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At Long Last, NeoOffice/J 1.1 Released 336

Posted by timothy from the now-you-may-take-a-vacation dept.
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."
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At Long Last, NeoOffice/J 1.1 Released More

At Long Last, NeoOffice/J 1.1 Released

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  • I seem to remember reading the a large part of NeoOffice was done in Java. I can't check the wiki since it has been slashdotted, does anyonw know how much Java is in NeoOffice?

    • Re:How much Java? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) *
      I can't check the wiki since it has been slashdotted, does anyonw know how much Java is in NeoOffice?

      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.

  • Just when they get if finished.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by steveyT ( 664379 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @07:24AM (#12879815) Homepage
    Apple go and change the architecture they're running on :D
    • Will that be a huge setback to the project, or will they just be able to check a box and recompile, as Steve Jobs suggested in his keynote? I guess it's probably the former, since they're probably not using XCode. Alas. I'd check the Wiki to see, but it's /.ed.

      Greg

      • Re:Just when they get if finished.... (Score:4, Informative)

        by FatherOfONe ( 515801 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @07:55AM (#12879985)
        Well seeing that this had a "J" in the title and it appears to have used enough Java in it to warrent that name, I would bet porting "may" be easier than you think. Easy being a relative term in all...

        Now "if" it was totally written in Java, then I would say it would be very easy to port :-)

        My gut feeling is that a significant portion of it was done in C, and thus it will take some time to get that part compiled and working again.
      • You don't have to use XCode to be able to do that. In fact, if they wouldn't be bothered about producing fat binaries, they could probably just simply recompile it. Since OpenOffice is multiplatform and Java should be also, they're unlikely to run into problems because of differences in bit ordering (least significant first or most significant first?). I also don't suspect them of having produced too much PPC specific assembly code.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Just when they get if finished.... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @08:18AM (#12880127) Homepage
        Will that be a huge setback to the project, or will they just be able to check a box and recompile, as Steve Jobs suggested in his keynote?

        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! :-)

    • The architecture change made me postpone the acquisition of a Mac Mini. The change might be beneficial in the long run, but on the short term we will have lack of software available for the "Mactel" platform.

      I hope Apple at least send a Mactel workstation for the NeoOffice J team for free. These guys have been working for free, to the benefit of the community of users of the Macintosh. I hope Apple acknowledges the effort, and that, in the day the Apple Intel computer is released, the port of NeoOffice J i

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • More like....just when they get it finished, OpenOffice.org 2 is almost out!

    • Actually, I'd say that's precisely when they've announced it.

      You know Microsoft can't be happy about having a (commercial) OS competitor on x86 like Apple; how else would they view Apple shifting from PPC to x86 as anything other than a swipe at their market? Apologies in advance to GNU/Linux fanatics, but OSX is the first real threat to their desktop dominance in some time. MS business is built on the rock of desktop domination.

      So what do you think they'll probably do to swipe back? My guess is, k

  • Cached on mirrordot (Score:2, Informative)

    by bandrzej ( 688764 )
    At least mirrordot was able to save a cache:

    http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/56f602610d944ff 78 9b6ec7a2075940c/index.html

    Looks like their news page died at 17,000 hits after 12:17 today. Very sad.

  • They recommend MS Office :) (Score:4, Funny)

    by mgkimsal2 ( 200677 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @07:26AM (#12879824) Homepage
    The NeoOffice/J 1.1 release is now available for download. Warning: all NeoOffice/J development and testing is done by volunteers so there are always some missing features and bugs. So if you expect software to be absolutely perfect before you install it, we recommend that you purchase a commercially supported office suite like Microsoft Office. (emphasis mine)

    Hrm - maybe Office on the Mac is much better than the Windows version. I've been hearing that for awhile, but it's still from Microsoft, and will still have some of the same issues that people have on the Windows version, or it'd have compatibility problems (key commands, etc).

    Still, I thought that comment about something being 'absolutely perfect' then recommending Office was pretty funny.
    • Hrm - maybe Office on the Mac is much better than the Windows version. I've been hearing that for awhile, but it's still from Microsoft,

      It's far from perfect on the Mac, but I'm always astounded at how much it is better on the Mac than on Windows.
    • Worse yet, my experience with MS-Offixe/OS X has been terrible. Maybe it's because my mac is dreadfully under-spec, but MS Office's stability was lamentable, even for a M$ product. Luckily it was a copy I bummed off my parents. I'm quite happy with OOO (which I bought at the apple store), and will give NeoOffice a try. Heck, if the integration is good enough, and it proves to be stable enough, I'll try to convince the 'rents to switch!
      • Worse yet, my experience with MS-Offixe/OS X has been terrible. Maybe it's because my mac is dreadfully under-spec, but MS Office's stability was lamentable, even for a M$ product.

