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NeoOffice/J uses a combination of Carbon and Java and features Aqua menus.

I know the plugin right now successfully extracts most of the metadata people insert into "File > Properties" dialog as well as some of the other metadata (like last person editing the doc). The text extraction from Writer, Draw, Impress, and Calc documents is in place but I have been unable to verify if it's working properly. I'm hoping that the dev tools in the release will provide a better way to get a handle on what the metadata server is doing with the MDTextContent keys as earlier builds gave no feedback for text content, only read/write metadata keys.

If you try it out, please give feedback in the NeoLight Development forum on trinity. While I know it's functional on prerelease builds, I haven't had the ability to check it on the release builds (my seeding key expired last Oct. prior to the newer Tiger builds).

ed

I released the NeoLight plugin yesterday which can index OpenOffice.org and NeoOffice/J formatted documents.

I had already posted this in an earlier comment in this article.

ed

One that probably isn't on the page may be the Spotlight plugin to allow for indexing of OpenOffice.org 1.x and NeoOffice formatted files. Unfortunately, I couldn't open source it prior to the Tiger release because the APIs were covered under NDA, but no longer!

The NeoLight metadata importer is licensed under LGPL and illustrates basic parsing of OOo 1.x formatted documents using CoreFoundation XML utilities. It's still in development and could use some developers to lend a hand testing, optimizing, and determining if we're extracting all the relevant content properly.

More information can be found in this trinity article.

ed

http://www.neooffice.org/

It will support OpenOffice and NeoOffice.

The guys of NeoOffice already start to coding the metadata importer

http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=News &file=article&sid=89

OpenOffice for the Mac: http://neooffice.org/

http://www.neooffice.org/

It's a Java/Aqua version of OpenOffice. It works, but it's not entirely perfect yet. The main missing feature in my opinion is using the standard Aqua interface for the main toolbars, etc.

The menus are already Aqua. :)

Actually, there is a Java-based implementation of OpenOffice that does not require X11: NeoOffice that I've provided, along with the X11 version, to a number of district tech coordinators for evaluation.

I have migrated from MS Office.X for OS X to NeoOffice/J which is based on OO.o

My experience has been that the interface is sophmoric when compared to the advanced and good looking MS Office.X interface. In addition, even basic Word formatting like bullets don't migrate with perfection from a .DOC file.

What I miss most are the Excel forumals which I use for all sorts of household budget calculations and other such needs.

Still, when comparing $0 to $500, I am happy to overcome the shortfalls.

Will the community fork OOo becuase of this? Maybe.

Maybe? It's already happened.

Everyone has (and will continue) to discuss Xcode.

I can give some insight into the question of learning curve.

I develop .NET web apps at work on XP but have a Mac at home. there are a good many differences:

- The mac is like Linux. Get used to the Linux command line. If you don't know basic commands like LS instead of DIR then the curve will be steap. If you have used a *nix system or are a quick study, I would pickup an O'reilly book and get up to speed with things like user permissions (CHMOD) and GREP and the Pipe "|" for automation. Also know than things like Chron jobs replace Windows Scheduler. Get a book adn take the few hours to skim it. It will be a great reference if nothing else.

- Perpare yourself for more text editor usage and less sophisticated Integrated Developer Environment (IDE). Okay, let the Apple Xcoders begin their flame. I really feel that MS got some things very very right with Visual Studio .Net and it is way different developing .Net apps with the IDE in Visual Studio. I have developed php apps on the Mac and used TextEdit and BBedit (a great OS X only editor). IMHO, seasoned coders who really know their stuff will do well transitioning from VS.net, beginers will have a few less crutches to use.

- You're gonna need an office suite. MS Office.X is great, but for the money, I kinda like OO.o and use NeoOffice/J myself. A Mac alternative to Visio is OmniGraffle and is better IMHO.

