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Does that mean that they are going to honour this request from the NeoOffice people?

Meanwhile...

in which developers create free intellectual property only to have others scoop it up and generate huge amounts of revenue

The only way* for a company to make "huge amounts of revenue" from Open Source software is to add value so that people are prepared to pay you money for something that they could get elsewhere for free. That "value" might be providing top quality support, or it might be investigating in marketing or just having a number of employees who wear suits and use words like "leverage" that give corporate clients a warm fuzzy feeling. Either way, does anybody really have a problem with that?

Any company director who looses sleep about getting all this "money for nothing" simply needs to let their employees use some of their paid time to contribute to writing OSS code or coordinating OSS development.

*(excluding the "extort protection money on the back of questionable IP violation claims" method, of course).

Disclaimer: I am a founder of the NeoOffice project.

Quote: and became an even worse idea when Apple deprecated the Java-Cocoa bridge

We never used the CocoaJava bridge at all. I guess you never bothered to read the source code. In fact, we use very little Java at all as is pointed out by the ohloh source code analysis of our open CVS. There's little Objective-C as we do most of the logic in C++ and call out to ObjC when required. There are some other stats there you may find intriguing as well like the estimated man-years and cost it will take to approximate our code.

Trust me, once any OS X port of OOo starts getting font handling and input methods correct, it'll slow down as well. This is true especially for Asian and other foreign languages. The bottleneck is in Apple's ATSUI and how it mismatches to the underlying OOo code. Has nothing to do with Java at all. Speed in a vaporware demo is one thing; carrying speed into a functional product is something different completely.

ed

Here is NeoOffice's official statement.

W

the original dispute was over the license - see the faq and the license in dispute:
http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/faq.php
http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/sissl_license.h tml

I chatted with Ed a long time ago (email, I think) after several separate groups and individuals were all attempting to port OOo 1.0, including myself, which I believe was eventually abandoned due to data model incompatibility. I forget the exact details, but I think it was OSX's problem with weak binding (this is X.1 and X.2 we're talking about) and OOo using multiply defined symbols in their plugins and requiring dynamic weak binding. X didn't have that problem, so only the X version was released.

From the blog:

MacOSX and Aqua are quite new to me, so please bear with me as I learn about this (for me) exciting new platform at first. Certainly I will have many questions for my fellow Mac porters. However I can contribute ~10 years experience with vcl which I think the port can benefit from.

The problem has always been that OO.o makes assumptions about GUI development that are well-suited to X11 and Windows, and not well-suited to Aqua. The question is, can someone who's learning Mac development as he goes push changes back to OO.o to make it more suitable for Aqua and other GUI toolkits? Can he do it before Sun changes their mind and de-funds the Mac port? Sun has a habit of funding things for about six months and then getting cold feet.

Which reminds me: I should throw some money at Ed and Patrick for their continued work on NeoOffice, which uses Java as a GUI adapter (!) to get OO.o tolerable on the Mac

OpenOffice.org runs on Mac OS X under X11. NeoOffice is an independently developed version of OpenOffice.org 2.1 which runs on Mac OS X natively and without the need for X11. I've been using it for years.

Given its heavy use of Java I think the 'native' qualification is debatable. Some aspects are native (e.g. font management), which is certainly a major plus.

Unfortunately, though, this application gives new meaning to the words 'slow' and 'bloated'. The author has also chosen to make its license (GPL) incompatible with OO.o's (LGPL) so that his porting efforts cannot be contributed back to the main project. That makes NeoOffice a very hostile fork. What's more, he is trying (against the terms of the GPL/LGPL) to limit free distribution by using the trademark loophole.

So, I would say that while a port exists, it's both low quality and under bad management, and I welcome this new effort to do it properly.

Those guys (Ed and Patrick) are way ahead of the OOo port, so it's most likely going to be around for some time, Sun or not. Its a sad story, but its really too bad the Neo guys and OOo couldn't work together, but there's something political going on.

Here's some oblig. links:
NeoOffice: http://trinity.neooffice.org/
OOo: http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/index.h tml

NeoOffice only uses a small amount of Java code for OS X look-and-feel. The guts are C++.

I suspect you won't read that page, Anonymous, but you should.

NeoOffice's code cannot be used by OpenOffice due to licenses (and copyright assignment).

