KOffice -- Kids Office

In addition to being active in the development of KOffice, I have also done some work on two other KDE modules -- kdegames, where I am the KReversi maintainer and kde-edu, where I do a lot of small tasks for other people. Most of the time it is simple stuff like bug fixing and code cleaning.

I am also working in a company that provides Linux solutions for, among other customers, schools. This has given me some insight into how school people think, and also what problems they face. I have also talked to a number of Linux packagers that provide special Linux distributions for school use, among them Skole-Linux and another European initiative that currently is working to provide Linux for several thousand schools (that I am not allowed to reveal any details about). These people say that the kde-edu module is one of the immediate reasons why they chose KDE instead of... well, The Other Desktop(tm).

I was in the shower the other day, thinking of a lot of different stuff, when I suddenly got an idea: How about a special edition of KOffice for kids in School? I imagined a much simplified office suite with fewer components (no kexi or kplato for instance), and much fewer features for each program. But not only that: I imagined also a softer and friendlier GUI with rounder corners and a lot of nice colors. This would make it less frightening for the kids to use, and also a lot simpler.

I mentioned this idea to Danny Allen (dannya on irc), who happens to be an artist, and also happens to have a vision for the future of kde-edu. In fact I wanted to model the program(s) after his vision, KidsPlay, and asked him if he could perhaps throw together a quick graphical hack to illustrate my point.

Well, it turns out that Danny liked the idea so much that he went completely into hibernation and disappeared. When he reemerged, not only did I get a quick hack, but I got a complete concept portfolio! So with no further ado, I and Danny Allen give you: KOffice for Schools -- Kids Office

This is the imagined GUI of the word processor. Danny has called it WordUp as a code name. I think he has captured my vision perfectly! Notice the simple and -- really -- intuitive GUI. Notice the lack of menu bar. Instead there are just a few icons that capture the most important functions. This could actually be used by kids age 8-10 to write a small report on some group work they did in class.

Another thing that he used when he designed this is the concept of 3, i.e. max 3 things grouped together: Cut/Copy/Paste, Bold/Italic/Underlined, Sans Serif/Serif/Fancy, Left/Center/Right aligned. You don't need any more! This is perfect! And the notepad metaphore is also perfect.

In addition to all this, he came up with a clever scheme to use color for coding features: green for safe ones, red for dangerous ones and blue for neutral ones.

Note, in the picture above how the paste icon is green when active. Paste is safe, because the pasted text can always be removed without problems. Cut would be dangerous and thus red. Copy would be neutral, i.e. blue.

Here is the complete toolbar for WordUp, as Danny imagines it. I can't say I understand all colors, but it sure looks nice, doesn't it?

He also added a mockup for the New and Open features, where the user can select a number of old documents or templates. I'll let the picture speak for itself:

Now, imagine this together with a shell like the one shown for KidsPlay above and with an integrated drawing application (DrawUp?), and you will have a very, very good office suite for young school kids.

As I said above, kde-edu is right now a big reason to choose KDE in the schools. This could make KOffice another one. And once they are hooked, they will never leave!

It's Final - MA Goes With Open Document

As you can read on GrokLaw, it is now final that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will only produce and accept documents in OpenDocument formats.

This is great news for KOffice, the first office suite in the world to announce support for Open Document. True, the support is not complete, but we will do all that is in our power so that the next version 1.5, will have complete support for it in KWord, KSpread, KPresenter, Kivio, Karbon and KChart.

It will be very interesting to see what Microsoft decides to do about this. If it was only Massachusetts themselves that was in the pot, I don't think they would care. However, columnists and bloggers all over the field agree that many, many other states and countries are watching this and preparing to do the same. So the stakes here could be the total domination that Microsoft has had in this area of the IT industry.

Not to let KOffice miss this chance to be in the limelight, I have written an open letter to Alan Yates, the manager who signed the reply from Microsoft about the issue. In that letter I correct a factual error (bad research or lie -- you decide) and also make some nice advertising for KOffice. It will appear on the dot as soon as it is back up, and danimo has promised me that it will also appear on slashdot, osNews and other prestigious news sites.

The Power of Delegation

One of my tasks as PR guy for KOffice is to see to it that the web site is up-to-date, informative and nice in general. But I am a lazy type, and updating the website by myself would mean work, so that's stupid, right?

What's a poor fellow to do? Delegate of course!

Now, the problem with this is that the KOffice website had fallen into disrepair due to a lack of web maintainer. So delegating to the webmaster was somewhat difficult.

So we have to get a new one. Due to me hanging out with the kde-edu people sometimes, I knew that they have a nice informative website, and I also know their webmaster.

Asking her if she wanted to take care of the KOffice web site didn't seem too straining even for me, so I did. Luckily enough for my ego she accepted without a moments thought so now KOffice has a new webmaster: Anne-Marie Mahfouf.

So here we are with a run-down website, a new eager webmaster and a marvelous product to show off. Anne-Marie has already started to shape things up, and the goal is to have the content revitalized for the 1.4.2 release of KOffice on sunday. Things are looking good, both for me who got my task done without work, and for KOffice who will soon have a website that you can actually use for finding information once again.

Of course, we are also interested in knowing what YOU want to find on the KOffice web, and we want YOU to send mail to us about it.

Last, to show what a really smart person she is, Anne-Marie followed suit immediately and delegated much of her work to Martin Ellis. That's the spirit!

Testing testing...

My name is Inge Wallin, and I am the new, marketing coordinator -- more commonly known as the "PR guy" -- for the KOffice module. I got this elevated position because I piped up at the KOffice meeting at Akademy saying that "KOFfice needs a PR guy", That should teach me...

(For you who read this at some other place than Planet KDE, let me point you to )

The person you should thank for this blog is Martin Ellis (mart on irc) who relentlessly pestered me to start it. He might soon regret that he ever mentioned it.

The good news is that I will let you know about new and exciting stuff happening in KOffice. The bad news is that I am as opinionated as Aaron Seigo, so you will probably hear a lot about other stuff as well, and you might not like all of it.

After that tirade, I would just like to let you know that KOffice 1.4.2 is on its way out. It will contain a ton of fixes, and a heavily shaped up Karbon. More about that in an upcoming entry.