- Get used to few, but higher quality choices. Okay, this one is touchy too but there are few fewer choices for software and websites to Google for a problem but the ones you do find for whatever the task might be are of better quality I think. Apple does a great many things right the first time so even if an article is written for Jaguar, it may very well work under Tiger, etc. I have found this very frustrating as I try to install something under IIS 6 with a document written for IIS 5 for example.

- Don't underestimate the hardware. Okay, your budget, your choice, but I would be more inclined to recommend to a serious developer buying a Power Mac (watch out, rumors of new updates in May so careful with the timing) over a Mac mini. The Mac mini is great for a home user wanting to check email, but if you are going to develop, compile, and potentially deploy Web Objects and such, don't underestimate the G5's supperiority to it's 32-bit father. At a minimum, follow all the recommendations and get 512mb ram (I have a Gig and use it).

Lastly, "Welcome".

Disclaimer: I am an OpenOffice.org Mac OS X developer and a founder of the NeoOffice project

One of the biggest problems with Java in OOo is the way that it's being used. Probably the largest volunteer developer community outside of Sun is in the porting project which mostly aims to recompile OOo onto other Unix and Unix-like platforms. Part of the portability lure is that the older architecture of OOo made porting easy; OOo itself has its own internal complete abstraction layers for operating system functionality, windowing, widgets, and the kitchen sink. By simply porting those layers, OOo could run anywhere and even the most obscure Unix variant could have access to a MS Office compatible office suite.

Java breaks that. Why? Not all of the platforms on which previous versions of OOo could be built have any official Java implementation (e.g. Linux/PPC).

Now, Java is no longer optional. Java is actually becoming a requirement not only for running OOo. Some of the build tools are becoming implemented in Java. What's worse, many of these newer Java-dependent features and build tools actually require a specific version of the VM in order to be functional (e.g. reliances on libraries distributed with Java 1.4+).

This choice leave platforms without Java in the cold, but sadly it also leaves platforms with outdated Java VM versions in the cold. I only hope this doesn't further cause headache for some of the intrepid 64 bit porters out there since I don't know of any VM that can be safely embedded in 64 bit apps yet.

Porting developers have raised this issue as far back as 2002 and earlier. There's no excuse for the Sun-dominated engineering of OpenOffice.org to have been ignorant of them. Instead of lowering the bar for the build process, the dependencies have just been injected into core functionality! It's sad when the pleas of some of the most prominent non-Sun volunteers to the project get blissfully ignored by the powers that be.

I don't have a problem with using Java for open source software since, after all, NeoOffice/J is dependent on Java. As NeoOffice/J is focused solely on Mac OS X, however, portability isn't one of the NeoOffice/J goals. For OOo, however, portability used to be one of its strengths and is still one of the strongest development communities within the project that doesn't originate from Sun. It's sad to see decisions made that alienate one of the only vibrant non-Sun communities.

While OOo has built a great community of marketing, translation, support, and evangelization volunteers, there is no substantial core developer community outside of Sun. Alienating the precious little that exists doesn't help the situation either. Unless there is serious effort to build up a non-Sun developer community, the project can only be doomed for failure when Sun cuts their development team (or goes out of business).

ed

Bah... Just download NeoOffice and say no to Microsoft. (Not affiliated, just a happy "customer")

Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

For the latest news, click the "News" link off of the NeoOffice homepage which will take you to trinity where our headlines and forums are posted. You'll find that there's new content in the forums every day :)

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

For the latest news, click the "News" link off of the NeoOffice homepage which will take you to trinity where our headlines and forums are posted. You'll find that there's new content in the forums every day :)

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

It's not on pause at all, rather, we're essentially roaring towards our first final release. We actually released 1.1 Beta Patch 6 about a week or two ago which fixed many of the crashes introduced by the 10.3.8 update along with other font fixes (particularly asian languages) and some other stuff thrown in. Technically, that's the 6th major update to the Beta version this year.

An anonymous donor also recently raised funding to implement inter-application drag and drop between NeoOffice/J and other OS X applications, so work is commencing on that requested feature.