OpenOffice's take on it: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/FAQ_Openo ffice.org_and_NeoOffice

NeoOffice's: http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/faq.php#11

Open Office is working on a native (as opposed to X11) version of OpenOffice for OS X, but according to the latest project plan, the final release won't be out until the end of the year:

http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/news/index.html

In the meantime, Neooffice is a decent option, considering that the project is only maintained by two people, and part-time at that:

http://neooffice.org/neojava/en/download.php#downl oad

On the Mac? First, you don't want to use that on the Mac. Try NeoOffice instead. That will keep you from having to run X11. Second, for all the nice things I would want to say about NeoOffice, it's not exactly snappy.

Really, I use NeoOffice. I've donated to the project. I'm grateful for all the good work they've done. But even the Intel-native version doesn't run any faster than Word 2004.

Disclaimer: I am a founder of NeoOffice.org

Due to politics, OpenOffice.org has exorcised all reference that a perfectly functional, native, and Aqua port of OpenOffice.org exists for the Macintosh. It is called NeoOffice. If you want to use only software named "OpenOffice" on your Mac, yes, you have few options, but if you like GPL software go check out the real deal.

NeoOffice 2.1 is scheduled for release on March 27th. Not only do we continue to push forward with being the only truly native fully released Aqua-enabled office application suite for Mac OS X, there are several features included that aren't even in OOo on Linux, including:

• Word OpenXML document import and export
• Excel VBA macro compatibility
• Microsoft Works file import/export
• linear programming extensions for Calc

NeoOffice is a GPL project and incorporates the best everyone has to offer to create the best product we can for our users.

OpenOffice.org is a political machine and to meet its own political goals is willing to restrict its users from compatibility requirements like OpenXML and VBA compatibility, not to mention failing to let users know other open source projects exist and are ready now, unlike their Macintosh vaporware. Their own users are hurt by their own desires for personal and political gain.

NeoOffice is free from all corporate influence, is truly GPL free software, and will always be so. If the lack of Mac support is your only reason preventing you from deploying OOo or its derivatives, it's sad that you didn't take the simple time to run a google search and just assumed the information the OOo website was all the larger OOo community has to offer.

ed

I would posit the latter. Look at some of the ODBC problems in M$ products for Apple. The problems have been around for ages and M$ has no plans to fix them, and hasn't fixed them despite new releases. The solution promoted is to ditch Apple. That company doesn't appear to treat Windows users any better, so my solution, however, was to ditch M$ and that has worked quite well.

Yes, the M$ Office for Apple has been profitable, but another reason for M$ to keep it around would be to maintain the lock on the office file formats. So to drop it now is probably just trying to force the few into Windows and thus the InfoPath / MS OOXML lock-in. IMHO, it's a premature move and will cost them.

There are a quite a few options, that are in most ways better, though different. The weakest points, which could go away in short order, are the file formats. The M$ formats are still undocumented and only some on the list below fully support OpenDocument, though that number is rapidly growing.

• Neooffice
• Mariner Write, Mariner Calc
• Abiword
• NisusWriter
• ThinkFree
• Mellel
• OpenOffice.org (still needs X11, I'm fine with that myself since I use X11 anyway, but others may not be)
• iWork (includes Keynote)

That's just focusing on word processors. There is a similar range of choice for spreadsheets and presentation graphics. Now see how important control of those file formats is.

They're doing a great job porting OpenOffice to OSX, a job that the OpenOffice people seem unwilling to do, and I hope they get the suppor they need.

And the way to ensure they get that support is to go to NeoOffice.org and make a donation. I did two weeks ago, and I encourage everyone else interested in ensuring the continued development of this crucial OS X office suite to do the same. Yes, I'm talking to you!

Or, relevant to the topic of Macintoshes, NeoOffice. I'm not in any way associated with the project, but I always like to bring it into discussions of Macs and office suites. They're doing a great job porting OpenOffice to OSX, a job that the OpenOffice people seem unwilling to do, and I hope they get the suppor they need.

especially when they can download OpenOffice for free.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what MS is doing with the next version of Office. They are removing support for VBA and replacing it with AppleScript. So, the most compatible version of MS Office will remain the current version [Office 2004]...

Just as NeoOffice is adding VBA support.

