KOffice 2.3.0 Office Suite Released

[deanjo]

What Linux user uses Photoshop in Linux?

Enough that it is one of the most requested apps for compatibility with wine and crossover.

[deanjo]

There are also many users of GIMP that use it because Photoshop isn't available in linux in a native format. Photoshop is also a big reason why many do not use linux but Windows and OS X. If Photoshop was ported I would expect that you would see a sharp drop in GIMP usage. GIMP is available in windows and os x as well, but the number of GIMP users in those OS's is dwarfed by Photoshop users.

[smitty3268]

The targeted audience of Krita changed in the 2.x line - originally it was a general purpose image editor app meant to compete against Photoshop and Gimp. With 2.x they changed the focus to specifically target artists creating images, and believe that will allow them to succeed better with the narrower audience, while leaving Gimp and Photoshop to take care of what they are good at. Therefore, they have features like many different paint brushes and mixing pigments together blending like actual paint would, etc.

Anyway, as far as what makes this release "certified", i believe it mostly boils down to 3 things:
1. Lots of bug fixes and stability updates
2. Huge performance increases, turning a slow app into something an artist would happily use
3. Some UI updates, based on a review of the user-friendliness by a third-party who has done similar work for other artistic programs in the past. I can't remember who it was, but i'll try to look that up and let you know if i can find it.

They also asked for some donations a while ago and used it to fund a paid developer for quite a while in order to do a lot of this work.

Basically, they're saying that Krita 2.3 is now at the state where artists should be able to use the app and not get pissed off at how broken and slow it is - until now the 2.x versions were basically considered betas, or for people willing to put up with bugs to play around with it.

[smitty3268]

With 2.x they changed the focus to specifically target artists creating images, and believe that will allow them to succeed better with the narrower audience, while leaving Gimp and Photoshop to take care of what they are good at.

From one of the developers:

This is where we can have a clear separation between the different 2D graphics application in the open source world, with Gimp having a focus on image manipulation, mypaint being a scratchpad for quickly drawing, and Krita being focused on digital painting. This does not mean there should not be any features overlap, like Krita having a set of filters for image enhancement. It is just that the focus of the user interface and of the development is different.

I can't remember who it was, but i'll try to look that up and let you know if i can find it.

David Revoy is the name of the artist giving them input that i was looking for. I think they've also been talking to several blender folks.

[BlackStar]

so i don't really get what the point is of koffice. why not just use open office? what does koffice offer that openoffice doesn't? if its for better kde integration then the developers could just spend their time working on openoffice instead and continue a program that has a lot more dedication, and is more completed.

Why have one implementation when you can have two?

This is the spirit of Linux: plurality and choice. It's the single greatest difference from Apple's monoculture.

[Awesomeness]

so i don't really get what the point is of koffice. why not just use open office? what does koffice offer that openoffice doesn't?

What a retarded question. When the KOffice project was born, there simply was no other FOSS office suite.
KOffice is the first ever FOSS office suite and predates OOo by two years.
Next time check Wikipedia first.

[hal2k1]

Digikam is for digital photos, not krita

Krita is not exactly a replacement for GIMP or Photoshop. While GIMP and Photoshop are primarily image manipulation programs (for photo editing, and the like), Krita is more of a painting program, for artists to create completely new images.

Of course, there is plenty of overlap, and Krita works well for photos. I don't know how well it compares to other programs, but I hear that it's not bad. Probably has fewer filters than GIMP or PS, though.

Krita is not really for photgraphs, it is a program for artists to create and modify raster graphics.

The photo image manipulation programs (for photo editing) for KDE would be digikam.

http://www.digikam.org/drupal/about/overview

http://www.digikam.org/drupal/about/features9x

It is a simple concept ... use digikam for photos and krita for drawings (karbon for vector graphics drawings). Note that karbon can use elements from Krita, and krita can use elements from karbon.

Neither krita nor digikam is as powerful as Photshop or GIMP, but the combination krita + digikam + karbon (each used for the purpose it is best at) probably beats either Photshop or GIMP.

[hal2k1]

Yes I have, but apparently you haven't. 2.1 didn't have a spell check. So my question was valid. What Linux user uses Photoshop in Linux? Most every Linux user uses Gimp.

I have a monkey not a troll and you checking out my monkey makes me nervous.

I don't use GIMP. I use digikam for photo management and editing of my digital photgraphs.

http://www.digikam.org/drupal/about/features9x

I have also used krita, but only sparingly due to the fact that I am not an artist.

[Smorg]

I've given up on office suites. It's a worthless genre of application software. Everything that can be done in a word processor can be done 10x better in Vim with your markup language of choice. Hell I'd rather edit ODF by hand in a text or XML editor than figure out how to nest complicated bullets and get the formatting right in either kwrite or openoffice. All WSYIWYG's are fail.

[R3MF]

just so i am clear; this koffice 2.3 release is created by the same people, and using the same code branch, as what will become the calligra suite in the first post-koffice release otherwise known as koffice 2.4?

so this has nothing to do with the single developer who disagreed with the koffice projects directions and went his own way...............

cheers