Calligra: Difference between revisions

Calligra Suite

Krita screenshot
Developer(s)	The Calligra Team
Initial release	1998 (1998)
Stable release	KOffice 2.3.1 / January 19, 2011; 13 years ago (2011-01-19)
Preview release	Calligra 2.4 Snapshot 2 / June 17, 2011; 13 years ago (2011-06-17)
Repository	invent.kde.org/office/calligra
Written in	C++ (Qt, KDELibs)
Operating system	FreeBSD, Haiku, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows
Platform	Cross-platform
Available in	Multilingual
Type	Office suite
License	GPL, LGPL, BSD license and others
Website	calligra-suite.org

Calligra Suite is an office suite created from KOffice in 2010.^[1] It is available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Haiku.^[2] It contains applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, databases, vector graphics and digital painting.

Calligra uses the OpenDocument format as its default file format and can import other formats, such as Microsoft Office formats. Calligra relies on KDE technology and is often used in combination with the KDE Software Compilation.

Calligra was created as a result of a split in the KOffice community in 2010. Initial work on KOffice development began in 1997^[10] with KPresenter, followed by KWord^[11] in 1998.

In 1999, KOffice was cited in testimony in the United States v. Microsoft anti-trust trial by then-Microsoft executive Paul Maritz as evidence of competition in the operating system and office suite arena.^[12]

The first official release of the KOffice suite was in 2000 when it was released as part of KDE 2.0.^[13] Versions 1.1 followed in 2001,^[14] 1.2 in 2002.^[15] KOffice 1.6, which was the last in the 1.x series, was released in 2006. ^[16]

KOffice has undergone a major transition accompanying the release of KDE Software Compilation 4. Coinciding with the work on KDE SC 4, the KOffice team prepared a major new release, KOffice 2 which used the new KDE SC 4 libraries.

KOffice 2.0 was released in 2009. It was only recommended for testers and developers rather than production use, since the release was missing key features and applications from the previous stable release series.^[17]

Kexi, the data management application, returned in May 2010, with KOffice 2.2. In this version a new framework for effects on shapes and a new import filters for the Office Open XML formats got added.^[18]

KOffice 2.3 was released in December 2010. According to its developers, this version is stable enough for real use, and Karbon14, Krita and KSpread are recommended for production work.^[19]

In 2010 members of the KOffice development team announced a split of KOffice to two projects under the names KOffice and Calligra Suite. Most developers and maintainers of particular applications joined the Calligra project. Three applications, Kexi, Krita and KPlato and the user interfaces for mobile devices have been completely moved out of KOffice and are only available within Calligra. A new application called Braindump has been added to Calligra after the split.

The Calligra team plans to release monthly snapshots while preparing for the first release which is scheduled for October 2011.^[20] The first of these snapshots was released on 19 May 2011.

Calligra Suite includes the following applications:

• Words (formerly KWord), a word processor and desktop publishing program.
• Tables (formerls KSpread), a spreadsheet application.
• Stage (formerly KPresenter), a presentation program.
• Kexi, an integrated data management application, designed as a Microsoft Access or FileMaker competitor. It has limited compatibility with the MS Access file format.
• Flow (formerly Kivio), a programmable flowchart drawing program with dynamically loadable stencils. Developed by theKompany, which offers additional (non-free) stencils for sale. Previously known as Kivio.
• Karbon14, a vector graphics editor
• Krita (formerly known as Krayon and KImageshop), a digital painting program with some image editing features.
• Plan (formerly known as KPlato), a project management application that can create Gantt charts.
• Braindump, a note taking application.

The main office suite in use today is Microsoft Office.^[21] Microsoft Office has been released for Windows and Macintosh but no version to date has been released for Linux. In addition, users of the open source operating system have typically expressed a preference for open source software.

In order to meet the demand for a Linux-based office suite, several projects have produced open source office suites for Linux including GNOME Office, LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org is likely the most popular office suite for Linux^[22] as it ships in the default installs of popular Linux distributions. However, OpenOffice has drawn criticism for its speed and memory usage.^[23][24] In light of this, KOffice, the Calligra Suite and GNOME Office remain alternatives on KDE and GNOME, respectively.

Calligra is designed to work with the KDE platform, using the Qt and KDE libraries. However it is released independently of the KDE Software Compilation. All its components are released under free software licenses and use OpenDocument as their native file format.

The developers of Calligra plan to share as much infrastructure as possible between applications to reduce bugs and improve the user experience.^[25] This is done by common technologies like Flake and Pigment. Flake provides a way to handle shapes, which can contain text, images, formulas (via KFormula), charts (via KChart) or other objects, in a consistent way across all applications. The Calligra team also wants to create an OpenDocument library for use in other KDE applications that will allow developers to easily add support for reading and outputting OpenDocument files to their applications.^[26] Automating tasks and extending the suite with custom functionality can be done with D-Bus or with scripting languages like Python, Ruby, and JavaScript through the Kross scripting framework.

Nokia has developed a user interface for use on mobile devices for Words, Tables and Stage. This version, which is called Calligra Mobile, is available for the Maemo and MeeGo operating systems. Calligra Active is a user interface for tablet computers.

• Calligra Suite website
• KOffice website
• KOffice Wiki
• KDE UserBase
• KDE Documentation