KDE's Calligra Office Suite For Android Released

jrepin writes "Coffice is a new project that tries to make KDE's Calligra office suite available on mobile platforms like Android, Blackberry 10, Jolla SailfishOS and Ubuntu Phone. Calligra already has some presence on smartphones, since document viewer on Nokia N9 is based on it. The first release brings Calligra Words viewer for OpenDocument Text documents and is currently available for Android only. Plans for later releases include viewers for spredsheets and presentations. Editing and saving as well as support for proprietary Microsoft Office formats are coming later."

OSX would be nice...

[jockm]

It is a shame that there still isn't a stable version for OSX.

Re:

[dreamchaser]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Re:OSX would be nice...

[ArhcAngel]

Just install KDE [kde.org] on your MAC and run it native! Sure, you have compile it from source but think of the satisfaction you'll feel every time you fire up your office suite...

Re:OSX would be nice...

[mwvdlee]

The primary aspect that sets computer text comprehension apart from humans' is that computers have trouble understanding context.
You've just made the gap a bit smaller.

Re:

[rubycodez]

Not only did normal people understand what was meant by "mac", so did you but being a fussbudget of the picayune you felt compelled to whine about it anyway. Get help.

Re:

[bjwest]

Who do you think started this whole PC/MAC thing to begin with? They're all PCs, but only some of them are MACs.

Re:

[jockm]

When I am offered ice cream I don't want to be handed rock salt and milk and told to churn it myself :)

More to the point, yes while I am capable to compiling it and running it myself, though I would feel annoyance every time I launched it, I said I wanted a stable version. Not an experimental version, nor an unstable version; and that is all we have now. That is all we have had for years now.

It is lovely they are pushing the bounds and porting to Android, I just with they would either produce a stable

Re:

[jockm]

Also can I introduce you to this little gem [calligra.org]:

Krita needs to disable OpenGL in Preferences.

That is not acceptable. And just how many YEARS has the OSX build been unstable and experimental? I have lost count.

Re:

[ingwa]

Since it's not acceptable we are very happy to receive your contributions here. Most progress is achieved by people who think that something is not acceptable. Seriously, I wonder what gives you this sense of entitlement. Everybody who works on Calligra is a volunteer except for the few hired by KO GmbH in Germany who provide support for Calligra. But they are doing the bidding of their customers, who apparently haven't seen fit yet to pay for a mac port. So in this case it's either put up or wait until

Re:

[jockm]

I do and continue to write and contribute to open source projects. But I they have to be on subjects I care about and use.

The problem here is that I can't even use Calligra to know if I might want to contribute — and push something else off that list, there are only so many hours I can devote to non paying work.

The OpenGL thing just belies a systemic problem that makes me far too nervous to even try Calligra — ie what other lovely little time-bombs are in there? Also if this is such a known is

Re:

[ingwa]

Ok, I see what you mean.

The problem is actually not so much running on OSX, which works, but that nobody has yet created a good package. I'm not myself familiar with packaging for OSX so I can't say for sure what's holding it up. I just know that so far there have been problems when people tried.

Re:

[jockm]

No the problem is that the port is labeled experimental and they themselves say it hasn't been tested; AND it is rocksalt and milk (IE you have to make it yourself). I only have so much time in my day to contribute to open source projects. So I am not going to go install Linux and Calligra just to see if it is worth giving a try. I am more than capable of compiling the suite myself, but I have better things to do than spend time on that just to see if I might like it. Especially with that OpenGL thing,

Re:

[mnajem]

Mac works best with another office suit.

Re:

[jockm]

Well and that is why I use Microsoft Office. Not being a troll, but honestly it is the one I work with best. I still can't round trip documents with even moderately complex formatting in [Open|Libra|Neo]Office with any consistency. Pages is lovely and I use it when I need to do something a little more DTP like, but I wouldn't want to write a novel in it. And AbiWord is a) not up to my needs, and b) was more or less abandoned on OSX a good while ago.

I would love another option to try. I don't hate MS (o

Don't knock yourselves out on proprietary compat

[sgt scrub]

I can see some kind of aftermarket converter for non-standard documents; but, I really don't see a need to support proprietary documents. New platforms like mobile devices should force the older desktop model to conform to them, imho.

Re:

[blackraven14250]

Ok, so make an office suite that's free but doesn't support the format used in the majority of the business world. That won't cause the suite to be marginalized at all in favor of other free or paid suites that *just work* for the people who actually have a need to read documents created by Word users everywhere.

