OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X Alpha Released!

An anonymous reader writes "Nearly 6 years after announcing a Mac port, OpenOffice.org has released the first release of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X that can finally run without X11!! An alpha is available for download today, but a lot of help is still needed to make OpenOffice.org available for Mac OS X. The site is very blunt: 'WARNING: THIS SOFTWARE MAY CRASH AND MAY DESTROY YOUR DATA DO NOT USE THIS SOFTWARE FOR REAL WORK IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT. This is an alpha test version so that developers and users can find out what works and not, and make comments on how to improve it.' Currently missing functionality includes printing, pdf export, copy/pasting, and multiple monitors. That said, if you're interested in participating you can visit the Mac team to figure out how you can help today."

Re:Good news

[kosmosik]

> Although the 'normal' version works like a dream on the Mac,
> having it work without X11 is a bit handier.

Well maybe OOo/Mac/X11 itself works well. The problem is that Apple X11 implementation is crap. You actually need to do stuff from like early 90s Linux to make it work with non-US keyboard layout and this is pain. It can be done via some hacking (like editing cryptic text files and so on) but it disqualifies X11 apps on OSX to rest of the world (apart from geeks).

So native version of OOo is always welcomed. Also I would love to see better X11 from Apple.

Neo Office

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.neooffice.org/ [neooffice.org]

A port of OpenOffice to Mac OS X that uses Java as a compatibility layer.

It _is_ production ready (I use it every day).
Why the OpenOffice people are hostile to this project is something I've stopped
wondering about... today's announcement of the "first" port of OOO to Mac not
using X11 just shows how badly a project hurts itself when it refuses to work
with others

Thanks to neooffice...

[MMC Monster]

Just wanted to give a thanks to the folks behind neooffice (http://www.neooffice.org/ [neooffice.org]) before all the bashing starts...

Re:Slashdot.org for truthiness released!

[subreality]

With apologies to no one, some comic relief was needed after that much excitement over an early alpha. Seriously, editors, please try to get some perspective. The unending slant gets old.

Re:Neooffice - differences?

[x_MeRLiN_x]

You misunderstood what the GP was saying. He acknowledges NeoOffice is currently more popular than OpenOffice.org for Mac but NeoOffice is always playing catch-up due to the fact it is a port of OpenOffice.org and they have to wait for changes to the original before converting them over.

Re:Neo Office

[constantnormal]

Try the current 2.1 version.

Much faster, although since NeoOffice is code on top of OpenOffice, it's never going to be faster than OpenOffice.

And the extensive use of Java as a wrapper around OpenOffice was only the original version 1. The current NeoOffice has much more Cocoa than Java. I suspect that's where most of the speed improvements have come from.

The best thing to hope for is that as OpenOffice itself becomes more OSX-friendly, NeoOffice will be able to leverage their experience in providing OSX-to-OpenOffice integration on top of a better-performing OpenOffice -- unless the approach Sun is taking in making OpenOffice more OSX-friendly is to wrap the C++ core in java, in which case NeoOffice should hang back with the OO 2.0.4 release and blow the doors off the "OSX-friendly" official version of OpenOffice.

The NeoOffice guys have already travelled that road, and speaking as a user, I wouldn't want to revisit it.

Re:Good news

[LKM]

The problem is that Apple X11 implementation is crap (...) it disqualifies X11 apps on OSX to rest of the world (apart from geeks).

And this is precisely what Apple wants. X11 on the Mac is for Geeks, not for "regular" users. The existing issues with X11 are intentional.

Re:Neo Office

[cunamara]

Why the OpenOffice people are hostile to this project is something I've stopped wondering about... today's announcement of the "first" port of OOO to Mac not using X11 just shows how badly a project hurts itself when it refuses to work with others

I use NeoOffice every day for hours each day. It's a polished and effective port of OpenOffice. The reason the OpenOffice.org folks aren't working with the NeoOffice folks is twofold: (1)Not Invented Here and (2) the NeoOffice folks keep finding broken stuff and major limitations in OpenOffice.

Re:Neo Office

[808140]

That seems distinctly unfair. Don't the BSD and LGPL people always say that they don't care if people "take their code proprietary" as it were, and that "the code is still there even if someone else improves it and doesn't share back?" Why, just yesterday there were hundreds of comments to that effect on the GPL2 vs GPL3 story!

