KOffice 1.1 Beta 3 Review: Part 1
KWord 1.1 in action
Author: Kent Nguyen - kent@mslinux.com
Editor: Tina Gasperson tina@gasperson.com
For five years, the only office suite I knew and used was Microsoft
Office.
Logically, an upgrade to Office XP should be my next step. Yet, after
reading
about Microsoft's increased invasion of privacy with XP
(Microsoft to me: We're turning off your Office), it became my quest to find an alternative office suite.
I stumbled across KOffice when a Linux guru friend suggested it to me.
Personally, I wouldn't want to switch applications, let alone an
operating
system, just to use an office suite. Yet now I was stuck between
upgrading to
Office XP or making the bold move to install Linux and Koffice 1.1 Beta
3. I
thought, "why not?" since Linux will always be free, no
one person has control over it, and I won't be harassed five years
later.
And so my quest began.
My quest:
I called upon a friend to help me setup Mandrake Linux 8.0 and KOffice
1.1
Beta 3 on my system. It took him about 30 minutes to have everything
up and
running.
When I booted up, the first screen looked like the logon screen I see
in
Windows NT at work. At home, I have Windows '98, which doesn't require
ahave
a logon screen. Obviously, I need to login to Linux. It's kinda like
Windows
NT in that way.
My first impression was that in KDE, everything looked very much like
Windows. I was relieved. The "K" is identical in function to the
"Start"
button in Windows, so that was where I clicked first. I scanned the
list of
software categories to find "KOffice." After several minutes scratching
my
head, wondering why I can't find KOffice, I asked my guru friend. He
showed
me that KOffice was under "Office". Ah! After moving my mouse over
"Office", the menu expanded to "KOffice Workspace", "KWord", "KSpread",
"Kivio", "KChart, "KIllustrator", "Krayon", and Kugar". All these
names were
new to me, but after several seconds of thought, I made some good
progress
associating those names with what I used to use. For instance, KWord
compares to Microsoft Word, KSpread to Excel, Kivio to Visio,
KIllustrator to
Adobe Illustrator, and Krayon to Adobe Photoshop.
So much for the guessing game. It was time for me to get down to
business.
KWord:
I clicked on "K"->"Office"->"KWord" to launch KWord. Up came a pretty
screen
with four options to choose from. I chose to create a new document, and
clicked OK.
KWord loaded quickly. The first screen looked like this:
The first document I created with KWord was a short memo to management
about
this exciting new software called KOffice.
The memo demonstrated basic word processing features such as center,
sizing
text, changing fonts, tabs, and word wrap. One feature I stumbled
across
that I like is the font dialog drop down. It allows me to preview the
font.
Microsoft Word has a feature that I find very helpful: it keeps the
four most
recently used fonts at the top of the dropdown. I couldn't find this
option
in KWord; it's probably a setting I need to enable.
After writing the memo, I wanted to see what it looked like before I
printed
it
KWord has a couple of ways to do this. One is the really good "Preview
Mode".
You simply go to "View"->"Preview Mode".
In addition to the preview mode, there's a "Print Preview". The print
preview allows you to see what it will look like if it is printed.
You can
go to "File"->"Print Preview" to see a preview of your document.
Another awesome feature most users from the Microsoft world would enjoy
is
the ability to view "Formatting Characters". You go to
"View"->"Formatting
Characters".
Though I haven't gone through the advanced features of KWord, like
frames,
I'm impressed by what I've seen so far. Great job KWord team!