        And OpenOffice totally blows as well. Takes over two hours to load. Maybe it's because I'm trying to run it on my Coleco Adam, but hey.

      • If you are beating your head against the wall trying to run Mac Office 2004 on an older machine, you might want to try the previous version, Mac Office X. v.X is happy on a 300MHz iBook...it was happy with only 160MB RAM and is positively ecstatic with 544MB.

        I intend to try this new version of NeoOffice when the dust settles, though. I try to run as much F/OSS on my machines as possible, even those running unfree OSes. There is a huge amount available for Mac OS X, and almost everything is available to Mac

    • Re:They recommend MS Office :) (Score:4, Funny)

      by k96822 ( 838564 ) * on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @08:17AM (#12880122) Journal
      Microsoft Office for Mac OS X is to Microsoft Office for Windows as Chevy is to Ford. No matter which you use, you should have bought a Toyota.

    • *cough*

      Still trying to get through to their server, but the Slashdot text certainly doesn't give me any confidence in the developers.

      Key Macintosh features include a standard Mac OS X installer

      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 t

  • Valid reason for BitTorrent (Score:5, Informative)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @07:27AM (#12879830) Homepage Journal
    I'll keep my client running today. Will you? http://play.aelitis.com/torrents/NeoOfficeJ-1.1.dm g.torrent [aelitis.com]

  • Fantastic! (Score:4, Informative)

    by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @07:27AM (#12879834) Homepage Journal

    My sister needs a laptop for work and I have been steering her towards a G4 mac. MS office adds $AUD300 to the price, which offends me, mainly because of the huge profit microsoft make out of it.

    Having this available could make it a much easier decision for her to buy the macintosh.

    • Go ahead and get the mac. Neoffice works quite well, has done for some time. Only if your work is centered on MS VB stuff or really heavy duty excel sheets are you in a pickle. Don't forget that if word compatibilty is your main issue then you can also go for Abiword [abisource.com]
    • NeoOffice/J is pretty good.

      I've been using it for around 6 months. I no longer have MS Office on my machine.

      I refuse to use MS products (I abhor their business practices, and boycott their products), and have no problems using OpenOffice.org or NeoOffice/J, both at home and at work.

      Have her play with OpenOffice.org. If she is okay with it, she'll be okay with NeoOffice/J.

    • AppleWorks (Score:3, Insightful)

      by line.at.infinity ( 707997 )
      I prefer AppleWorks for my office suite, which comes free with new Macs .. yes, it's an outdated office suite, but it works, it's more responsive and loads much faster than NeoOffice/J.

      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 Ap

  • Seems the better then regular OpenOffice... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by afd8856 ( 700296 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @07:28AM (#12879835) Homepage
    Looking at the integration features, it seems better then either Windows or *nix versions of OpenOffice.

  • What if it were written in Java? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @07:28AM (#12879838) Journal
    I have begun to think that most, if not all, free software applications ought to be written in Java or a reasonable facsimile. Ideally, a common language and runtime that all free software could target would be available that would allow immediate porting to take place.

    To some extent we have this now with Linux as a standard OS, but even with it there is a lack of common binary compatibility. Java takes care of that such that the same binary application on one platform works on another, only relying on the base runtime to be ported.

    How much quicker could we have had NeoOffice on MacOS if it were written in an easily-ported language like Java?

    Are there any plans for such a common language runtime to which applications can target themselves in the free software ecosystem?
    • Are there any plans for such a common language runtime to which applications can target themselves in the free software ecosystem?

      Yes, it already exists. It's called Java. There's also a knock-off of it called .NET or C# or Mono.
    • Ideally, a common language and runtime that all free software could target would be available that would allow immediate porting to take place.

      Having it be a language that doesn't suck dirty swamp water through used oil filters would be a pleasant bonus, but that doesn't seem to be an option.
      • Having it be a language that doesn't suck dirty swamp water through used oil filters would be a pleasant bonus, but that doesn't seem to be an option.

        Did you notice that Mono [mono-project.com] supports numerious languages [mono-project.com]?

