Announcement draft

[Inge Wallin]

On Tuesday, April 26, 2011 16:00:52 Inge Wallin wrote:
> Here is a first draft of the announcement of snapshot 1.  I have already
> had some feedback from Cyrille that I incorporated.
> 
> Please comment on the overall structure (is this what we want to focus on?)
> as well as the actual content.  Also remember that this is a first draft
> that will be polished over the next few days.
> 
> When we have the screenshots and visual tour on the website, I will also
> add references to those.
> 
> 	-Inge

Based on feedback from my first draft, I have embellished it a bit.  Here is a 
longer version. :-P

	-Inge
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Announcement

Today Calligra project announces the first snapshot release of the
calligra suite.  It is now 5 months ago since Calligra and KOffice
split ways and during that time we have improved our core libraries as
well as improved all the applications themselves.

Our goal is to provide the best application suite on all platforms
based on open standards.  That is no small goal.  We feel now that we
have improved the foundation enough to start working seriously on
improving the user experience.  For this, we need the help of our
users!

We will therefore release monthly snapshots, starting today, until the
final release in October.  These snapshots will be packaged by most
major Linux distributions and instructions on how to install them will
be provided too.  We hope to get lots of feedback on the snapshots so
that in October we can finally announce "Calligra is now end user
ready and is the most usable free office suite of all".

Development

But what has happened since the formation of the Calligra project?
Development has speeded up a lot since the break.  We have several new
contributors, and old contributors have come back into the
project. Here are the some of the results that make us proud to
announce this first snapshot in a series:

* Applications:

  - We have added two new applications:

    Flow is a diagramming and flowcharting application in the spirit
      of Visio.

    Braindump is a note taking application that builds on the Calligra
      core and uses the full power of the OpenDocument Format to allow
      for text, images and even multimedia in the notes.

  - We have worked to identify the weaknesses in the user interfaces
    that we have.  Help in this have been user interface design
    people, both from within the community and from outside it. We
    have also started to work on implementing the ideas that have come
    up, but this is far from finished yet.

* Foundation:

  - We have improved the separation of the core of Calligra -- the
    Office Engine -- from the user interfaces.  This means that it is
    now even easier than before to create new user interfaces for new
    situations. 

    In our repository we have two working user experiences: the
    desktop one and one aimed at mobile platforms, Calligra Mobile.
    There is also a new mobile user experience based on Qt Quick being
    developed. We have great hopes on this one since it will allow the
    user interface to adapt easier to new form factors like tablets.

    In addition to these community based ones, we know of at least 3
    company sponsored user interfaces that are not yet released.

  - The core has been significantly speeded up and in some cases been
    made more lightweight. This will improve the ability for Calligra
    to work in limited environments like mobile phones.

  - The text layout and rendering library has been completely
    reworked. It is now possible to render tables with page breaks,
    tables within tables, to have editable footnotes and endnotes and
    to get rendering of headers and footers correct.  None of this was
    possible with the old text layout code.

    At the same time we also added basic support for sections as
    defined in ODF and the new text layout makes it much easier to
    later implement full section support with a multi-column
    layout. The text layout library is used in all parts of Calligra.

* Compatibility:

  - All our file conversion plugins have been improved a lot.  Among
    the new features is support for Smart Art in MS Office 2007 files
    and later.

Towards the Future

Calligra is much more lightweight than other free office suites, it
has a good separation between engine and user interface and there
are already several mobile user interfaces.  We therefore expect
Calligra to be the dominant free office application on mobile
platforms.

We also have a good foundation to stand on.  What is not yet fully
mature is the desktop interface.  The developer team discussed that a
lot at the Calligra developer sprint in Berlin, and we have a plan to
improve and simplify the user interface for the desktop.

We will work on improving this until the final release, and that is
what we need our users to participate in.  So install the Calligra
snapshot and test it out.  Report to us bugs and bad usability and
together we will make Calligra not only the best mobile application
suite but also the best desktop application suite!