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Calligra

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Calligra Suite
Developer(s)KDE
Repository
Written inC++ (Qt, KDE Platform)
Operating systemUnix-like, Windows, Android[1]
Size~120 MB (compressed source code), ~25 MB (translations)[2]
Available in26 languages[3]
TypeGraphic art and office suite
LicenseGPL, LGPL
Websitecalligra.org

Calligra Suite is a graphic art and office suite by KDE forked from KOffice in 2010.[4] It is available for desktop PCs, tablet computers, and smartphones. It contains applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, databases, vector graphics, and digital painting.

Calligra uses the OpenDocument format as its default file format for most applications and can import other formats, such as Microsoft Office formats.[5] Calligra relies on KDE technology and is often used in combination with KDE Plasma Workspaces.

Supported systems

Calligra Active displaying a presentation

Calligra Suite heavily relies on Qt and therefore can be ported to any platform compatible to Qt with relative ease.

Desktops

Calligra’s main platform is desktop PCs running Linux, FreeBSD, OS X, and Windows,[6] of which Linux is the best supported system.[7] A version of Calligra’s predecessor KOffice was ported to Haiku.[8]

On desktop systems, the whole range of features is available.

Smartphones

Calligra Mobile is a version for smartphone-like formfactors. Its main purpose is to serve as document viewer for devices running Maemo or its successor MeeGo but simple editing features are also available.[9] This version only includes Words, Sheets and Stage.

Development was initiated in summer 2009 and first shown during Akademy / Desktop Summit 2009 by KO GmbH as a simple port of KOffice to Maemo. Later Nokia hired KO to assist them with a full-fledged mobile version, including a touchscreen-friendly user interface which was presented by Nokia during Maemo Conference in October 2009.[10] The first alpha version was made available in January 2010.[11] Along with the launch of the Nokia N9 smartphone, Nokia released its own Poppler and Calligra-based office document viewer under GPL.[12][13]

Tablets

Calligra Active was launched after the Plasma Active initiative to provide a document viewer similar to Calligra Mobile but for tablet computers.[14] As with Mobile, only Words, Sheets and Stage are included.

On 12 January 2012 an experimental version of Calligra for Android was announced – originally based on Calligra Mobile[1] the base for the port was changed to Calligra Active for performance reasons.[15]

History

See also: History of KOffice
Major Releases
Version Key feature Date
2.4[16] First release April 11, 2012
2.5[17] Tablet version August 13, 2012
2.6[18] Calligra Author February 5, 2013

Calligra was created as a result of a split in the KOffice community in 2010, after disagreements between the core developers.[19][20] Following arbitration with the community members, several applications were renamed by both communities.[21] Most developers, and all but one maintainer, 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 and KWord was replaced by the new word processor Calligra Words.[22]

KOffice 2.3, released December 31, 2010, along with subsequent bugfix releases (2.3.1–2.3.3) was still a collaborative effort of both the KOffice and Calligra development teams. According to its developers, this version is stable enough for real use, and Karbon14, Krita and KSpread are recommended for production work.[23]

On May 18, 2011 the Calligra team began releasing monthly snapshots while preparing for the release of Calligra 2.4.

The first version of the Calligra Suite for Windows was released on December 21, 2011. The package is labeled as “highly experimental” and “not yet suitable for daily use”.[24]

The Calligra team originally scheduled to release the final 2.4 version in January 2012[25] but problems in the undo/redo feature of Words and Stage required a partial rewrite and caused a delay.[26] Calligra 2.4 was released on April 11, 2012.[16] From the 2.4 release onward, the Calligra developers aim for a four months release cycle.[27]

Components

Component Description
Words A word processor with the ability to import Microsoft Word documents.
Sheets A spreadsheet program, formerly known as KSpread and Calligra Tables.
Stage A presentation program, formerly known as KPresenter.
Kexi A visual database management front-end, similar to Microsoft Access and with limited compatibility to Access’ file format. A Report Designer to replace Kugar is included.
Plan A project management application that can create Gantt charts. Formerly known as KPlato.
Braindump A notetaking and mindmapping application newly introduced with Calligra Suite 2.4.
Flow A programmable flowchart drawing program with dynamically loadable stencils. Formerly known as Kivio.
Karbon A vector graphics editor, formerly known as Karbon14.[28]
Krita A digital painting program with some image editing features. Formerly known as Krayon and KImageshop.
Author An e-book authoring application like iBooks Author[29] with EPUB export, newly introduced with Calligra Suite 2.6.[30][31][32]

Reception

Initial reception shortly after the 2.4 release was positive. Linux Pro Magazine Online’s Bruce Byfield wrote "Calligra needed an impressive first release. Perhaps surprisingly, and to the development team’s credit, it has managed one in 2.4", but also noted that "Words in particular is still lacking features". He concluded that Calligra is "worth keeping an eye on".[33]

The German sister publication LinuxUser 10/2012 reviewed Calligra 2.5 on September 12, 2012 (2012-09-12). Its reception was mostly positive. Negative criticism centered around Words' stability: "During our review no Calligra module was completely free of crashes, however Words' crashes reached an amount that we cannot recommend it for general use." The reviewer Thomas Drilling on the other hand praised Calligra’s usability, writing: "The consistent work flow, often stunningly intuitive workarounds, and clear menu structure are well received." He then concluded: "The individual modules' quality varies: While Words shows weakness, image editor Krita, spreadsheet application Sheets, and presentation program Stage completely won us over. Flowcharting application Flow allures with its wide range of stencils which makes drawing flow charts come easy."[34]

Technical details

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 when applicable.

