[dot] KOffice Releases Ninth Alpha of KOffice 2.0

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1216221620/

From: Boudewijn Rempt <boud at valdyas.org>
Dept: slowly-but-surely
Date: Wednesday 16/Jul/2008, @08:20

KOffice Releases Ninth Alpha of KOffice 2.0
===========================================

   The KOffice team announces the availability of the ninth alpha
release of KOffice 2.0
[http://koffice.org/announcements/announce-2.0alpha9.php]. With KDE4
becoming more stable by the week, KOffice development is picking up at a
fast pace and developers who previously had trouble keeping up are now
getting active again, leading to a much increased rate of commits for
KOffice. Both the NLnet sponsored Girish Ramakrisnan, who is working on
OpenDocument support, and the KOffice Google Summer of Code students
[http://www.valdyas.org/fading/index.cgi/hacking/summer_of_code/2008.comments]
are delivering solid work.
    Using editable rich text (e.g. in Krita) is now possible.
[http://static.kdenews.org/danimo/krita_editable_text.png]
     Apart from much invisible, but very important work on improving
core funcationality like ODF support, text handling and other
infrastructure, important visible areas of progress in Alpha 9 are:

     KSpread has regained support for printing. It is possible to print
a range of sheets or a selection of cells.

     The Kexi report generator can now generate reports in html and ODS,
the OpenDocument spreadsheet file format, which KSpread and OpenOffice
Calc can read.

     Vector layers in Krita can contain text and vector shapes.
Editable, rich text in Krita is now a reality. Even nicer, it has become
possible to add filter layers and masks to Krita, delivering live filter
effects on vector shapes.

     The text shape object, which is the basis for KWord and provides
editable rich text in all KOffice applications has gained a visual way
of changing the paragraph layout.

     KOffice-wide, a new implementation of guides provides snapping to
guides and dragging of guides for all flake shape objects.
   New for text: visually alter your paragraph spacing. 
[http://static.kdenews.org/danimo/kotext_paragraph_tool.png]
     The Google Summer of Code students have been hard at work: Lukas
Tvrdy has implemented the core of a chinese painting brush engine.
Benjamin Cail has ported most of the .doc import filter to make it
convert to odf instead of the old native KWord file format, cleaning up
and improving our ODF code along the way. ODF support is really being
focussed upon with both Piere Ducroquet and  Carlos Manuel Licea Vázquez
putting in a lot of work. Piere has been implementing document variables
and Carlos has made a lot of progress converting KPresenter to use ODF
natively instead of its own old file format. Lorenzo Villani is very
productive and has already shown off his Kexi web forms work on his blog
[http://blog.binaryhelix.net/], until his computer started smoking! The
calligraphy tool Fela Winkelmolen is writing for Karbon is coming along
very nicely and is already completely usable. Fredy Yanardi, finally, is
shouldering a lot of development work on Kpresenter, focussing on the
presentation notes feature.

     But all KOffice developers have been working really hard on
improving all components of KOffice. Please go to the changelog
[http://koffice.org/announcements/changelog-2.0-alpha9.php] for more
details! Or install KOffice on the operating system of your choice.

     For more screenshots, please visit our visual changelog
[http://koffice.org/announcements/visual-changelog-2.0-alpha9.php]. The
KOffice team would really welcome volunteers to maintain the visual
changelog!

     The KOffice team intends to continue delivering montly alpha
releases until we have implemented all features in our feature plan
[http://wiki.koffice.org/index.php?title=Schedules/KOffice/2.0/Feature_Plan]:
thereafter we will deliver beta releases until those features are
stable. Coincidental with the release of Alpha 9, KOffice has entered
the feature freeze stage.