It's funny though, because it seems that for all their rhetoric about how using BSD and similarly "non-viral" free software licenses is somehow "more free", BSD/LGPL people generally aren't happy at all when people relicense their code. BSD people hate it when their code gets relicensed, ironically especially when that license is the GPL (for some reason, having their code co-opted by Microsoft or Sun bothers them less -- how does that work?) The LGPL is just like BSD, except that it is exclusively GPL-compatible by design. If it bothers you that someone is releasing mods to your LGPL-licensed program under the GPL, why on earth are you even using the LGPL?

Host and parasite -- god, I love it. Talk about double-speak! It reminds me of this great exchange between an interviewer and Theo de Raadt (whom I have the utmost respect for, as it happens, but this attitude is typical of BSD types):

NF: Lots of hardware vendors use OpenSSH. Have you got anything back from them?

TdR: If I add up everything we have ever gotten in exchange for our efforts with OpenSSH, it might amount to $1,000. This all came from individuals. For our work on OpenSSH, companies using OpenSSH have never given us a cent. What about companies that incorporate OpenSSH directly into their products, saving themselves millions of dollars? Companies such as Cisco, Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, Siemens, a raft of medium-sized firewall companies -- we have not received a cent. Or from Linux vendors? Not a cent.

Of course we did not set out to create OpenSSH for the money -- we purposely made it completely free so that the "telnet infrastructure" of the 1980s would die. But it sure is sad that none of these companies return even a fraction of value in kind.

If you want to judge any entity particularly harshly, judge Sun. Yearly they hold interoperability events, for NFS and other protocols, and they include SSH implementation tests as well. Twice we asked them to cover the travel and accommodation costs for a developer to come to their event, and they refused. Considering that their SunSSH is directly based on our code, that is just flat out insulting. Shame on you Sun, shame, shame, shame.

I will say it here -- if an OpenSSH hole is found that applies to SunSSH, Sun will not be informed. Or maybe that has happened already.

That's from this interview with Theo at NewsForge [newsforge.com] if you want to read the whole thing. But basically, there's this tremendously hypocritical attitude among the most ardent supporters of licenses that are presumably "freer than the GPL". I see nothing wrong with the classic BSD/PD stance: "We don't care what you do with it, no matter what we still have the original copy". I think that's a noble way to look at things. It just seems that in practice, that's almost never how it is. Someone turns around and creates something useful from your code and relicenses it in a way that prevents you from benefiting, and suddenly they're evil, even though that's supposedly a right that you expressly wanted to guarantee to them in the first place!

Re:Good news

[kosmosik]

> And this is precisely what Apple wants. X11 on the Mac is for Geeks, not for "regular" users.

Yeah so maybe just throw out some source code of X11 that barely compiles and you need to fix it yourself. No binary release - then it would be even geekier. :)

> The existing issues with X11 are intentional.

Yeah. :) That is what I love Mac fanatics - if something is broken in OSX it must be intentional. LoL.

Re:Why?

[Dynedain]

Why? What's the point of this? The Microsoft Office Student/Teacher edition can be purchased readily from Apple's online store for $149 for the full version of Office. If you can't afford $149 for your productivity either:

A) Your time isn't worth any money and you should reconsider what you're using it for
B) You can't afford it, so how can you afford the computer that you're using
C) You just have no desire to pay for software and/or hate Microsoft for XYZ reasons.

Or:
D) You aren't a student or teacher, and the few times per year that you need an office suite don't justify a $300 expense.

$300 is half the price of the Mac Mini to run it on. The $600 spent on the Mini goes a lot farther in terms of productivity than $300 spent on MS Office.

Re:Neo Office

[FST777]

When someone takes BSD-licensed code like OpenSSH and releases it proprietary, they may do so. No harm done, "we" still have the original. It is a sign of bad morals when they don't do something back though, and that may be said. Which is exactly what Theo did.

Furthermore, when there is a bug in the original code, it is certainly not up to the devs of that code to inform all the deriatives. That would be funny: someone takes your hard work, does nothing in return and people still expect that you take responsibility for that.

