Released". KDE.News. 21 June 2005. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  24. ↑ "KOffice 1.5 Released". KDE.News. 11 April 2006. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  25. ↑ "KOffice 1.6 Released". KDE.News. Archived from the original on 2012-04-03. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  26. ↑ "KOffice 2.0.0 released". KDE. 28 May 2009. Archived from the original on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  27. ↑ "KOffice 2.1 released". KDE. 24 November 2009. Archived from the original on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  28. ↑ "KDE applications available for Haiku!". Tiltos.com. Archived from the original on 2013-09-21. Retrieved 19 September 2013.
  29. ↑ "KOffice 2.2 Released". KDE. 27 May 2010. Archived from the original on 2011-07-17. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  30. ↑ Joe Brockmeier (14 December 2010). "Behind the KOffice split". lwn.net.
  31. ↑ "KOffice split". KDE. 23 October 2010. Retrieved 4 May 2013.
  32. ↑ "Re: KOffice split". KDE. 26 October 2010. Retrieved 4 May 2013.
  33. ↑ "KOffice arbitration is finished". KDE. 11 June 2011. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  34. ↑ "CALLIGRA_HAS_MOVED_TO_GIT". KDE. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  35. ↑ "Unmaintained / KOffice • GitLab". KDE. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  36. ↑ "KOffice Repository". KDE. Archived from the original on 2012-12-20. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  37. ↑ "KOffice 2.3.0 Released". KDE. 31 December 2010. Archived from the original on 2011-06-07. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  38. ↑ "KOffice 2.3.3 update". Lists.kde.org. 1 March 2011. Retrieved 19 September 2013.
  39. ↑ "Calligra Suite Goes Active". KDE. 6 December 2010. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  40. ↑ "KDE - Experience Freedom!".
  41. ↑ "Re: Platform support / Roadmap". KDE. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  42. ↑ "KOffice activity (Note: Script Kiddy is an automated maintenance bot, not a developer)". KDE Projects. 18 July 2012. Archived from the original on 2012-12-20. Retrieved 18 July 2012.
  43. ↑ "KOffice activity (Note: Script Kiddy is an automated maintenance bot, not a developer)". KDE Projects. 19 August 2012. Archived from the original on April 15, 2013. Retrieved 4 December 2012.
  44. ↑ "KDE Quality Website Tools activity". KDE Projects. 22 October 2012. Archived from the original on December 28, 2012. Retrieved 4 December 2012.
  45. ↑ "KOffice – Overview – KDE Projects". KDE. Unmaintained Projects » KOffice
  46. ↑ "Calligra Suite: The Other Free Office Suite". 2 February 2016. Archived from the original on 30 April 2018. Retrieved 6 December 2016.
  47. ↑ "KOffice 2.0 Alpha 5 Released". KDE.News. Archived from the original on 2012-07-17. Retrieved 19 September 2013.
  48. ↑ "KOffice ODF Sprint Report". KDE.News. 14 May 2007. Retrieved 19 September 2013.
  49. ↑ Kross Scripting Framework
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