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

It's not on pause at all, rather, we're essentially roaring towards our first final release. We actually released 1.1 Beta Patch 6 about a week or two ago which fixed many of the crashes introduced by the 10.3.8 update along with other font fixes (particularly asian languages) and some other stuff thrown in. Technically, that's the 6th major update to the Beta version this year.

An anonymous donor also recently raised funding to implement inter-application drag and drop between NeoOffice/J and other OS X applications, so work is commencing on that requested feature.

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

There's no support for them in Mac OS X because OpenOffice.org itself still runs in X11 on Mac OS X. The Native Widget Framework doesn't actually use native widgets at all. The way the NWF works is by introducing a new abstraction layer (first pioneered by NeoOffice/C) that allows the OOo SFX/VCL based widgets to call a platform-specific function that essentially translates to "draw a button background here" or "draw a scrollbar thumb here". On Mac OS X you can only get access to low-level widget rendering routnies through the Appearance Manager (Carbon) or the HIToolbox (Carbon/CG). Neither of those are available to X11 applications.

Besides...I think it'd be frustrating to have "Aqua-ish" buttons in an X11 app that can't even copy to the clipboard correctly. Kinda defeats the purpose putting the look onto an app that doesn't even have the right Mac OS X functionality, not to mention the "feel/UI design" :)

ed

• 2.0 isn't finished yet on any platform! We've already got so much on our plate that we simply can't spend our time working on such a large codebase that hasn't even yet reached code-freeze.
• Mac OS X (X11) build support and testing for 2.0 isn't finished yet! In fact, it's only just begun. Because NeoOffice/J is built on top of the X11 base, we need to have a solid X11 version running and compiling before we can isolate whether bugs are inherent to Mac OS X or whether they are unique to the GUI replacement layer.
• We haven't even finished NeoOffice/J 1.1! We're still working on trying to iron out all the bugs in the 1.1 based product. Moving to 2.0 is obviously going to introduce new bugs, and we can't consciously shoot ourselves in the foot right before a final release.
• Translation of 2.0 isn't complete. NeoOffice/J supports localizations in over 40 languages, and we definitely don't want to leave any languages behind. We won't be considering moving until all of our supported languages are available.
• 2.0 is not the final 2.0.x release. This is just a matter of fact...2.0 will probably have bugs after it is introduced and will have another 2.0.1 release, a 2.0.2 release, etc. It's easy to get caught up in the hamster wheel of keeping up with the torrent of patches and point releases from Hamburg and we can't afford to lose focus and let native porting suffer.
• Moving to 2.0 is going to be a lot of work. Definitely months worth of dedicated work, actually, perhaps even more than a year. Just going from 1.0 to 1.1 took Patrick over a year easy and we're still not finished with that jump yet.
• There are higher priorites than moving to 2.0. While folks love to clamor for "feature parity", we have different priorities (well, I do, perhaps Patrick disagrees). I am more than happy to trade 2.0 features in exchange for working on and completing the equally complex Mac OS X specific tasks, including:
  • getting the first "Final" release of NeoOffice/J!
  • moving to Java 1.4/1.5...crucial for the long-term viability of Neo/J on Tiger and future operating system revisions. There's no sense in spending a year perfecting 2.0 only to find it won't run on the latest and greatest. We already have to work around crashing bugs in the 1.3.1 VM every time there's just a minor update (e.g. 10.3.7 -> 10.3.8), and there's gotta be only so many more updates for which we can find workarounds until the VM just plain no longer works.
  • implementing the NWF and other Aqua widgets
  • using native file dialogs
  • beginning to redesign the interface to adhere to Aqua HIG
• We only have so much time available! Although Patrick is truly astounding, there really is only so much time available as we need to feed our families and pay the rent from time to time. With limited resources available and several large and very technical projects looming on the horizon, they need to get prioritized.

