Does Calligra totally suck, or is it just me...(sorta /rant)
 

So, I've got a netbook that I haven't installed libreoffice or openoffice on, and needing a quick edit of an existing simple document created a couple of years back, I fired up calligrawords.

The original comprised a table with 30 rows, 6 columns, and a total of 7 words in various cells.

Using cw, I find I can't resize cells, rows, or columns. I can resize the entire table, only.

There are delays of up to 30 seconds performing simple operations (printing, resizing fonts, cutting, pasting.)

Upon attempting to print, it goes thru the motions, *acts* as though a document has printed....nothing.

After saving the unfinished document (giving up, really...) I can print the document from a terminal using lp.

Google docs has no issues with the same original document. Must I use the cloud, or install LO, for such simple tasks?

I honestly don't expect any technical support, etc., as the moment has passed by, and I will install LO to avoid future issues, but I'm curious whether anyone else has faced similar frustration, taking 90 minutes to perform a 10 minute task?

/rant

cheers,

In my experience, some parts of the Calligra Office suite are quite usable while others are in very early stages of development. I found Krita finally stable for the first time in Slackware64-current with all recent updates, and actually prefer it now over GIMP for my purposes (mainly working with photos shot in RAW format). Also, my impression was, that the spreadsheet application is quite ok. But I can confirm that I have had lots of trouble with the word processing program. I haven't re-checked with Calligra 2.6, though, but before it was unusable, IMHO.

I have to say that I like the GUI approach that Calligra is taking a lot better than what all other office suites do, as they are mainly copying each other with no added value. And I believe the statements of the developers, that their priority was to get the fundamentals right, first, and that they only now are turning their attention to making all the goods and features underneath available to the user. But usually designing, implementing and polishing a GUI is about 80% of the work in software development, provided that underlying API, services and functions are stable.

However, what is much more annoying than crashes and some inconsistencies and delays, like those you describe, is the fact that ODF support is absolutely unreliable. If you modify a document that has been created with LibreOffice, you may or may not be able to read that document with LibreOffice ever again. But you can be pretty sure that it will look differently than before. This is my No-Go-reason #1 for Calligra.

So they are doing it right, I guess, but it will take a while before Calligra Office as a whole can become a real contender to the established office suites. As I said, individual applications are already quite good, their approach is solid, and their GUI design is refreshingly inspired. So I hope they can attract enough developers to get things straight someday. I have a lot of sympathy for the project.

gargamel

I have been using both Calligra 2.6 & LibreOffice 4.0.3 for a little while now, and I can safely say, they both need more help. I end up saving documents in MS format's so I can do easily in MS Office that I can't in Calligra & LibreOffice. Having said that, I use LibreOffice over Calligra, it just seems more robust, and it's more stable in my environment.

I like the idea of Calligra's Author for creating ebooks and the like, but there are many other ways to get that job done.

Anyway, if I was investing, I would probably invest in LibreOffice at this point. The jury is still out on Calligra with me : )

Have fun gang.

In fairness to Calligra, I realize that editing *existing* documents/projects in another project can create weirdness, so had the situation been reversed, I could be dumping on LibreOffice, which I've been using since the fork, and Oo before that, for a total of 8 or 9 years.

In essence, it's not fair to the developers, contributors, and those many who are closer to the project after the first or second attempt.

I even dumped Linux after a 6 month trial many moons ago, only to return within a week, for good. So there's always hope.

cheers,

Once you Slack you're hooked. :)
I'm happy that I have the option of choosing between Calligra and Libreoffice. I prefer Libreoffice. I used OO prior to the fork.

Who needs office suites?

vi
sc
mutt

That's all you need.

My users, who migrate from MS Windows to Linux.

http://www.microlinux.fr/desktop_linux_bureautique.php

I'm using Apache Open Office (currently 3.4.1) for the job. Highly recommendable.

As an alternative to mutt there's (al)pine, and for visualisation I'd add gnuplot to the list. ;)

I agree that sc is quite powerful, but unfortunately data exchange with other spreadsheet applications and integration with other office tools is quite tedious. It's not really intuitive how to export data from sc in a format that can be processed further by users of a more common GUI spreadsheet application. And sc cannot import data from such applications, such as LibO Calc, directly. The documents must be converted first, and if a LibO document is made up of more than one table, you have to slice it in a way so that sc can work with the result. And, of course, if you have to send back your results, you'll have to re-assemble everything again. Too much effort for my likings.

Apart from that sc is really amazing, and I used in the past, because it had good export capabilities to LaTeX format.

gargamel

LibreOffice or its predecessors always scores highest in the annual LinuxQuestions awards, it consistently outperforms all other office suites on user generated polls and, I suspect, it is one of the first packages downloaded from Alien Bob or Slackbuilds.org when Slackware users are setting up a new system.

So the question I would ask is; "why is Calligra the default office suite?"

samac

My guess is because it part of KDE.

My wife who works in an office as an administrative assistant; she creates documents, power point presentations, and spread sheets.

BTW, we had a discussion on Calligra before, and most of what has been said is still valid, although Calligra 2.6, which comes with many improvements, had not yet been released, then. Look here.

gargamel

I wonder if ed, bc and netcat wouldn't be enough. :)