        There is not one single language. With Mono, you can (1) pick from a growing variety of source languages that (2) all interoperate on a common runtime system that is (3) portable across platforms and (4) compiles to native code.

        Doesn't this just about fit the request of the grandparent post in his
        • Did you notice that Mono supports numerious languages?

          Did you notice that Mono is primarily an implementation of .NET, and thus subject to patent claims by Microsoft? Microsoft has stated that these patents will be avilable on a "royalty free and otherwise reasonable and non-discriminatory basis", but short of an irrevocable legally-binding release worded in such a way that it's unambiguously clear these patents can not be used against open-source software, I am unwilling to trust to their good will.

          Sta
    • It's incredibly tempting to instinctively reply with an incoherent rant, but I'll try not to.

      One problem that I see is that languages are still evolving, and will continue to do so. Should we have left things well-enough alone at C, and not invented or rewritten algorithms in Java? Are Perl/Ruby/Python insignificant enough that nobody should have spent effort programming in them?

      Languages ARE improving, and by putting a stake in the ground, you're guaranteeing that at some point the "unified standard

    • Well, here's the thing: even if you do use Java it still takes time to port to Mac because Swing Java is not the same as Cocoa Java. And believe me -- Swing apps do NOT cut it on Mac OS.
    • The problem with Java (especially as a GUI) is that it works acceptably everywhere and works spectacularly nowhere. Since Java isn't open source, and since there is no one platform for which it's targeted, Java is basically a mish-mash of UI features and whatnot: Jack of all trades and master of none. No one can go back and make it closely match the look and feel of a particular OS, since it isn't open source, and Sun hasn't made it match any one OS, since there's no one OS where it thrives.

      So, were NeoOff
    • How much quicker could we have had NeoOffice on MacOS if it were written in an easily-ported language like Java?

      Wow, this thread is much Much MUCH farther into the bizarro world than usual, even by the lax non-article-reading standards for Slashdot. NeoOffice/J IS WRITTEN IN JAVA [freshmeat.net] with some Carbon for native Mac goodies. What the heck do you think the "/J" stands for?

      It really freaks me out that NINE OTHER PEOPLE already responded to Santa's question and none of them mentioned this minor detail.

      • NeoOffice/J IS WRITTEN IN JAVA with some Carbon for native Mac goodies. What the heck do you think the "/J" stands for?

        It stands for "we're using Java for the user interface". NeoOffice is based on the OpenOffice.org source code, which is written in C++.

  • Very much a Mac Application (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @07:30AM (#12879851) Homepage
    Before anyone complains about the lack of Aqua widgets and the continuing Windows 95-like appearance of the program, from experience that's probably the last remaining area to be completed.

    Everything else is great, and infinitely superior to the old port of OpenOffice.org to the Mac's X11 - for instance, copy-and-paste works fully (styled text is no problem whatsoever); file associations work correctly; native printing, fonts, anti-aliased line art are just fine. Even more recent, esoteric stuff like Spotlight searches are fine - when I installed Tiger, all my documents got neatly indexed without me lifting a finger.

    It's in an application bundle, it stores its settings in ~/Library/ - apart from those grey, rectangular buttons and controls, it's a complete, modern Mac application.

    Honestly, don't judge it on first appearances or screenshots (I've found numerous Mac 'ports' of software which seem to concentrate too much on cosmetics rather than functionality) - it's truly wonderful. For anyone looking for a free office suite on their Mac, here it is!
    • I'd rather download Microsoft Office for OSX. They've released it for free now on BitTorrent, apparently. At least, I see it available all the time there, so it must be. You have to really appreciate that kind of gesture from Microsoft. Not only do they innovate, but they share with the competitor's customers!

      More importantly, no amount of money could be placed on the quality and reliability of a corporately-developed product like this. After all, would you rather drive a car built by Ford or a car built b
    • As a person who switches between half a dozen boxes running OS X, Linux, and Windows (sometimes all in a single day), I decided over a year ago to switch to OOo, as something I could run on all of these (and work on the script for my Great American Graphic Novel in stolen moments at work, at the laundromat, sitting in front of the TV, and even sometimes in my study). The OS X boxes required some substantial hacks to get OOo for X11 working well enough for even a geek like me to put up with. (Don't get me
      • This is a bit off-topic but...