We're intending to backport the major feature of 2.0 that is required...OpenDocument format support. There are plans for an OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 release on other platforms that provides OpenDocument support which we hope to incorporate.

What's most likely going to happen is that we'll try doing a NeoOffice/J 1.5 release with Aqua widgets and other Mac-specific features and technical enhancements. Our #1 goal isn't to keep up with the most up to date OOo release, but rather, to make a great Mac OS X office suite. NeoOffice/J 1.1 is the most solid foundation upon which to build it since it's the most bug free.

Without substantial assistance (e.g. perfecting

Interesting - no mention of OS X. I know the OS X port has now essentially been left to the excellent NeoOffice - I wonder if a beta 2.0 of that is now on the cards?

I am tempted to help with hacking neo when they get to NeoOffice 2.0

May I recommend http://www.neooffice.org/? It integrates OOo into Mac OS X via Java, and the latest version is the best so far. It's a little slow to load, but that could be my iBook. On the whole, I've been pleased with it. I've used MSOffice, Abiword, Mellel, BBEdit, ZWrite, and a few others editors/word processors (all for text editing, no programming), and NeoOfficeJ is the best I've found so far.

NeoOfficeJ. Very nice, actually using it at the moment. I use both MS Office and NeoOfficeJ as NeoOfficeJ has some features that MS has not implemented well. I'm really hoping they get on the ball somehow with the 2 beta as I'd love to see a true native Open Office for Mac OS X.

Yeah, NeoOfficeJ(ava) is the one I was thinking of. Is this project still live? The homepage shows the last "news" posted 12/21/04 (not that OO.o ever updates their website with regularity either).

I applaude these guys and gals who have stepped up to support OS X native while OO.o has backed away from OS X support (X11 is their solution which - to me - is not a solution for the Apple crowd that has always expected more from their user experience.)

I hope that instead of porting to so many languages (40 the site says) they focus on getting these v2.0 features in the Suite.

Interesting - no mention of OS X. I know the OS X port has now essentially been left to the excellent NeoOffice - I wonder if a beta 2.0 of that is now on the cards?

Cheers,
Ian

You're thinking of NeoOffice -- which plans to support it someday, as I understand it, but it's [sadly] not a priority at this point.

info on http://www.neooffice.org/

The most native that I have seen is NeoOffice. Native look & feel through carbon and java.

neooffice

Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

The DLS was held right across from a gun show (credit to The MacRat for the photo. I'm impressed the guy in the penguin suit at the door didn't go bonkers from the sun, run on over and get a semi and proceed to mow down geeks at will.

<shameless plug>

Of course, for me the highlight was Simon Phipps call for recognition of NeoOffice admist a truly wonderful presentation arguing that open source is a natural evolution of a connected society that will effect a societal transformation, similar to the rise of artisan guilds. But I very well may be just a tad bit biased having been a visual aid... ;)

</shameless plug>

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer for Mac OS X OpenOffice.org and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

The printing problem really isn't related to Apple X11 at all but is rather a problem with Unix application porting in general since there's no good standardized way to do printing for Unix apps. Each large Unix app tends to print things a little differently, usually relying on either Xprint or on other low level tools like lpr to get access to the Unix print queue.

OpenOffice.org/X11 doesn't use Xprint...rather, it generates its own PostScript. This PostScript then has to get converted into PDF which is inserted into the Mac OS X print queue using CUPS. This is the only way to port the printing system as used on OOo for Linux & Solaris. It is fragile for obvious reasons.

If you're having trouble printing with OOo the recommended workarounds are to either use another application to print out that PDF (like you're doing above) or to use NeoOffice/J. Because NeoOffice/J is using native graphics, it provides access to the native print system of Mac OS X as well. NeoJ will give you access to normal Mac OS X print and page setup dialogs along with the additional access to specific printer extensions and the Mac OS X PDF save, Fax, and Preview functionality. That really is the correct solution.

Even if Apple does provide better X11 printing functionality through Xprint or other frameworks, unfortunately OOo/X11 is not able to use them since that's just not how it prints.

