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 usefull for other small business people too.

For efficient work, Kraft handles catalogs that organise 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.

Specialised software for craftsmen is usually 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 organisation 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.

Kraft is developed following the german 'best practices' and german
laws etc. I am not sure if it makes sense/is possible to use it
in other countries than germany. Kraft's first and example user is 
a landscaper company with 6-10 people, office work is usually done by 
the boss after a workday on the building site. I do not hope, but
it might be that Kraft will be influenced by the need of landscapers.
I promise to avoid where possible to open it up to all other trades.

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

If you are interested, please speak up. If you are a developer and
like to participate, please send email to Klaas Freitag <freitag@kde.org>

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

Please refer to the paragraphs in the INSTALL file.

