14 DAY TRIAL // Calligra 2.8, an integrated suite of applications for office, creative, and management needs, has been released and is now available for download.
This version of Calligra has been in the works for quite some time. The previous Beta was released back in December 2013, and we didn't get much news since then. Krita, a professional application for digital painters, part of the Calligra suite, also received a massive update, so it's only fitting that Calligra developers do the same.
The Calligra suite is actually composed of three major components: office applications (Words, Stage, Sheets, Flow, and Kexi), graphics applications, (Krita, Karbon), and project management (Plan).
The current Calligra 2.8 doesn't actually have updates for every single application, but some of the most used ones have received various improvements.
Words and Author (both are text processors with different functionalities) have received support for comments in the document. This is a feature that is already present in other major office suites and it is a nice addition that the community will certainly enjoy.
Sheets, the spreadsheet application, has also received a very important update for the pivot tables. Unsurprisingly, pivot tables are one of the most asked for features in office suites. The one in Microsoft's Excel works really well, so there is a pressure that all the free alternatives work at least as well, if not better.
The visual database creator, Kexi, didn't get any new features, but the developers concentrated on the existing ones. According to the changelog, “thanks to close collaboration with users, about 30 issues has been identified and corrected. The only new feature is ability to open hyperlinks in forms. But the big news is that the app is now available to build and run on Windows for the first time in 2.x series.”
Flow is a simple and powerful diagram editor that only received one particularly interesting feature, namely the ability to use SVG stencils.
We have already covered the release of Krita 2.8, which received a massive update. You can check our report on the launch, which covers it in much greater detail.
A complete list of changes and updates can be found in the official changelog. Download Calligra 2.8 right now from Softpedia.
The current version of the software also runs on mobile platforms, namely Calligra Mobile and Calligra Active. Users of any previous iterations have been asked to update as soon as possible, either by compiling the new build or by using the provided methods.