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer for Mac OS X OpenOffice.org and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

The printing problem really isn't related to Apple X11 at all but is rather a problem with Unix application porting in general since there's no good standardized way to do printing for Unix apps. Each large Unix app tends to print things a little differently, usually relying on either Xprint or on other low level tools like lpr to get access to the Unix print queue.

OpenOffice.org/X11 doesn't use Xprint...rather, it generates its own PostScript. This PostScript then has to get converted into PDF which is inserted into the Mac OS X print queue using CUPS. This is the only way to port the printing system as used on OOo for Linux & Solaris. It is fragile for obvious reasons.

If you're having trouble printing with OOo the recommended workarounds are to either use another application to print out that PDF (like you're doing above) or to use NeoOffice/J. Because NeoOffice/J is using native graphics, it provides access to the native print system of Mac OS X as well. NeoJ will give you access to normal Mac OS X print and page setup dialogs along with the additional access to specific printer extensions and the Mac OS X PDF save, Fax, and Preview functionality. That really is the correct solution.

Even if Apple does provide better X11 printing functionality through Xprint or other frameworks, unfortunately OOo/X11 is not able to use them since that's just not how it prints.

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer for Mac OS X OpenOffice.org and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

That very well may be an interesting solution for the software restore CDs as well as addressing changes in layout of the CDs or OS versions (e.g. locating X11 on Tiger CDs which will become needed at some point this year). I hadn't thought about that and will check out some sets from computers that shipped with 10.3. I don't have any since I've not yet purchased a mac that had 10.3 preloaded. Thanks for the suggestion!

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer for Mac OS X OpenOffice.org and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

That's actually what the 1.1.2 GM installer does do. When installing on 10.3, if it detects Apple X11 isn't installed it prompts the user for the appropriate CD from the Panther retail set and searches for the package.

Only problem is that the installer is only intelligent enough to work with retail 10.3 CD sets...it doesn't have the ability to go through the software restore CDs that ship with computers since we don't have the CD layouts. Unfortunately, in the time since we've released it that's much more common for users as there are less and less users upgrading machines via retail CDs. The installer still prompts users without CDs to go to the Apple X11 website and has the URL displayed in a dialog.

Next installer I put together I'm going to see if I can make it a bit more helpful or at least be able to redirect users straight to the website to download the .pkg. Apple does have registration forms to fill out prior to download, so the procedure unfortunately can't be automated using a simple curl command.

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer of Mac OS X OpenOffice.org and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

FWIW, the screenshot that appears with that text is actually showing the package descriptions from the Fink project through the FinkCommander GUI and the article text is representative output from a Fink command line. Apple didn't write Fink (and certainly not its package descriptions) nor a bunch of the other software mentioned in the article (e.g. OpenOffice.org, xgalaga).

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

Yes, we could ship a different X11 environment, and this is what we do already to automatically install XFree86 + OroborOSX on 10.2 machines. There are really two problems with 10.3 machines however...

First off, Apple X11 really is nice in that you get your full quartz-wm that allows X11 windows to be minimized into the Dock and used via Exposé. Not many of the other X servers support this type of integration. I don't know myself since I haven't really investigated using too many other X servers on 10.3 systems. But, like other Apple software too, non-technical Mac users tend to want to use an Apple alternative if it exists.

Secondly, both Apple X11 and XFree86 do wind up using the same locations to install themselves: /usr/X11R6, /etc/X11, .xinitrc, and so on. As a result, you can't really install the two different X11 environments side by side as there are differences in some of the libraries (such as Open GL). This makes it difficult to include a different X11 environment in the distribution since there's a strong possibility of potentially horking someone's pre-existing Apple X11 install on the machine or the opposite of the user installing Apple X11 after the other environment and horking it.

