In September, the KDE project made available Version 1.2 of KOffice, an open-source productivity suite packed with new features, including an English thesaurus and mail-merge capabilities in its word processing application.
However, although Im a KDE user, Im going to stick to OpenOffice.org because the Microsoft Word import filter in the KWord component of KOffice doesnt properly convert eWeeks story templates. Other organizations may have to deal with this same limitation. Also, KWord doesnt offer a Word export feature (as OOo does).
If you think it would make sense simply to bring the OOo file formats and filters into KOffice, you arent alone. And the KOffice developers are on the case, having begun this process by switching to compression formats from .gzip to .zip, which is the format that OOo uses.
You can get the complete scoop on the file format debate, along with copious comments from the relevant developers, at dot.kde.org/1031695260. KOffice is available for free download at download.kde.org/stable/koffice-1.2.