The developers of Calligra plan to share as much infrastructure as possible between applications to reduce bugs and improve the user experience.[35] 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.[36] 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.

References

  1. ^ a b "Calligra on Android". blogs.kde.org. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
  2. ^ ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/calligra-latest/
  3. ^ ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/calligra-latest/calligra-l10n/
  4. ^ Brockmeier, Joe (14 December 2010). "Behind the KOffice split". Linux Weekly News. Retrieved 20 June 2013.
  5. ^ "Calligra Words". Calligra. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
  6. ^ "Get Calligra". Calligra.org. Retrieved 2012-05-01.
  7. ^ "The problem with supporting Windows". Slangkamp.wordpress.com. 2012-04-09. Retrieved 2012-05-01.
  8. ^ KDE applications available for Haiku!
  9. ^ "Calligra 2.4 Snapshot 1 Tour". Calligra. 2011-05-18. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
  10. ^ "Nokia Sponsors KOffice Development for Mobile Devices". KDE.News. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
  11. ^ Jonathan Riddell (2010-01-21). "KOffice Based Office Viewer Launched for Nokia N900". KDE. KDE.NEWS.
  12. ^ "Calligra provides the Engine for Nokia's Harmattan Office". Calligra.org. 2011-10-24. Retrieved 2012-05-01.
  13. ^ "Index of /pool/harmattan/free/o/office-tools". Harmattan-dev.nokia.com. Retrieved 2012-05-01.
  14. ^ "First Beta Version of the". Calligra Suite. 2011-09-14. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
  15. ^ "Calligra Active on Android". blogs.kde.org. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
  16. ^ a b "Calligra 2.4 Released". Calligra.org. 2012-04-11. Retrieved 2012-06-13.
  17. ^ "Calligra 2.5 Released | Calligra Suite". Calligra.org. 2012-08-13. Retrieved 2013-02-08.
  18. ^ "Calligra 2.6 Released | Calligra Suite". Calligra.org. Retrieved 2013-02-08.
  19. ^ "KOffice split". KDE. 2010-10-23. Retrieved 2012-06-13.
  20. ^ "Re: KOffice split". KDE. 2010-10-26. Retrieved 2012-06-13.
  21. ^ "KOffice arbitration is finished". KDE. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
  22. ^ "Calligra Words is not a fork of KWord". blogs.kde.org. Retrieved 2012-06-13.
  23. ^ "KOffice 2.3.0 Released". KOffice.org. 2010-12-31. Retrieved 2012-06-13.
  24. ^ "Calligra Packages for Windows Released".
  25. ^ "2.4 Beta 5". KDE. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
  26. ^ "Calligra Words: undo/redo framework". blogs.kde.org. Retrieved 2012-03-30.
  27. ^ "Calligra 2.4 Released – Now What?". Ingwa2.blogspot.de. 2012-04-13. Retrieved 2012-05-01.
  28. ^ H., Jan (2012-02-26). "Karbon or Karbon14?". calligra-devel (Mailing list). So lets make it official and written down what was done in practice anyway: drop the 14 from the name. {{cite mailing list}}: Unknown parameter |mailinglist= ignored (|mailing-list= suggested) (help)
  29. ^ Inge Wallin (2012-08-14). "Calligra Author". Retrieved 2012-09-14.
  30. ^ "Calligra Project Announces Calligra Author". Calligra.org. 2012-08-14. Retrieved 2012-09-14.
  31. ^ Inge Wallin (2012-08-19). "Progress in Calligra Author". Retrieved 2012-09-14.
  32. ^ Inge Wallin (2012-09-05). "More Progress in Calligra Author". Retrieved 2012-09-14.
  33. ^ "Calligra: The Other Office Suite Narrows the Gap". Linux Pro Magazine Online. Retrieved 2012-05-01.
  34. ^ Thomas Drilling (September 12, 2012 (2012-09-12)). "Kleinere Baustelle. Calligra: KDE-Office aus einem Guss" (in German). Linux New Media AG. Retrieved September 14, 2012 (2012-09-14). Keine Calligra-Komponente verschonte uns im Test gänzlich von Abstürzen, jedoch nahm deren Häufigkeit bei Words ein Ausmaß an, das uns veranlasst, Ihnen das Programm nicht für den Alltag zu empfehlen.
    Das über fast alle Komponenten hinweg einheitliche Bedienerkonzept und die oft verblüffend intuitiven Workarounds sowie die übersichtliche Menüstruktur gefallen dagegen gut. Die Qualität der einzelnen Module bewegt sich allerdings auf sehr unterschiedlichen Niveau: Während Words deutlich schwächelt, überzeugen der Bildbearbeiter Krita, die Tabellenkalkulation Sheets und das Präsentationsprogramm Stage auf ganzer Linie. Der Flowcharter Flow lockt mit seiner großen Auswahl an Schablonen, die das Zeichnen von Flussdiagrammen schnell von der Hand gehen lässt.     {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= and |date= (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  35. ^ The KOffice Project – KOffice 2.0 Alpha 5 Release Announcement
  36. ^ KOffice ODF Sprint Report
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