        You have a "study", but you have to use a laundromat? I think your priorities are bit mixed up :)

        Most 2 bedroom apartments (which I presume yours is, at the least) have a washer/dryer hookup, or can easily be adapted to one. Assuming you don't live in one of those cheapass "no laundry machines allowed" complexes, you could at minimum use the ones designed to attach to the sink fixtures.

        -WS

    • Everything else is great, and infinitely superior to the old port of OpenOffice.org to the Mac's X11.

      Disclaimer: I haven't downloaded and tried this most recent version.

      While NeoOffice/J is a usable program, I think stating that everything else is great is a bit of an overstatement. In all the versions I have used to date the startup times are very slow, and the GUI lacks the responsiveness of a native application. Scrolling for example is noticeably choppy. More importantly for me is that it has no s

  • Good news (Score:3, Informative)

    by Lord Satri ( 609291 ) <alexandreleroux@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @07:30AM (#12879854) Homepage Journal
    This is good news (tm). I've been using the X11 version for a while. Works great. Yes, it's X11, but it truly works fine. Downloading NeoOfficeJ right now. It is a good thing to have a choice. It might not be native but hey, we'll get there eventually.

    In terms of competition, there's KOffice for MacOS X I kept my eyes on, see http://kde.opendarwin.org/ [opendarwin.org]. Still pre-alpha however.

    I use and love iWorks. Keynote is simply *great*. But it is not free (forget open source). And iWorks, for the moment, lacks a spreedsheet, which OOO doesn't. Thanks to OOO and NeoOfficeJ developpers! :-)

  • Coralized link (Score:3, Informative)

    by harvardslacker ( 881339 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @07:33AM (#12879874) Homepage
    Here's the Coralized link:

    http://neowiki.sixthcrusade.com.nyud.net:8090/inde x.php/NeoOffice/J_1.1_Announcement#Announcement_.5 Ben.5D [nyud.net]

    Though, frankly, there's not much there to read.

    Greg
  • ["...] mouse scrolling, integration with major Mac email clients and native support for Mac fonts. The full announcement is here."

    Do current relses of OpenOffice.org and other software have native support for Linux fonts? I ask this because I find that fonts on Linux are a bit "blurry"...that is, they are not as clear/crisp as their those on their windows counterparts. Even when anti-aliasing is turned off, fonts on Linux do not look that good. This is one reason in my opinion, why some slashdotters have

    • fonts on Linux are a bit "blurry"...that is, they are not as clear/crisp as their those on their windows counterparts.

      According to this [ffii.org] it's a patent issue. I think there's something deeply wrong with patents on operations required to render fonts correctly, above and beyond the already troubling issue of software patents in general. Remember that in the US fonts are explicitly not copyrightable to prevent even the potential of copyright being used to prevent free speech. Shouldn't this easement be extended to any communication or presentation technology.

      • Re:Allegedly this is a patent issue... (Score:4, Informative)

        by timster ( 32400 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @08:03AM (#12880023)
        Whoa, you're not a lawyer for sure. Nor am I.

        Fonts -- meaning that file (or files) of computer data that represent a particular typeface -- are absolutely copyrightable. That's why Linux distributors cannot distribute the fonts from Microsoft or Apple (though an end-user can download some fonts from Microsoft's web site, or use the fonts from their own Windows installation).

        It is the typeface itself that cannot be copyrighted. But that's the way the characters look, not the data that represents them to a computer. So I'm free to clone the Arial typeface by developing my own font that represents it, but I can't just copy Microsoft's font.

        Developing a good font from a typeface is a lot of hard work, I hear.
        • You're right, current usage of these words means that I should have said "typefaces" rather than "fonts". But that's a side issue: the copyright on the font isn't relevant to the patent on Truetype rendering. I could create a true type font and release it into the public domain and it would still be necessary to use the algorithm covered by this patent to properly render the typeface embodied in the font.

          That is, this is a patent that restricts the typeface itself. You can only approximate way the characte
        • So I'm free to clone the Arial typeface by developing my own font that represents it, but I can't just copy Microsoft's font.

          As I've pointed out before, Arial [ms-studio.com] already is a ripoff of another font [iliveonyourvisits.com] (Helvetica)...

    • Re:Question: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by zborgerd ( 871324 )
      I find Linux font rendering to be very nice; better than Windows and even on par with OS X, but a lot of it is largely due to configuration and the videocard/monitor being used. This is a pretty lengthy reply, but I'd like to help people debunk the myth that Linux has "bad" font rendering. It's just that most distributions don't provide fonts and font renderers that function in the way many users might expect.