I have to admit - I didn't see the day coming when NeoOffice would be more compatible than Office X.

Sadly my current version of Office is unusable on mactel machines (damn rosseta), and openoffice is a 200 pound gorilla.

When you have to deal with .doc files, try NeoOffice--it's a Mac-ified version of OpenOffice. It's not perfect, not blazingly fast, but very usable, and free.

If you have the freedom to do use whatever you want most of the time, look into LaTeX. It has a fairly steep learning curve, but the output is much, much nicer than Word. Using LaTeX is like fine wine or some other luxury--once you try it, you'll be horrified at the quality of the typography on whatever you were using before.

works pretty well on the Mac for me. It's a little behind the main openoffice release, but the integration is good, especially including fonts.

Working in Japanese, I prefer neooffice on the Mac to openoffice on Linux. I'd probably have fewer format issues on OO if I took the time to make sure I had good Japanese fonts on the Linux box, but I haven't taken the time to do that because the neooffice branch works well enough for me.

joudanzuki

Or you could just use Neo Office which is just Open Office wrapped in a decent OS X interface (rather than messing around with X11).

Currently it only uses Open Office 2.0.3 code

You make it sound like that's a small list that doesn't encompass much. I don't know, though... I don't really have huge problems with stability. MSOffice compatibility is pretty good, and seems to be getting better all the time. Plus, I somewhat blame Microsoft for the problem, so no point in telling the developers about it-- they know.

By your complaint about OSX-native binaries, I assume you mean a version which doesn't require X11? If that's the case, you should at least check out NeoOffice, which is an attempt to bring a native port of OOo to OSX (including Aqua-fying the interface). It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn good considering their lack of resources. Last I heard, it was a two-man operation. Still, it would be nice if the OOo people would either support the NeoOffice guys, help out, or make some effort toward bringing their own port to OSX.

So I guess we're really left with making it faster and lighter. I can't say I disagree, but it does seem like that might be a difficult task. Someone involved in the project might be able to tell me, would it make the whole thing run faster and use less RAM if you broke the thing out into separate applications? Personally, I can deal with the increase hard drive space, as well as the increased overhead of running multiple concurrent executables, if it means that any given executable can be launched more quickly and with less overhead. But maybe that's just me.

Either way, yes, I'd like to see OOo faster. Also, if I could add to your list, I'd really like to see the whole thing be prettier. I know, it seems like a minor thing, but it's easier to sell people on an application if it's pretty, and I do occasionally try to convert people to using OOo. I guess it'd be more accurate to say, it'd be nice if the Windows and OSX versions of OOo were to blend in better with their perspective operating systems. Running on X11 in OSX is a bit silly, and the icons and toolbars tend to look a little "off" in Windows. They just don't quite fit in with native applications. In Windows, it's a very minor complaint, but a complaint none the less.

Otherwise, I wouldn't want to end the post without being thankful and happy at OpenOffice's continued development. It's a fantastic application, keeping me free from needing Microsoft for most of my day-to-day tasks. And you really can't beat the price! So, if any OOo developers managed to read through all this, and didn't feel like beating the crap out of me for my nit-picking, thank you very much!

Everyone, pool your mod points and give 'em to this guy. I always found it ridiculous that OpenOffice has to run on an X session, it always seemed like a horrible kludge to me, especially getting printing to work.

*TYPEY-TYPEY-TYPE*

Ta-daaa!

- it works great!

http://www.neooffice.org/

First of all, as everybody else is pointing out, Microsoft Office works on the Mac.

But, perhaps more importantly, so does NeoOffice, which is a more than adequate replacement for most users. I have MS Office on my Mac and I still use NeoOffice anyway because it interoperates better with Linux and because I prefer the UI.

And for most people, Pages+Keynote is probably a better choice than either MS Office or NeoOffice anyway: less bloated and easier to learn.

Or you could spend nothing at all and download NeoOffice, an OS X OpenOffice port. Has almost all of the features of Office, and all the characteristics you'd expect from a native Mac app, all for free.

..right here, and you don't need *shock* CrossOver Mac

http://www.neooffice.org/

Don't you just love convergence?

How many people will be happy when there's a good, stable, up-to-date native OSX version?

If Excel is over, point out to me a good replacement for it on my Mac. ... There isn't one.

