Kraft README
============
Jun 2005, Klaas Freitag <freitag@kde.org>


Kraft is free software for persons in small businesses writing
correspondence like offers and invoices to their customers.  It is
focused especially on handcrafters to support writing of invoices
etc. but might be useful for other small business people too.

For efficient work, Kraft handles catalogs that organize materials and
template texts that can appear in the documents for the customer. It
focuses on good printouts because that is still the main communication
media in the craftsmen business.

The main purpose of this software is to provide something that can not
only be used by nerds but also but people that usually are not
interested in computer work at all but feel that they have to use one
to face the business.

Specialized software for craftsmen usually is very expensive and
unfortunately not really good IMO. I follow the market for
software for landscaper for more than 10 years now and I did not see a
product that has
 - a real intuitive GUI
 - a set of features that a non nerd needs. That means that most of
   the software has way too much features. They're prepared for every
   use case one might think of and since implementing features seems
   to be easy they do not focus on simplicity enough.
 - support for Linux.
 - support for open standards
 - a good value for the user compared to the money it costs

I know that it is foolhardy to think to start something that can be
better here, but there is nothing in this area in the free software
world yet.

However there are real good tools in KDE that can be used to support
the craftsmen in their daily work: Office tools like KOffice,
KOrganizer and friends for the personal organization and so on.  I
think and hope that this project can benefit from that.


Kraft is strongly under development, so there is very little of
functionality yet.

Interested?
===========

If you are interested, please speak up. Please check the web
site http://volle-kraft-voraus.de for contact details.

Installation
============

Please refer to the paragraphs in the INSTALL file.