KOffice is based on KDE ( http://www.kde.org ) which is needed to run KOffice.
You need kdelibs and kdebase installed if you want to compile and run
koffice. Look in the kdelibs sourcedir for the file COMPILING for help. Also
look at the website as there are many helpfiles available.

KOffice is a collection of office applications linked together by a common
basis. This common basis assures that all office application can work
together. You can, for instance, insert a spreadsheet in your thesis without
leaving your document. Editing the spreadsheet happens _inside_ your thesis.

The applications currently included in KOffice are:
- KWord
  Professional text editing 
- KSpread
  Professional number cruncher/spreadsheet
- KPresenter
  Professional presentation program
- KChart
  Graphing of your abstract data
- Karbon
  Vector graphics tool
- Kugar
  Database report creation
- Kivio
  Flowcharting program
- Kexi
  a database management tool
- KOffice Workspace
  A combination of all of the above

Note: these applications are not necessarily part of the previous or next
official stable version of KOffice.

Developers:
===========

KOffice is created by Open Source programmers around the world. All developers
give their time/code to the community for everyone to benefit. The major reason
this is done is because those developers want to have a good office suite, and
they don't mind sharing it with you.

If you feel you found a bug or missing feature you can always contact the
developers of koffice (via http://www.koffice.org ) or delve into the software
yourself.

The part that is shared between all KOffice applications can be found in the lib
directory. There classes like KoDocument can be found; these classes are
extended in the project directories.

Read the .h files in the respective directories for more info.


Document format:
================

Nearly all KOffice applications use XML formatted files in a ZIP file.

The main document in XML format can be read with a text editor (after having
unzip-ped it from the ZIP file.) XML itself is simply a set of tags,
where the application can define the meaning of these tags. The definition of
the document type is therefore different for each KOffice application (as you
will most likely not find a curved line in a kword document). The Document Type
Definition can be found in every application's source directory in the
directory '(application)/dtd.'

If you would like more information about the makeup of the actual KOffice 
document structure (not the XML DTD), see the lib/store/SPEC file.

If you want to see more/fix bugs in this file, feel free to ask or add it 
yourself.


Contacts:
=========

User mailing list: mailto:koffice@kde.org
Developer mailing list: mailto:koffice-devel@kde.org

Subscribing and list information: http://www.kde.org/mailinglists
Archives: http://lists.kde.org

If you have questions about this README file or about KOffice in general,
please mail to the koffice mailing list: mailto:koffice@kde.org



Thomas <zander at earthling dot net>
Chris Lee <lee at azsites dot com>
et al.
