Calligra 2.5 Office and Creativity Suite Released

jrepin writes "The Calligra team is proud and pleased to announce version 2.5 of Calligra, the KDE's office and creativity suite. Words, the word processor, has among other things improved support for editing of tables, tight run-around of text around images, manipulation of table borders, and dragging of text. Sheets, the spreadsheet application has a new stand-alone docker for the cell editor and a new cell tool window with cell formatting controls. Stage, the presentation program, has a number of usability improvements. Flow, the diagram application, has support for new stencils in odf custom shapes. Kexi, the database application, now offers a full screen mode. Krita, the painting application, has a new compositions docker, useful in movie storyboard generation. At the same time as the desktop version, the community also releases a QML based version for tablets and smartphone: Calligra Active." If there's one application here I'd like to see on a (pen) tablet, it's braindump.

Re:Finally!

[Carewolf]

LOL. Well there were a few improvements by making the suite into active x objects, so that you could place one item into another. (for example an excel table in a word document and still have it editable in the excel style.)

Koffice has been using Kparts for a decade, I can only assume calligra hasn't reverted that.

Java

[sourcerror]

Calligra has Krita and other graphics tools too, which are pretty unique. Also the true RMS believers always steered clear from OpenOffice because it depends on Java.

Re:Finally!

[AvitarX]

KDE is fairly innovative.

We owe Webkit to their NIH syndrome for example. Additionally, Krita is an interesting app that doesn't really have an open source analog.

Their take on Kword has always been different than MS's take on word processing (which is where Libre Office gets theirs). I really like how the toolbars in KDE4 behave too, getting the interface totally native is a nice touch.

Re:why another office suite?

[jbolden]

Huh? Calligra is much older than Libre Office. KDE office was around when Libre was still Star Office. Neither one of them is new kid on the block unless you want to go back 15 years. If you do back 15 years...

the goal of KDE was to create a GUI for Linux. The Office suite has to follow the GUI standards.
Star Office was a port of a pre-existing 2nd tier office suite to Linux. They didn't follow the GUI standards but they were the furthest along when Sun acquired them.