At Long Last, NeoOffice/J 1.1 Released 336
VValdo writes "After nearly five years of development, NeoOffice/J has made it to its first stable release. NeoOffice/J 1.1 is a Mac OS X-integrated office suite based on OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 that includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and drawing applications. Key Macintosh features include a standard Mac OS X installer, a native Aqua menu bar, use of the native printing system, full clipboard support, drag-and-drop, Mac "command" key shortcuts, mouse scrolling, integration with major Mac email clients and native support for Mac fonts. The full announcement is here."
Seems the better then regular OpenOffice... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What if it were written in Java? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Valid reason for BitTorrent (Score:4, Insightful)
Mine's chugging away, downloading - there's a fair few seeds already so it hasn't uploaded anything yet!
Here's a nice, friendly Mac BitTorrent client [sarwat.net] for all you GUI-fiends, and while I'm at it, here's a list of conventional mirrors and translations [planamesa.com]...
Re:How much Java? (Score:2, Insightful)
A LOT. NeoOffice/J more or less uses the core of OOo for opening/saving files, and rendering the GUI to a back-buffer. Everything else, such as the screen handling, clipboard, I/O, and anything else machine specific, is done through Java.
Re:Just when they get if finished.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just when they get if finished.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like it'll 'simply' (heh) involve porting to GCC4 [neooffice.org]...
What they really need is (a) more programmers with some highly esoteric combinations of skills, (b) a Mac-Intel box or two, and (c) monetary donations!
Re:Question: (Score:3, Insightful)
By default, all distributions (except for Debian, I believe) use the Autohinter instead of the Bytecode Interpreter, due to potential patent issues. They render in very different ways. The Autohinter looks pretty good on LCD displays, with its subpixel hinting (producing fonts that are better in my opinion than Windows Cleartype), but I prefer the Bytecode Interpreter on CRTs.
I'm not sure what you mean by "native" support for Linux fonts. All of the font rendering is handled through Libfreetype. You can compile Freetype to use either rendering method, but it defaults to the Autohinter. Freetype supports more than 11 different font formats. This includes standard scalable formats such as Truetype and Type 1 fonts.
For example...
With the Bytecode Interpreter:
http://www.borgerding.org/dropline/zborgerd/screen shots/2.10_1.png [borgerding.org]
http://www.borgerding.org/dropline/zborgerd/screen shots/2.10_2.png [borgerding.org]
http://www.dropline.net/gnome/optical/2.10_4.png [dropline.net]
http://dlgwiki.dot42.org/uploads/katana.jpg [dot42.org]
http://dlgwiki.dot42.org/uploads/katana2.jpg [dot42.org]
With the Autohinter:
http://www.dropline.net/gnome/optical/dropline-11. png [dropline.net]
http://www.dropline.net/gnome/optical/dropline-9.p ng [dropline.net]
http://www.dropline.net/gnome/optical/dropline-5.p ng [dropline.net]
Additionally, configuration can cause fonts to look bad. Some people don't like much antialiasing. They prefer the method that Windows uses to antialias only fonts greater than 12 points in size. A combination of the Bytecode Interpreter and disabling antialiasing for small fonts can produce font rendering that is similar to the rendering that most Windows users are familiar with.
If you disable antialiasing while using the Autohinter, you'll find that fonts look terribly uneven and jagged.... They're pretty ugly. If you want to disable antialiasing, you probably should do it only with the Bytecode Interpreter being used as the renderer. This will produce the results that you may be looking for if you prefer Windows-like font rendering.
Lastly, OpenOffice.org's builds have typically included internal Freetype libraries that don't particularly look pretty. There are some workarounds for this. I mention it in the following FAQ:
http://www.dropline.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=825 [dropline.net]
It's quite outdated, but may provide you with the information that you need to get the font rendering that you prefer. You may also want to try tracking down a package of the Microsoft Core Webfonts. They are legal to distribute as long as they are provided in the original EXE, which may be extract with cabextract. As an alternative, you may be able to find a custom build of OpenOffice.org for your favorite distribution, that links against your system's own freetype libraries instead of the internal OO.o Freetype libraries.
Re:They recommend MS Office :) (Score:3, Insightful)
*cough*
Still trying to get through to their server, but the Slashdot text certainly doesn't give me any confidence in the developers.
Except that's not a standard Macintosh feature. Real Mac programs don't have installers, they have .app bundles and can be installed by simply dragging them to 'Programs' (or any other location of your choice) and uninstalled by dragging them to the trash.
Up till now it seemed to be mostly Microsoft products that break that model. Is the NeoOffice/J team trying way too hard to follow MS?
When their servers come back up I'll be trying it, nonetheless... with high hopes but low expectations.
Re:Just when they get if finished.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just when they get if finished.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Eh ... am I missing something? (Score:2, Insightful)
And five years is the total time since the first work on porting OOo to the Mac began. NeoOffice/J has really only been in development for two years, primarily by one developer in his spare time....
That's nice, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yuck. Who wants to see that on their Mac every day?
And, what ever happened to the fully native Aqua interface that Sun promised for Open Office three full years ago:
So, let's recap. In 2002 Sun promises to fully support the Aqua interface using Java. Like so many other Java on the desktop promises from Sun, they never make good on this promise. Has anyone ever held Sun's feet to the fire on this and the hundreds of other Java promises they've made in the past 10 years?Three years after Sun promises Mac OS X support another team of developers finally ship something for Mac OS X that has no Aqua interface at all... except for the MENUBAR.
My analysis of this sad state of affairs is Java has failed on the desktop.
AppleWorks (Score:3, Insightful)
iWork is $79, Mac MS Office is $399. If one was choosing between these two, I would recommend the iWork not just because of pricing but because of the vendor: Apple is more likely to care about their own users while MS has potential to drop their product quality because Mac users aren't as important to MS than they are to Apple. Microsoft has already started to pull away from Microsoft Windows Media Player for OS X (currently lacks AVI, MPEG, MP3 support, playlist, drag-n-drop support, displayal of filename during playback, doesn't stop screensavers from running during video playback, etc.). MS has also announced that they've stopped development for Internet Explorer for Mac. The few people that still use IE for Mac probably do so because they've grown accustomed to it from the times before Mozilla + Safari, or because of the Microsoft brand name. I think people need to stop thinking that the Microsoft brand is the best choice, especially on the Mac platform which competes with Windows for marketshare.