      By default, all distributions (except for Debian, I believe) use the Autohinter instead of the

    • One of the biggest issues in Linux (x.org) is to make sure that your monitor size is setup correctly (in mm) in your xorg.conf.

      This is *very* *very* important, and makes a *huge* difference in the quality of your on-screen font rendering.

      In this section:
      Section "Monitor"
      DisplaySize 381 228
      HorizSync 15-48
      Identifier "Monitor[0]"
      ModelName "Unknown"
      Option "DPMS"
      VendorName "Unknown"
      VertRefresh 30-61
      UseModes "Modes[0]"
      EndSection

      Make sure your display size is correc

  • I think this shows that (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @07:34AM (#12879878)
    NeoOffice isn't the one.

    and that quite possibly
    there is no server.
  • While I salute the NeoOffice team for getting Open Office to work nativly on the Mac, there are still things that need to be done. Primarly clean the interface. The interface is good for Windows user and Linux users who are use to sucky interfaces and which solves the problem by adding more buttons and icons to it. Mac People are more use to the cleaner Interface and most are more willing to access the features threw the menus, and hotkeys. And having buttons for the most commonly used features. Microso

  • Screenshot (Score:5, Informative)

    by base_chakra ( 230686 ) * on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @07:50AM (#12879955)
    This 800x600 screenshot [freshmeat.net] should survive a slashdot throttling.

  • The big question: Is it made using XCode? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mr. Cancelled ( 572486 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @08:06AM (#12880041)
    ... And thus easy to make a universal binary from? Or will this be harder to port once the Intel switch begins?

    Good app, but I hope it can move with the Mac as Apple transitions to Intel processors. Seems like kind of a waste of effort if it's tied to a specific architecture, in light of Apples recent announcements.
  • For OO 2.0 to arrive...

    Great work tho.. have to give them a lot of credit..
  • I don't know why people love comparing cars to computers so much. Mac users especailyl like to call Macs the BMW of Computers due to the small market share, high quality, and a heavy dose of style when compared to plane jane Dell (Chevy/Ford?) boxes.

    Well I have an analogy for NeoOffice/J - It's the PT Cruiser of Software. Sure it's all new and shinny on the inside, but it's retro styling harkens back to Office98 or something. Lots of Grey and icons I certainly don't want to lick or drink.

    Don't get me wron

  • The Desktop Wars (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chia_monkey ( 593501 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @08:30AM (#12880219) Journal
    Are the desktop wars over as many had previously assumed. "Microsoft has won". There still seem to be some coals on the fire though. You've got a couple of these open source projects (OpenOffice, NeoOffice, etc). Then you've got Apple doing their thing...starting with Safari, then Keynote, then iWork...Then you've got the whole Apple moving to x86 and everything that brings such as developers showing how easy it is to port to x86 by doing a full conversion during the WWDC and nutty statements like Michael Dell saying he'd sell OS X if Apple decided to sell it as a standalone product.

    I'm not really sure the desktop wars are over. Each announcement of stable, full-featured M$ replacement seems to solidify that assumption. Thoughts anyone?

  • My Experiences (Score:5, Informative)

    by LaughingLinuxMan ( 872028 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @08:30AM (#12880223) Homepage
    I have used the last release candidate to do "real" work on personal projects. That is, I actually tried to get things done with it rather than just clicking around to see how "Mac" it is. I have both MS Office X and NeoOffice/J installed. Office X is used for school work, where I cannot take a chance of my professors not being able to read a document.


    1) In the early releases NeoOffice/J was sluggish. There were rendering delays with first word typed, pull-down menus, and switching tools, among other things. I am pleased to say that the interface speed has increased through the release candidate schedule. That said, you will find there are still delays here and there that may bother you. They bothered me until I used Office X again. That product has UI delays as well, just in different places. At this point I think it is a wash.


    2) Stability (e.g. random crashes) was an issue on the earlier releases. These have been largely successfully addressed. In fact, when using the last RC to get work done I did not experience any crashes. Very nice.


    3) The UI is somewhat confusing, since it departs from some of the standard metaphors we usually see in office software. The primary example is the tight coupling of the different suite functions. Those that are used to using one application for spreadsheets and another for presentations will need to aclimate to a monolithic application. This is not a big change per se; it just takes some getting used to. There are other minor departures, such as the lack of aqua widgets and different locations of buttons and menu items. Once I got used to these differences, I found the product usable for my project work.