BSD is like: here you are, do what you want, as long as you give credit. It would, however, be extremely nice when there is something done in return, for example financial support. This would create a certain symbiose: Sun makes SunSSH, and gives credit and finances to OpenSSH, so that OpenSSH can continue to improve while SunSSH can use those improvements.

What Theo said was this: sure they can use it, but I find it sad that they won't return any favor. He is completely right with that statement.

If OpenSSH was released under the GPL or even the LGPL, either telnet would still be the #1 app for remote control or a myriad of proprietary protocols would exist for that.

Re:Neo Office

[nanosquid]

Don't the BSD and LGPL people always say that they don't care if people "take their code proprietary" as it were, and that "the code is still there even if someone else improves it and doesn't share back?"

I have released under BSD, GPL, and LGPL. When I picked BSD, I did so for practical reasons, like to encourage companies to use the code with less fear. Nevertheless, I strongly prefer for those companies to contribute back. Legally, I have no way to force them, but I'll certainly tell people in no uncertain terms what I think of them if they don't. Likewise, when I pick the BSD, I do so for good reasons, and relicensing the code under the GPL undermines those reasons, which is why I certainly will tell people who do that in no uncertain terms what I think of them.

In different words...

The BSD license is a license that relies on people to behave reasonably voluntarily; if they don't, you have every right to complain, even if you can't do anything legally about it.

The GPL license is a license that tries to force people to behave reasonably through legal obligations; if they don't, you don't just complain, you go to court.

The 1980's Called, Wants It's Software Back

[gig]

This is a complete fucking waste of time.

A word processor?

You are killing me. A fucking word processor. It is like inviting people to use a back-breaking chair.

Now that we have more than one output medium, it is important to separate content from style. We also have a "universal" text format which is UTF-8 but we do not have a universal style format. If you munge in your styles with your text you are just setting up a situation where a publishing professional is going to have to rip that text back out of there and if you stored it with a funky old encoding good luck on your smart quotes and em dashes.

What would be the point of enabling a computer user in 2007 type type text and apply styles and you don't save their work as HTML+CSS? What is the point? It makes no sense to me.

What is required when you write is to store the actual typing. If you save UTF-8 you can type any character from any language and then later another human can use that UTF-8 text file to instantly "re-type" your work into any publishing system, smart quotes and all. No conversion necessary, no errors introduced. Doesn't matter if they are working in InDesign or Dreamweaver or other, there is simply no defensible argument for not having a single UTF-8 master copy of any kind of writing. You can drop it on a browser to read even 25 years from now, it will be compatible long after you are dead. In the entire history of computing there has not been a word processing format that lasted even 10 years. If you open a Word document from Word 97, that is only 10 years ago, it has to be "converted" (destroyed) when you open it. Good luck with that system here in the 21st century.

If Microsoft tries to sell ice in the Arctic, will open source follow with open source ice for the Arctic?

Movable Type is about 10,000 times more exciting than OpenOffice. I mean, c'mon.

TextWrangler for Mac OS X is free and it has UTF-8, RegEx find/replace that works across any number of files or a whole disk, real-time speller, S/FTP, lots of writing tools, a great find differences, beautiful text rendering, and completely scriptable with AppleScript (macros). Those are the tools that people need to do good writing and create documents that can be used in modern ways, not mail merge and bad fonts.

Re:The 1980's Called, Wants It's Software Back

[Anonymous Coward]

What would be the point of enabling a computer user in 2007 type type text and apply styles and you don't save their work as HTML+CSS? What is the point? It makes no sense to me.

Because there's no one way to render HTML, so you'll have a mess of incompatibilities? Because CSS doesn't have enough features for a word processor?

you save UTF-8 you can type any character from any language and then later another human can use that UTF-8 text file to instantly "re-type" your work into any publishing system, smart quotes and all. No conversion necessary, no errors introduced.

If you ever tried Unicode's bidi-algorithem, you'll see your description is a little bit rose-colored.

In the entire history of computing there has not been a word processing format that lasted even 10 years. If you open a Word document from Word 97, that is only 10 years ago, it has to be "converted" (destroyed) when you open it. Good luck with that system here in the 21st century.

The problem is the closed format. With ODF we won't have this problem.