After almost a month since the previous Alpha 10 release, the KDE Project has announced the availability of the first Beta stage of the KOffice 2.0. This is a most important moment as, from now on, the developers' efforts will shift from adding new features to bug fixing, until the final launch of KOffice 2.0.

The KDE team's objectives during the past few years have been to create a new and improved interface allowing the user to better manipulate the newly introduced features. Also, new capabilities were designed in such a way as to try and diminish redundant functionality, and to make them easier to maintain, thus facilitating the development of new components.

The main purpose of this Beta release is to generate a user feedback on both the new infrastructure and the UI. This will help the development team resolve the majority of bugs, and also try to implement good suggestions. The 2.0 release is aimed to be a demonstration of the Digital Office's future and also to lure in new collaboration (coders and new ideas alike).

KOffice 2.0 Beta 1 comes with the usual applications, like:

· KWord Word processor;
· KSpread Spreadsheet calculator;
· KPresenter Presentation manager;
· KPlato Project management software;
· Karbon Vector graphics editor;
· Krita Raster graphics editor.

KChart has been integrated (as a shape plugin) within all KOffice applications, so it's now possible to create charts inside any of the above mentioned apps.

There are some tools that will not be present in the 2.0 version, such as KFormula (formula editor) and Kexi (the desktop database creator). The future is uncertain with regard to the flowchart editor (Kivio), as it currently has no maintainer, so it's not certain whether it will appear in the final release.

KOffice 2.0 will surely be a much more flexible toolset than its predecessor, as it relies on a new concept (Flake Shapes) that better integrates all the suite's components. Flake will allow any KOffice component to maneuver any shape; for example, Krita can now integrate vector graphics and KWord can embed bitmap graphics. This is why KOffice 2.0 hopes to attract new users, as now it can become popular among other groups as well, like children or certain professionals.

Download KOffice 2.0 Beta 1 from Softpedia.