Open Source Office Suite KOffice Out Now.

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KOffice is the open source, cross-platform office suite that OpenOffice.org.KOfficeis part of KDE desktop environment KDE's products are a modern desktop system for Linux and UNIX platforms, comprehensive office productivity and groupware suites. You can run KDE apps like KOffice can run in Windows & Mac OS X & Linux environment, although installation is still a lot simpler in Linux distributions like Kubuntu or OpenSUSE.

KOffice team released a preview of KOffice 2. KOffice includes a word processor, spreadsheet utility, presentation manager, project management softwre, a vector graphcis editor and a raster graphics editor. It use of the OpenDocument Format as the native file format. This makes KOffice immediately compatible with a lot of other office software, most notably OpenOffice.org

(Karbon - Vector graphics editor)

The following applications are part of KOffice 2.0:
  • KWord - Word processor
  • KSpread - Spreadsheet calculator
  • KPresenter - Presentation manager
  • KPlato - Project management software
  • Karbon - Vector graphics editor
  • Krita - Raster graphics editor
All the applications of KOffice has a new GUI layout better suited to todays wider screens. The GUI consists of a workspace and a sidebar where tools can dock. Any tool can be ripped off to create its own window and later be redocked fo full flexibility. The users setup preferences are of course saved and reused the next time that KOffice is started.

(Krita- Raster graphics editor)

New version does have a number of new features, including:
  • Better integration between applications
  • New GUI designed to work with widescreen monitors
  • Support for Windows, Mac, and Linux
  • Native support for OpenDocument Format
It's also much easier for third party developers to create add-ons that will add new features and customizations. The idea of an application that supports third-party extensions and add-ons users can download and install in one click may be more applicable to Web browsers than office suites, but the developers at the open source KOffice project have developed such an architecture where all components are modular. Find more info at the wiki
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