Read more below to find out . . . . Erlangen proved a fertile breading ground for ideas, and the resulting energy yielded good progress in several areas. However, given that the KDE head branch is currently in a feature freeze in anticipation of the release of KDE 2.0 on October 16, many of the ideas will have to wait until the freeze is lifted at the end of October. At that point many ideas will percolate into the codebase. First, KWord frame handling was improved and floating frame support was added.
Tables generally work much better now.
Even tables with variable-width columns are now handled when imported from MS Word TM , as such imported tables use the new floating frame support. Second, the MS Word filter now supports basic text styles such as bold, italics, etc., in body text. Finally, the architecture for enabling both import from, and export to, MS Word has been implemented . . . Third, the MS Excel TM import filter continued to evolve. In particular, a lot of head scratching resulted in Percy Leonhardt adding support for large tables, and extending support for various border options.