The team behind the KOffice suite announced the release of its latest version, the KOffice 2.0.0. The office productivity suite has been totally rewritten and the latest version consists of six applications, each one suited for various tasks at home or in an enterprise environment. The new version a new the developing the team only recommends it to developers and testers. The regular users have to wait for upcoming maintenance releases. KOffice 2.0 is the first release in a long series so it is likely to contain incompatibilities and bugs. Certain components that existed in KOffice 1.6 will not available in 2.0.0, but will be re-introduced in KOffice versions 2.1 and 2.2.

Applications included in KOffice 2.0.0:

• KWord Word processor

• KPresenter Presentations creator

• KSpread Spreadsheet manager

• Karbon Vector graphics editor

• KPlato Project management tool

• Krita Raster graphics editor

The KChart software is available in the entire KOffice Suite in the form of a shape plug-in. The Kexi database creator, Kivio Flowchart editor, and the formula shape are some of the features missing in this suite. The availability of Kivio in the versions to be released is uncertain. One of the major new features included in KOffice 2 is “Flake” which provides a very solid integration and interoperability. KOffice 2.0.0 also consist of a redesigned, customizable Graphical User Interface which is suitable for wider screen formats. Each individual toolbox can be docked or undocked to suit your work flow. KOffice has the ability to remember the layout and settings so users need not reconfigure it with every launch of the program. Another change in the suite is the inclusion of native support for the ODF, Open Document Format. This ensures the compatibility with other Office suites, like OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office.