KDE Releases Calligra 2.7 30
jrepin writes "The Calligra team is proud and pleased to announce the release of version 2.7 of the Calligra Suite, Calligra active and the Calligra Office Engine. Words, the word processing application, has a new look for the toolbox. In the same toolbox there are also new controls to manipulate shapes with much enhanced usability. Author, the writer's application, has new support for EPUB3: mathematical formulas and multimedia contents are now exported to ebooks using the EPUB format. There is also new support for book covers using images. Plan, the project management application, has improvement in the scheduling of tasks. The formula shape now has new ways to enter formula: a matlab/octave mode and a LaTEX mode."
Re:Where did this come from? (Score:5, Informative)
I've been using KDE since it was released, and have never given Calliga a peek, and only about 6 months ago have I even heard of Calliga at all.
You'd never know it by visiting the Calligra site, but it was forked from KOffice, and Kword, KSpread, KPresenter etc. all got
renamed after the Fork. (I had guessed it was a fork because large application suites don't spring fully fledged from nothing).
A primer for those new to Caligra is Here [wikipedia.org].
I'm not sure I need yet another office suite at work, but it has some things that might be interesting
to try, since installation is just a click away on any competent Linux Distro.
Calligra Words (Score:5, Informative)
is the only part of the Calligra Suite I have really tried out (version 2.6.4). It lacks some features necessary for me, but it is a nice lightweight word processor. Its best feature is its tabbed & indexed sidebar. Just moving icon toolbars to the side doesn't work. It seems so logical to use some of that wide screen real estate for toolbars, but in reality it is hard to make sidebars work.
But Calligra Word has got it right:
Text instead of icons.
Tabbed & indexed to maximize the information, but without losing spatial memory of where functions are. (The main thing I hate about Microsofts "Ribbon").
The Calligra Word "Dockers" is also a very nice concept: they are basically information and toolbar tiles that defaults to the right side. They can either be compressed when tiled together, be tabbed behind each other, or float freely
Looking at the screenshoot of the new 2.7 version, they seem to have improved the toolboxes and their layout even further
Another thing Calligra does very well, is integration with the other components. The Calligra Word has superb drawing and figure making and manipulation abilities, while feeling really fast and lightweight at the same time, no long waits or disc trashing while the drawing component is started etc.
It really shines when it comes to making fast one-off DTP/presentation stuff like combining text, figures and pictures, and connecting them with lines.
Re:Where did this come from? (Score:4, Informative)
I think the Calliga name is quite new...
The first Calliga release was a little over a year ago, although the Calliga fork occurred about 2.5 years ago. It was a mass-exodus fork where nearly all the developers and maintainers went to the new project.
(and I assume Words is Kword 2).
Nope, Calliga Words was written from scratch over the last few years. Kword is the only KOffice application that did not become a Calliga application.