The general feedback we got from users is that they really do prefer using Apple X11, so that's why the OOo installer only supports Apple X11 when installing on 10.3. Heck, there are still users who are still using the Apple X11 Public Betas that ran on 10.2! (note, if you do that, search out Beta 2 and not Beta 3...Beta 3 has window positioning bugs that can't be worked around since quartz-wm doesn't really have source shipped for it IIRC. good luck finding it, tho).

ed

If you want OpenOffice on OS X, help make one of the NATIVE ports more popular by using it. NeoOffice/J It's a totally native client that uses Java to render the UI. (Native Java? These are strange days.) Please help keep X11 apps off OS X.
I realize we're stuck with X11 on Unix, but if you're sitting on top of Quartz, might as well use it, no?

Disclaimer: I am a developer of Mac OS X OpenOffice.org and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

If the X11 server was preloaded onto all Apple systems, it would also solve quite a number of distribution problems for OpenOffice.org and other X11 applications. The license for Apple X11 doesn't allow third parties to bundle it and redistribute it. That makes it really frustrating from an installation perspective. Instead of being able to automatically install the X11 server (like we do using XFree86 for 10.2) we have to prompt the user to either go out and find where the X11User.pkg is on their Panther CDs or Software Restore CDs or even go and download it from Apple to install. Our installers can automatically install all of the other 6 applications OOo requires to run, but we just can't get Apple X11 so it kind of puts a dent in the installation experience. I'm sure that other commerical appliactions like MATLAB would like to be able to auto-install X11 as well.

Preloading X11 onto all shipping systems would allow us to not have to worry about users getting confused by the additional steps of the process. Traditionally, Mac installers are very simple and it's rare they require other software to be installed first.

Another solution which would be equally good IMHO is if Apple could come up with some type of distribution clause in their license to allow X11User.pkg to be bundled with installers for other applications. I don't think the problem is the underlying XFree86 based stuff, but rather quartz-wm and maybe other components. Last I knew quartz-wm wasn't open sourced, only the XFree86 derived stuff under the MIT license.

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer for Mac OS X OpenOffice.org and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

Well, as it turns out my update to the timeline was grossly misquoted in a couple of places. The update was really just to put things in perspective as to what was really going on in the various projects as well as to reinforce the importance of the X11 work. It was never intended to "cancel" anything since, well, there wasn't really anything to cancel. The update was just stating how things really are within the project.

Today's article on eWeek has some much better reporting on the progress towards 2.0 X11 and other issues that had been raised by my update. I highly recommend giving it a read as it's a bit more informative then the old /. comments in that thread.

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer for Mac OS X OpenOffice.org and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

I happily noticed this myself earlier on in the week and was impressed to find the OpenOffice.org related section. Unfortunately there are some inaccuracies in the section, but I couldn't find any address to which corrections should be submitted.

Perhaps the most major omission is that the OpenOffice.org Mac OS X (X11) installer is not limited to 10.3 only. In fact, it supports both 10.2 and 10.3. For 10.2 users it also will automatically install XFree86 and a window manager if the system does not have XFree86 on it. Since Apple X11 is not redistributable under its license, 10.3 users are required ot manually install Apple X11. Ironically, that makes installation on 10.3 more inconvenient then 10.2!

On the trinity forums Smokey also noticed the file format "incompatibility" line in the article. It isn't actually true since OpenOffice.org is 100% compatible with StarOffice which, last I checked, is a commercial office suite even if it doesn't run on Mac OS X :)

Even with the little foibles, it's great to see support from Apple for X11 applications in general as well as a basic introduction that can help open up the entire world of X11 OSS applications for users, not just OpenOffice.org.

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer for Mac OS X OpenOffice.org and a founder of the NeoOffice project.

I happily noticed this myself earlier on in the week and was impressed to find the OpenOffice.org related section. Unfortunately there are some inaccuracies in the section, but I couldn't find any address to which corrections should be submitted.