    All that being said, I have decided to do all my personal project work in NeoOffice/J. Why? The data I generate in my personal projects is valuable to me personally. I would like to maximize the chances of being able to read it in the distant future. Since the Open Office file format is completely open and documented, I believe that the OO.org file format has the greatest chance of being read 15-20 years from now. If there is not any software in 15-20 years that can read the format, then due to the open licensing on the format I could write/hire someone to write a program to read the documents. Try doing that with some archaic closed format. I will deal with quirks today to enable access to the my data tomorrow.


    -LLM

  • Great for files from those 'other' computers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NardofDoom ( 821951 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @08:31AM (#12880226)
    My wife was working on a presentation for her masters class and was getting files from her Windows-using classmates to produce the final Powerpoint. For some reason Office v.X couldn't open the files, but NeoOffice/J could.

    For that reason alone (and the price), I recommend NeoOffice. I've been using it as my sole office application for some time now with no problems.

    • Yes, that sort of thing happens. I've had errors in Word documents that I couldn't fix in three different releases of Word (one for Mac, two for Windows), while OpenOffice.org easily repaired them. There really isn't any reason for not having OpenOffice/NeoOffice if you exchange documents in Microsoft's proprietary formats, at least as a back-up.
  • Ok, my understanding is that this is the C++ OpenOffice code with Java used solely for the GUI (or so their site says). I loaded it last night and it works just fine. It's not 100% Aqua, but it's good enough for every day use.

    My question is.... Why don't the openoffice developers take this approach? Java is available for Mac, Linux, Solaris (obviously), and Windows. And on the Mac and Windows versions the UI looks pretty good. My understanding with the Linux version is, it can use GTK widgets, so I wo
    • You know, it's not all that hard to do a cross platform gui in c/c++ that has native widget support across all platforms.

      I mean there's already free toolkits out there, and even so, doing your own isn't immensely hard. It just takes knowing more than one system really well, and writing a properly abstracted widget interface.

      Having said that, that's exactly what they've done for OO 2.0.

      And no, they didn't use Java for the GUI.
  • I'd love tgo switch to NeoOffice or Pages or another decednt alternative to Word on the OS X platform, but they all ignore a feature of vital importance to professional writers like myself: A halfway decent word count function. In Pages, you can do a word count on the whole document, but not on a highlighted selection. And in NeoOffice, you have to go through an enormous song-and-dance with the Tools-->Statistics dialog (before manually selecting a tab!) to get the word count (a method that also preclude

    • ...NeoOffice or Pages or another decednt[sic] alternative to Word on the OS X platform, but they all ignore a feature of vital importance to professional writers like myself: A halfway decent word count function.

      Actually, while the programmers of Pages may not "get it," because it is a native application and because the programmers of OS X do "get it," you can just install a system service that will perform a word count on a selection. In fact there is a set of services called "Wordservice" that is free

  • Well Done NO/J devs! (Score:5, Informative)

    by benmhall ( 9092 ) on Wednesday June 22, 2005 @09:56AM (#12880929) Homepage Journal
    I've been using NeoOffice/J on my Macs for a couple of years now. (I have a rather dated review here. [linuxgruven.ca]) Without a doubt, it's my favourite office suite for OSX.

    What's really amazing is that almost all of the coding work is done by Patrick Luby (pluby) with a fairly small group of very dedicated testers and contributors. Despite the complexity of the code and the magnitude of the task, Patrick and the rest of his small team of volutneers has managed to release the only viable alternateive to MS Office for Mac OSX.

    I have been installing NeoOffice/J on lab machines at work for over a year now. NO/J 1.1 is a significant improvement over the earlier versions. It now integrates with the menubar, opens and closes like a Mac app, and even uses OSX's keyboard shortcuts. Heck, they even managed to integrate it with SpotLight!

    For everyone out there using a Mac, be sure to check it out. Also, if you like the program don't forget to donate. [planamesa.com] Even $50 is much appreciated. Think of it, an entire office suite on your platform of choice with perfect interoperability with Linux, Windows and Solaris. And it's Open Source. Surely that's worth a donation.

  • Great (Score:2)

    by hkb ( 777908 )
    Wow great, an office suite with a Windows GUI. Now I can harken back to the days before I "switched", back when Windows was relevant to me.

    TextEdit it still is.

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