[dot] KOffice 2.0, The Vision

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1149518002/

From: Thomas Zander <>
Dept: write-history-yourself
Date: Monday 05/Jun/2006, @07:33

KOffice 2.0, The Vision
=======================

   KOffice [http://www.koffice.org] is working on its future, one based
on KDE4. KOffice is starting new initiatives with libraries like Flake
[http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Flake] and Pigment
[http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Pigment] that are going to be
used for all KOffice applications.  For the users of KOffice those
changes are invisible until the 2.0 previews actually start to appear
some months from now.  Therefor the KOffice crew wants to show you their
goals of what KOffice 2 is going to look like.  Read more for the whole
story.

     When I first saw a paper on KOffice it showed the concept of
embedded documents which allows me to have a formula or chart in my
paper and allow me to update my charts by just altering some cells in my
spreadsheet. The idea that an open source and good looking office suite
does that brought me into KOffice.

     Now, many years later, we are moving to the next level.  KOffice
will define so called 'shapes' which can be anything from a simple
triangle to a multi-layered image and allow those to be used in all
KOffice applications as the building blocks of a document just like they
are shapes that the application provides itself.  So no more embedded
documents which are always square and always start from the top-left
corner. This allows for simple things like KWord finally providing
simple lines the be drawn, but much more exciting are new features like
being able to rotate or skew a KWord text frame. And not only being able
to do that in a KWord document, but also in a Krita or a Karbon
document.
     In KOffice each application will have a specific media that it will
specialise in. KWord will obviously specialise in text frames while
Karbon will specialise in all sorts of vector graphics.  The difference
is that the applications will put all that in a Shape and a Tool.
     Consider a user who wants to write a paper and have a nice vector
graphic in the header of his document.  He would be able to load an svg
graphic and place it in his KWord document. For tweaking the loaded
graphic he can just click on it and at that point KWord will see that
the shape is a vector one. KWord will then supply a tool in the toolbox
(which is the normal 2-columns toolbar type thing Krita already has)
that allows the user to alter the internal vector graphics right inside
his KWord document. But without the annoying flickering and replacement
of menu and toolbars that happens if the shape was really an external
document being edited.
     KOffice 2 will still have the most applications there are combined
in any single office suite, and on top of that those applications will
show an integration that's unparallelled in the industry.  Each
application really does make the whole more complete by literally making
the other applications more powerful.
     Every application that uses the Flake library will provide a
shape-type that the other applications can use.  Want to use that 1 cool
Kivio-shape in your Krita painting, go ahead.  But the most exciting
part is that the shapes come with so called 'tools'.  Where each
application can use the interaction model for that shape type. And since
its determined per shape-type, its the same across all the KOffice
applications.

     We already see the advantage with a basic interaction-tool that
allows moving, rotation etc. of all shape-types.  It has features like
scaling with the control button down, reserving the aspect ratio of the
shape. Unlike in KOffice 1.x that single interaction-tool will be used
in all KOffice applications stopping the application from reinventing
the wheel, they are literally all running the same code and thus all
applications will work consistently towards the user.  Definitely a good
thing for usability.
  Flake in KWord 2