• Debian PowerPC
• Open Office Mac
• Gnumeric OSX

Gosh, that was easy. I don't have a machine to test the above, but I'm sure at least one of them would work well. Running Debian would be the easiest way to get an alternative if it has been made to work with your current machine (x86 or PowerPC). Any are sure to run better and be more frequently updated than the two year old kludge that is Office of OSX:

Both Office v. X and 2004 Standard Edition run non-natively on Intel Macs through the Rosetta Emulation layer. Microsoft does not intend to update Office 2004 for Intel Macs, and has announced that the next version of Office for Mac will have universal binaries, capable of running natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs.

Excel doesn't require Windows...

Wooo-hoo! Freedom and choice in crappy and expensive software. My horizons in non free have been broadened. M$ emulation is everywhere.

It was never meant to be.
Unless Apple gets their shit together and codes up a comparable, and compatible product.

But does it have to be Apple? Or can it be Sun Microsystems and volunteers?

Or just run NeoOffice on the Mac. This is really an OpenOffice.org port to the Mac so that it doesn't require an X windowing environment to run (though there is a Mac version of OO.o that runs under X). It does a pretty good job of reading & writing MS Office files (not perfect), it stores docs in native OpenDocument standard format (these are really .xml files which have been zipped and saved as a single open-doc file -- which means you can get external software to parse the docs & integrate with them), AND it runs on Mac, Linux, Solaris, & Windows. Did I mention it has a much more attractive price tag than MS Office?? =)

When I read the headline about Microsoft not making a virtual PC port, my first thought was "Does anybody really care?" It would be a completely irrelevant product.

Such as NeoOffice?

Not Mac users. The version of OOo that's available for Mac requires you be running X11, and does not integrate into the desktop WHATSOEVER. I will use it only as a last resort.

Mac users interested in OpenOffice.org need to try NeoOffice. It's a Mac native port of Open Office and the 2.0 Beta release uses Aqua. There's no need for X11 and installation is a breeze.

NeoOffice works, but in my opinion it is JUST AS FUGLY AS THIS AD.

Check out this thread.

W

Granted I am not a Mac user but at least I know about NeoOffice and that is why the (butt ugly IMHO) advertisment should be for OpenOffice and NeoOffice

Chop

NeoOffice doesn't require X11, works with OS X's native fonts and printing system, supports all OS X's text input methods (Japanese, Chinese, etc.), and is much more attractive and snappy as of 2.0a.

BitTorrenting the BINARIES wouldn't be piracy - but it would be violating the trademark. So you can't do it.

You can bittorent the source all you want - it *is* after all, open source...

Check out the forums, the wiki, and everything else on the neooffice page. If you don't want to pay for the early access build, BUILD IT YOURSELF! And you don't have to pay a cent.

The SOURCE is there for you.

BTW - don't build it yourself and then bittorent that either - that would also violate the trademark. Feel free to change the source and rename it something different though - it is, after all, OPEN SOURCE!

For more on the Open Source/Trademark/Free/Pay/Early Access/etc issue, please read this thread. Then, after you are more educated, come back and share your views.

BitTorrenting the BINARIES wouldn't be piracy - but it would be violating the trademark. So you can't do it.

You can bittorent the source all you want - it *is* after all, open source...

Check out the forums, the wiki, and everything else on the neooffice page. If you don't want to pay for the early access build, BUILD IT YOURSELF! And you don't have to pay a cent.

The SOURCE is there for you.

BTW - don't build it yourself and then bittorent that either - that would also violate the trademark. Feel free to change the source and rename it something different though - it is, after all, OPEN SOURCE!

For more on the Open Source/Trademark/Free/Pay/Early Access/etc issue, please read this thread. Then, after you are more educated, come back and share your views.

I think when NeoOffice goes beta, THAT will be news. Why? Because the current plan for beta includes an aquified version.

Take a look at how this is progressing here. Pretty amazing, especially when you consider that NeoOffice has two developers. TWO. And they aren't even full-time.

Also, a new graphics, file icons, splash screen, etc. are in the works for 2.0 beta. Check out the forums.

And FWIW, I've had absolutely no problem with the alpha series so far.

W

I think when NeoOffice goes beta, THAT will be news. Why? Because the current plan for beta includes an aquified version.