Perhaps the most major omission is that the OpenOffice.org Mac OS X (X11) installer is not limited to 10.3 only. In fact, it supports both 10.2 and 10.3. For 10.2 users it also will automatically install XFree86 and a window manager if the system does not have XFree86 on it. Since Apple X11 is not redistributable under its license, 10.3 users are required ot manually install Apple X11. Ironically, that makes installation on 10.3 more inconvenient then 10.2!

On the trinity forums Smokey also noticed the file format "incompatibility" line in the article. It isn't actually true since OpenOffice.org is 100% compatible with StarOffice which, last I checked, is a commercial office suite even if it doesn't run on Mac OS X :)

Even with the little foibles, it's great to see support from Apple for X11 applications in general as well as a basic introduction that can help open up the entire world of X11 OSS applications for users, not just OpenOffice.org.

ed

To those who want an aquafied OpenOffice, please check out NeoOffice. They are working to make OpenOffice more MacOS native. Currently, they have removed the need for X11, put in Aquafied menus, and native printer and font support. Sure, its not perfect yet, but its getting there.

Try NeoOffice/J. You can use it right now.

Check out NeoOffice. They seem to be doing just fine. Help/funds from Apple would certainly not hurt, but I'd say the "native-looking" OS X oo.o version is here to stay.

First of all, this is NOT related to Apple announcing iWork. At all. No, there's no conspiracy.

Second, this is OLD news. Anyone who's even remotely followed OpenOffice.org Mac OS X porting work knew any potential Aqua port was on the back burner. Way on the back burner. With the stove unplugged.

Third, the X11 port will ALWAYS continue to exist.

Fourth, there is a Mac OS X graphical port, albeit via Java, in the form of NeoOffice (1, 2). This project has come a LONG way since its relatively recent inception, and is an impressive work melding OpenOffice with the Mac OS X look and feel. There's more work to be done, but the latest 1.1 development release is impressive.

Fifth, there are gargantuan technical hurdles to maintaining a full Aqua port of OpenOffice without greater engineering support (perhaps from the likes of Sun, who has shown zero interest in maintaining OpenOffice for Mac OS X, much less maintaining a commercial StarOffice for Mac OS X). These are all detailed here, incidentally by one of NeoOffice's chief representatives.

So calm down. This isn't an Apple conspiracy, or the end of OpenOffice for Mac OS X. OpenOffice will continue, in X11 form AND in the likes of things such as NeoOffice. If anyone is to blame for the official OpenOffice.org Aqua port going by the wayside, frankly, it's a lot closer to Sun than anyone else.

It's disappointing news, but at least there's still the NeoOffice project. Its was originally intended to be a place for experimenting with the issues involved in a native OS X port, but if the office OOo project won't be doing it hopefully NeoOffice will get more support as the primary (er, only) Aqua version.

Disclaimer: I'm a developer of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project

I've seen this mentioned in a number of places now. I just watched the QuickTime feed of the keynote for the iWork section (starts at about 1hr 3 mins) and heard no mention of spreadsheets or "Cell" in that section. It goes straight from pages to the Mac mini. Did I just miss it?

Also of note: while it appears iLife is going to continue to be bundled with new Macs, it is unclear if iWork is going to be bundled at all. I don't think Keynote is presently bundled with any configs, but they just may not have yet updated the Apple store. It would truly honk for low-end Macs if the death of AppleWorks meant that users had to pay for software. Kinda funny since, after all, they include GraphicConverter but don't bother to preload a FOSS office suite ;)

ed

1. Make a 2 slide presentation in Keynote.
2. Use a "Cube" transition effect.
3. Save and export to PowerPoint
4. Open in PowerPoint for presentation. Notice how PowerPoint doesn't do the spinning Cube transition even though theoretically you saved it in the file.

Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project

No, the new iWork is definitely not a replacement for the old AppleWorks/ClarisWorks suite. AppleWorks really did try to do a "kitchen sink" approach as well as give you the flexibilty to embed one type of document in another. I really suspect their decision to focus on word processing is very good from a market driven perspective.

