The slogan in KOffice’s website “the most comprehensive office suite in existence” is correct. Many users think that a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation program and an e-mail/calendar management is enough for an office productivity software. This definition does not take into account many office tasks which are performed by the workers. OpenOffice.org has nice programs for vector drawing, mathematical equation editing and databases but this is still not sufficient. At this point KOffice will suit your needs better.
KOffice has the following programs:
- Word processing: KWord
- Spreadsheets: KSpread
- Presentation: KPresenter
- Database: Kexi
- Flowcharting: Kivio
- Vector drawing: Karbon14
- Image editing: Krita
- Project management & Planning: KPlato
- Graph and chart drawing: KChart
- Mathematical formula editing: KFormula
- Report generating: Kugar
- E-mail, calendar, task management: KOrganizer
We believe nothing is left behind by these programs.
KWord
KWord is, as the name says, is the word processor of the KDE Office Suite. KWord differs from the other wordprocessors, since the program is based on frames rather than page orientation. Let’s put it this way: Do you want a document that you can place text, graphics, and tables freely (page layout) or do you want a regular-looking document (text oriented)? With the former, you can make newspaper/magazine-like documents, brochures, invitations and with the latter you can type your regular report, article or book. One of the most powerful points of KWord is the screen layout, which places KWord between a word processor and desktop publishing software.
Beginning with the page layout option, KWord offers flexibility with Paragraph Layouts, known as Styles. The paragraphs contain settings about the indents, line spacing, enumeration (numbering), fonts and alignments, borders etc. There are predefined headings to structure your documents, predefined enumeration and bullet styles plus the flexibility of adding your own. The screen has a pane on the left which shows you the structure (according to your headings for example) or the elements that are present in your document (such as tables, lists, graphics.)
The other standard word processor features are available with KWord such as alignment, Arabic/Roman numbering (both upper and lowercase), header/footer, footnotes, automatic table of contents generation, ruler, tables etc..
KWord can import OpenOffice.org Writer, rich text, Word Perfect, Abiword, HTML files, Microsoft Word, PDF word processors, XML files and can produce LaTeX output.