OpenOffice

[markdavis]

Although this sounds interesting, what would be more useful for me would be OpenOffice/LibreOffice on Android.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/libreoffice-for-android-frustratingly-close-to-release/ [arstechnica.com]
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Android [documentfoundation.org]
http://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/11985/is-libreoffice-4-available-for-android/ [libreoffice.org]

Re:OpenOffice

[JabberWokky]

You do realize that this uses the exact same file format? Since the interface is necessarily going to change between a phone or tablet interface and a desktop program, just pretend this is LibreOffice on Android and you'll be good.

Re:

[loufoque]

What matters is not file formats, but the rendering engine.

Re:

[ingwa]

The Calligra rendering engine is actually very good. Nokia put a lot of effort into Calligra to make it a super good document viewer for their N900 and N9 MeeGo phones. This includes all MS Office formats (doc/docx, xls/xlsx, ppt/pptx). Heck, Calligra supports more of docx than MS own embedded office versions. And it's much better than any other free offering, including OpenOffice or LibreOffice, when it comes to viewing.

Re:

[nazsco]

They say odt format is not available yet (with a typo missing the "not" on the store no less)

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[AliasMarlowe]

They say odt format is not available yet (with a typo missing the "not" on the store no less)

According to Google Play [google.com], it's the exact opposite: "only OpenDocument Text documents (ODT) are supported".

spellcheck

[1u3hr]

viewers for spredsheets and presentations

But apparently no spellchecker. Not that anyone at Slashdot uses one.

Re:

[rubycodez]

You might be interested to know that "spred" is indeed an archaic form of the present-day "spread"; it is therefore not a mispelling.

Nice to be off the cloud

[nazsco]

Finally a office suite not forcing me to store all mydata on their servers.

Though be warned, it will download some 20mb of qt libraries. On my nexus one, this raises the bar on if i can even have the app by a huge margin

Re:

[Teun]

What is your problem comprehending the first words of the summary; 'Coffice is a new project that tries'?
How do you read it as a ready to use project?

Re:

[ingwa]

I think you are mixing two things: Using the Calligra engine for a viewer (which is excellent) and the Calligra Suite for desktop (which is indeed somewhat buggy). But it's already much much better. Besides, note that this is not the Calligra community doing something. It's one individual who has released an Android viewer (alpha quality right now) based on the Calligra engine (stable). I can't say anything about how fast the full package will be extended or stabilized but the underlying engine is already

The Benefit of KOffice/Calligra

[Zombie Ryushu]

The KOffice/Calligra applications serve absolutely indispensable use: Kvivio/Draw. It got me though my Four Cisco CCNA Classes when I was in university. It is a Visio diagramming program that at least partly can replaces Visio.

Re:

[loufoque]

There are plenty of other diagram drawing software, many of which not Qt-based.

Re:

[Noughmad]

Why do you say that as if being Qt-based were a bad thing?

Re:

[jayrulez]

No, it's not.

Not so suite news

[The Infamous Grimace]

The title implies a full office suite; at this point it's just a doc viewer. Let me know when 'Sheets' is ready; I could use a decent spreadsheet app for my Nexus 7, and Kingsoft doesn't do it for me.

Re:

[friesandgravy]

Try E-Droid-Cell pro. Clunky, but, featured, it has been very solid for me.

Re:

[ingwa]

Sebastian said to me that the next milestones after getting the thing working at all was:
- Adding doc and docx import filters
- Add spreadsheet support
- Add presentation support

Coffice?

[Freggy]

And finally we got rid of this terrible KOffice name, and now they call this Coffice? What was wrong with Calligra Mobile?

Re:

[PuZZleDucK]

CalligraMobileOffice ... See that wasn't so hard :p

Re:

[ingwa]

But it doesn't. :)

Calligra is an application suite with some applications that are office applications and some that aren't. Krita, for instance, is not an office application, it's a paint application for professional artists. In fact, before Krita created its own website (krita.org) the spread of it was hampered by its association to the office applications.

Re:

[ingwa]

Not "they". Sebastian Sauer. He has made a truly remarkable job by porting the Calligra engine to Android in 2-3 weeks. But it's not an officially released suite (or even application) yet by the Calligra community. I'm sure that it will be, but it's not yet.

Btw, the Calligra Active group, who is working on the tablet edition of Calligra, have started to create QML components of the word processor, spreadsheet and presentation modules. For those you who are not into Qt and QML development, this means that

New ecosystem taking shape

[gmuslera]

Targetting a bunch of mobile platforms at once is one of the biggest advantages of QT/QML. Having a key app as Calligra in all of them not just gives base to the new mobile platforms, but also extend the ecosystem to Android, as a lot of people will have the libraries installed, making more attractive to develop for it.

Letter K?

[Tarlus]

Given KDE's naming schemes, I'm surprised that they didn't call this Kalligra.