Download KOffice 1.6

KOffice is an open source office suite for the KDE desktop environment on Linux and Unix systems. It consists of a number of different applications such as a word processor (KWord), a spreadsheet program (KSpread), a presentation program (KPresenter), a project management program (KPlato), a drawing program (Krita) and a database program (Kexi). The developers have released KOffice 1.6 with the following announcement:

Highlights:

The 1.6 release is intended mainly as a feature release for the two fastest developed components: Krita and Kexi. This version also contains a vastly improved version of KPlato, our project planning application. However, other components are being actively developed too – with astonishing results. Here are the highlights of this release:

• Krita Steps Up Into the Realms of Professional Image Editing
  With this release Krita steps up and becomes usable for professional image editing. Krita and its maintainer won the prize for “Best Application” in this years KDE conference in Dublin. With features such as magnetic selection, effect layers, color model independency, and full scriptability, it has risen to become what is probably the best free image editing program today. For more details look in the Principal Improvements below, or the complete changelog.
• Kexi Adds Many New Features:
  Kexi, the desktop database application competing with MS Access, is the other application in KOffice that is already the best of its kind. Kexi has received over 270 improvements since version 1.0 (KOffice 1.5). With this release, Kexi gains such features as the ability to handle images, compact the database, automatic datatype recognition and Kross scripting tools. Other parts have also been much developed with both new features and ease of use in mind.
• KFormula Goes to OpenDocument and MathML
  The formula editor of KOffice now supports OpenDocument and MathML and uses it as its default file format. It also surpasses the equivalent component in OpenOffice.org, scoring 70% on the W3C MathML test suite, compared to 22% for OpenOffice.org Formula. The KOffice team sees this as one of the many examples where the work to provide a very well-structured codebase of KOffice pays off to provide superior support for the existing standard.
• Scripting Support in KSpread, Krita and Kexi
  KOffice 1.6 brings scripting to a new level with scripting functionality in KSpread, Krita and Kexi. Scripting is provided through the cross-language script bridge Kross, which enables KOffice to be scripted in Python, Ruby with possible future extensions of Javascript and Java. With this release, KOffice also introduces pure command-line scripting where eg spreadsheet documents can be automatically manipulated with scripts to create many new use cases.

Principal Improvements:

The principal improvements in KOffice 1.6 over KOffice 1.5 are:

KSpread:
• Added scripting with Kross.

Kexi (Desktop Database application):

• Further enhancements and optimizations in the database connectivity library.
• Further improvements in Table Designer: “Image” data type, undo and redo commands, support for default values, and tooltips.
• Improvements in Query Designer: defining sort order for column in both visual and SQL view
• Data-aware “Image Box” widget in Forms and Table View, major improvements in the Auto Field form widget
• Support for macros

Krita (Pixel-based image editor):

• Support for handling perspective in drawings, including perspective transformation, perspective grid and perspective clone
• Added support for layer masks
• A new magnetic selection tool has been created.
• Many new filters have been added: random noise, random pick, lens correction, filters from krita-plugins
• Krita can open PDF files and transform them into a bitmap
• New tool for drawing bezier curves has been added

KPlato (Project management tool):

• Added PERT calculation for estimated value based on optimistic, expected and pessimistic value
• The distribution used is dependent on the setting of Risk.

KFormula (Mathematical formula editor):

• OpenDocument and MathML are now native format with OpenDocument as the default
• The list of supported elements: mi, mn, mtext, ms, mstyle, msqrt, mroot, mfrac, mrow (others might work)
• The list of supported styles: mathcolor, mathbackground, mathsize, mathvariant

Kugar (Reporting tool):

• Kugar’s templates are now visible in the startup dialog.

A more complete list of changes is available at the KOffice web site.