Take a look at how this is progressing here. Pretty amazing, especially when you consider that NeoOffice has two developers. TWO. And they aren't even full-time.

Also, a new graphics, file icons, splash screen, etc. are in the works for 2.0 beta. Check out the forums.

And FWIW, I've had absolutely no problem with the alpha series so far.

W

Sure. Like the two poster-children of free software applications, GIMP and OOo, both of which run natively without X11... not.

Wrong and wrong. Your only correct move was posting as AC.

Instead of using the deplorable X11 version of OpenOffice, why not use NeoOffice.org ? I have used it for the past year on my PBook when dealing with m$ office users and have never had a problem. It is essentially a native wrapper around OpenOffice and works just fine. No more X windows to run it. Give it a try. You might be surprised.

Now, I have a Mac friend who claims that this all just ripped off from Apple's Pages word processor. Since Vista is a shameless OS X clone right down to the colors, it wouldn't surprise me one bit. However, Pages currently fails the same test as MS Office: They want me to pay money for it. Anything is too expensive when I can do everything I have to do for free on NeoOffice (OpenOffice.org with increasing amounts of Aqua). If you haven't looked into OpenOffice.org, this delay might be what yo have been waiting for to save that money you have been giving Microsoft (or Apple, for that matter) all those years.

What about NeoOffice?
It's nice to have choice, but two groups working on the same thing seems kind of wasteful.

Does anyone here still prefer and use older versions like Office 2000? At home, I use 2000 version and it still does fine for my needs. I don't do fancy editings in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. Sometimes I use OpenOffice especially in Linux and Mac OS X v10.2.8 (NeoOffice), but that's rare. At work, I have to use Office 2003 since it is required by IT. I don't like these newer versions (2002/XP, 2003, etc.).

You can get the Windows patch here. And after you do that, the Office patch is right here.

I've asked this before, but does anyone know when NeoOffice will be ported?

The port is non-trivial and work is ongoing. They hope to have it working sometime this year. Detailed information is available in this support forum thread. I looked this up because I was curious about the answer too, but it took me all of five seconds to google this. You might want to try that in future, rather than Slashdot.

The hackers and a handful of tech savy users that want OS X on generic hardware are irrelevant.

I disagree. Completely.

They may be irrelevant to Apple's current sales objectives. And they may be irrelevant in terms of percentage of OS X units sold in the very near future.

But I think they will be highly relevant. Both in terms of increased possibilities for future market and product moves available to Apple and to the impact felt by Microsoft. Right now Microsoft is fighting mostly a one-front war with Linux.

If that handful of hackers and tech savvy users along with a few engineers can show that running OS X on commodity hardware works well and a community builds up around it, Apple may have the best opportunity it has ever had to sharply swing it's market share.

What would happen if they would stage another switch blitz, reduce the cost to $49.99, and bring back Ellen?

Is it unthinkable that they could double their market share? Especially if Apple was to throw a few dollars at NeoOffice?

Ahh, so used to BBCode. Sorry. NeoOffice

Fixed.

Disclaimer: I am an OpenOffice.org developer and a NeoOffice founder.

There are a number of tricks with which you may be able to improve presentation performance. First off, try 1.2 Beta. Older versions of NeoOffice/J were based on Java 1.3. Apple's virtual machine was buggy, so to implement drawing properly we needed to use triple buffering. With NeoOffice 1.2, we're using Java 1.4 and can access drawing buffers directly without working around bugs Apple never fixed in earlier VM versions.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you can always improve speed if you avoid transitions and animations in your presentation. Various funky cube wipes/dissolves add nothing to the content of presentations and just waste everyone's time and (I daresay) distract from the actual content. Folks should focus on what a bullet point actually *says*, not whether it flies in from the right, iris dissolves, or whatever. Sorry if it seems like a rant, but animations really are frills and should be used sparingly. In most every presentation using them, the "transition effects" actually detract from the content instead of providing meaningful information.

I've used NeoOffice and OOo X11 for presentations off of a 400MHz TiBook for years at O'Reilly conferences, business conferences, and others. If someone complains that their presentations run slowly, the first thing that runs through my mind is that it's not the type of presentation I want to be sitting through. Give me an overhead projector with transparancies anyday over something with sound effects and transitions that'll trigger seizures :D

ed