Most people tend to want to be able to write simple letters on their computer. TextEdit could do this, of course, and for simple tasks I do know people who use it. The next class of users is advanced home and entry-level business personnel. Think of the kind of people that want to make a flyer advertising a store event or the people making a newsletter for their little league. These are the exact target audience for Pages.

Pages comes with 40 templates that are customizable in the sense you can add in your own graphics easily to creat new templates (I think...). This makes it easy to create newsletters, corporate letterhead, and the like. The transparency allows for easy watermarking of documents.

Pages will also probably be sufficient for opening most Word documents generated by these similar types of users, home or small business users who have Word pre-installed on their Windows box and use the DOC format to e-mail their newsletters as attachments. In that respect it's great to have a similar pre-installed option available on the Mac that can support that market segment.

Whether they will target spreadsheets and database connectivity in the future is still up for speculation. After all, even Claris killed its own standalone spreadsheet application (Resolve) by selling it off to C&G. For users who want an integrated suite full featured spreadsheets, charting, macros, database connectivity and the like, there's only a few remainingplayers in the Mac market: Microsoft Office, NeoOffice/J (OpenOffice.org, but without the X11), ThinkFree, and Mariner. I don't think Apple's about to compete with Microsoft Office anytime soon as they use Office to help sell the platform. The death of AppleWorks now leaves us open source guys as one of the remaining strongest office suite competitors on the platform.

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project

No, the new iWork is definitely not a replacement for the old AppleWorks/ClarisWorks suite. AppleWorks really did try to do a "kitchen sink" approach as well as give you the flexibilty to embed one type of document in another. I really suspect their decision to focus on word processing is very good from a market driven perspective.

Most people tend to want to be able to write simple letters on their computer. TextEdit could do this, of course, and for simple tasks I do know people who use it. The next class of users is advanced home and entry-level business personnel. Think of the kind of people that want to make a flyer advertising a store event or the people making a newsletter for their little league. These are the exact target audience for Pages.

Pages comes with 40 templates that are customizable in the sense you can add in your own graphics easily to creat new templates (I think...). This makes it easy to create newsletters, corporate letterhead, and the like. The transparency allows for easy watermarking of documents.

Pages will also probably be sufficient for opening most Word documents generated by these similar types of users, home or small business users who have Word pre-installed on their Windows box and use the DOC format to e-mail their newsletters as attachments. In that respect it's great to have a similar pre-installed option available on the Mac that can support that market segment.

Whether they will target spreadsheets and database connectivity in the future is still up for speculation. After all, even Claris killed its own standalone spreadsheet application (Resolve) by selling it off to C&G. For users who want an integrated suite full featured spreadsheets, charting, macros, database connectivity and the like, there's only a few remainingplayers in the Mac market: Microsoft Office, NeoOffice/J (OpenOffice.org, but without the X11), ThinkFree, and Mariner. I don't think Apple's about to compete with Microsoft Office anytime soon as they use Office to help sell the platform. The death of AppleWorks now leaves us open source guys as one of the remaining strongest office suite competitors on the platform.

ed

Disclaimer: I am a developer of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X and a founder of the NeoOffice project

If Keynote is any indicator, they will most likely not support OpenOffice.org or OASIS formats. There is also no OASIS or XML option in the screenshots of their filter sheet. While it's unclear from the limited info on the website, Pages may save either in RTF or in its own internal format. If it's internal, Apple most likely will open up this file format over time.

When Keynote first came out its file format was "secret" unless you wanted to reverse engineer the XML. A month or two after the software came out they did publish the Keynote schema for their documents. So they are using an open file format for Keynote, even if Keynote is the only application that uses it.

I spec'd a Keynote filter for OOo/NeoOffice a long time ago but no one has taken up the task of implementing or revising that specification. Being able to import Keynote formatted documents just isn't really a commonly requested feature (definitely much less so then Aqua user interface) so I haven't spent my own time on it.

ed