FOSSPicks

Productivity Suite

Calligra 3.0

KDE's closest approximation to an office suite (if that term still means anything) has always been a loose collection of applications bundled together as Calligra. The occasionally huge difference in the maturity of the bundled applications has often caused criticism, as too has the flaky nature of its cornerstone applications like Calligra Words, the word processor. But I have always found the suite to be a useful addition to any KDE desktop and have hoped this collection would get some much needed attention.

Calligra Words, in particular, is one of my favorite KDE applications. As you might expect, it can be reconfigured endlessly. As a writer, this is important because it allows the user to remove the many distracting elements on display and leave the editing environment front and center, complete with word count. When pared back like this, Words was my favorite distraction-free word composer. But saving and loading issues, plus its adherence to ODT, often caused problems, and I eventually moved away.

That's why the release of Calligra 3.0 is so important. Not only has it given the development team an opportunity to rationalize the disparate nature of the collection, it has also meant addressing many of the old bugs and shortfalls. Krita, formerly of Calligra 2.x, is now big and successful enough to stand on its own, while Author, Flow, and Stage have been dropped, leaving the suite with five core applications: Karbon, the vector image editor; Kexi (released separately) the database; Plan, the project planner; Sheets, the spreadsheet; and the aforementioned Words.

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