KDE's KOffice has just reached Alpha 7 and it revolves around OpenDocument format.

This release is the first to see some results of the OpenDocument Format testsuite being imported into KOffice. The testsuite exists from a lot of little documents that each show one feature in ODF. Automated testing of loading those documents will allow developers to keep on working on the code without fear of breaking the already working code. This is known as regression testing.

In this release already 23 tests are added into KOffice and the results are visible in much better loading of text documents in KWord. KWord is also one of the target applications for 2.0, and NLNet has sponsored a developer working on that application.

KDE deserves some praises for refusing to touch OOXML with its the anti-FOSS poison pill (RAND+OSP), in addition to the impossibility of implementing something that nobody else will ever implement, not even Microsoft.

KDE's views seem a little different from the views of Abiword, which has just spoken to Red Hat Magazine about the same issue and also from that of Gnumeric, which was discussed here before (a Microsoft 'success story' and 'case study').

In other OpenDocument news, ODFDOM has just been released to the public.

I am pleased to announce that the first public version of ODFDOM is now available for download.

Europe seems to be quite firmly behind ODF. ⬆