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Don't forget that OpenOffice.org itself is huge, and it is a C++ application. It's actually a beautiful example of how horridly slow C++ can get, both running and compiling. NeoOffice/J is just OpenOffice.org with some extensions.

I did a line count analysis a while back in response to some FUD spreading, but it's probably still roughly accurate. On a source code level, less then 2% of NeoOffice/J is actually Java. 98% of the code is straight from OpenOffice.org. And not all of the NeoOffice/J code is in Java, so the actual figure is probably less then that.

On a binary level, the size of the combined JAR files for NeoOffice/J and OpenOffice.org are only 3.7 MB of the application's 317 MB footprint. And those JAR files include the support OOo has for Java applets, DocBook filters, and the like. The "Java" magic NeoOffice/J adds to OpenOffice.org is essentially contained in a single file "vcl.jar", which is 70k. I'm sure someone can do those percentages themselves as I left my RPN calculator at home ;)

ed

Indeed you can except [2, v] it, if you'd use Openoffice.org.</pedant>

One thing that amuses me is sites that include the MD5 checksum on the download page. Yes, because if someone got in and changed the tarball, they sure wouldn't even bother updating that MD5 string at the same time! ;)

One such site is TheOpenCD's download page. See any md5sums for their iso's on anything but the mirrors themself? While projects like OpenOffice gets things done right.

One thing that amuses me is sites that include the MD5 checksum on the download page. Yes, because if someone got in and changed the tarball, they sure wouldn't even bother updating that MD5 string at the same time! ;)

One such site is TheOpenCD's download page. See any md5sums for their iso's on anything but the mirrors themself? While projects like OpenOffice gets things done right.

That's what OpenOffice.org uses. The article is less about trusting Firefox, and more about trusting every mirror to provide an unhacked copy of Firefox. How do we know the mirror wasn't broken into and the mirrored copy tampered with? It's a valid point.

Read further along for great comments like the disinformation in this which omits our 2.0 plans. There's other ones like this where the project is described as "harmful and destractive" to OpenOffice.org. And this was all in response to a user just saying he enjoyed NeoJ.

If responses like those are not politics and scare tactics, I don't know what is.

(and yes, we do have patches that we've relicensed and submitted that do not get committed back into OOo, such as UTF8 filename support).

ed

Read further along for great comments like the disinformation in this which omits our 2.0 plans. There's other ones like this where the project is described as "harmful and destractive" to OpenOffice.org. And this was all in response to a user just saying he enjoyed NeoJ.

If responses like those are not politics and scare tactics, I don't know what is.

(and yes, we do have patches that we've relicensed and submitted that do not get committed back into OOo, such as UTF8 filename support).

ed

It's included already:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1 1823



(Man, am I ever missing out on Karma by moderating today!)

Disclaimer: I am one of the community members of the Mac OS X OOo "team" and founder of the NeoOffice project

It will probably be a while before you can even see X11 support for 2.0. Eric just got the 2.0 X11 based code to *compile* for the first time yesterday and it won't even run as setup crashes.

Part of the problem is that OpenOffice.org really isn't a "team"...it's primarily Sun Microsystems. Sun has four priorities: Linux x86, Windows, Solaris, and Solaris x86. Sun pays no one to work on Mac OS X support. Since it isn't one of their priorities, they frequently code without keeping the special needs of Mac OS X in mind, doing stupid things like hard-coding shared library extensions to only be ".dll" or ".so", neither of which are used by Mac OS X. They can't claim ignorance since folks have been trying to write Mac OS X code for over three years now, but yet they still don't even keep simple compatibility needs like that in mind.

Getting true native support for OOo without X11 on Mac OS X is most likely not going to happen within the OpenOffice.org project. All of our native work has been going on in the NeoOffice/J project. It uses a mixture of Carbon and Java to run using ATSUI for native fonts and Quartz for native drawing and printing. We also use full GPL licensing so we can incorporate the good work of contributors who can't get their translations and patches into OOo due to licensing and politics.

The process of giving it Aqua widgets has already begun. The latest 1.1 Alpha patches use native Mac OS X menubars. Aquafication is slow, though, because our first priority is to make it functional first, then make it pretty second. It doesn't matter if it looks pretty if it crashes after 5 minutes!

For what it's worth, it's already taken over two years just to get NeoOffice/J to the point where the native Mac OS X support is functional. By functional I mean that it can copy and paste both formatted text and images with other Mac OS X applications, has correct fonts and font layouts, functions with most all of the Mac OS X printer drivers, launches properly from the finder, works with the scrollwheel on those funky mice some Mac users have, has an integrated WordPerfect filter, uses the Apple Installer, has automatic upgrade notification, automatically translates the interface based upon your preferred language in the System Preferences language pane, etc.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 X11 has no native non-X11 support in it, much less the level of integration with Mac that we've achieved with NeoOffice/J. It's taken two years of some really dedicated engineers (namely, Patrick) to get NeoJ up to that stage. Replicating all of that work within OOo will probably take nearly that long and perhaps longer if the experts aren't there to help.

NeoOffice/J is in fact OpenOffice.org 1.1.2, and is 97% identical on a source code level. It's even got bug fixes that aren't in the OOo GM (such as functional JDBC support). This week we're going to be taking NeoOffice/J to 1.1 Beta after all known crashing and deadlocks have been fixed. And...

NeoOffice/J 1.1 Beta will be based off of OpenOffice.org 1.1.3, which isn't even available for Mac OS X X11!

Just keep up to date on the latest Mac OS X porting news on trinity instead of the infrequently updated OOo pages. RSS feeds are available too.

And don't let all of the politics and scare tactics of the OpenOffice.org denziens scare you either. NeoOffice really is the 'official' place for Mac OS X native OpenOffice.org and is where all of us core developers work (Patrick, Dan, and Ed).

ed

Native System Theme Integration (Native Widget Rendering)

To enhance integration of OpenOffice.org with the underlying operating system, all user interface elements (such as buttons and scrollbars) will have the same look as those used in most other "native" applications for that platform. OpenOffice.org will react on-the-fly to changes of the desktop theme, so that when the user changes the desktop colors or theme, OpenOffice.org will adjust its own appearance to match.

It also states that this is available in Gnome 2.4 and above, KDE 3.2 and above and WinXP so it would appear to be in. On other platforms, it should just look the same as before.

info from this page

Here's your answer: http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/

well if you use debs then there's this handy guide to converting the rpms to debs...

Here's how it used to look... ;-)
---
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday December 20, @05:16PM
from the do-you-see-what-I-see dept.
gmuslera writes "A preview release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 was released, which has new features like better MS-Office compatibility, an Access-like program and a more. The Register has a good review of it with screenshots and how it performs. It's work in progress, maybe not recomended for production sites, but it is a good sample of what is coming."

Here's how it used to look... ;-)
---
Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday December 20, @05:16PM
from the do-you-see-what-I-see dept.
gmuslera writes "A preview release of OpenOffice.org 2.0 was released, which has new features like better MS-Office compatibility, an Access-like program and a more. The Register has a good review of it with screenshots and how it performs. It's work in progress, maybe not recomended for production sites, but it is a good sample of what is coming."

No, look at the page title, it's "marketing:". I think that makes the whole thing cheap. ;)

OpenOffice.org is still missing a replacement for Microsoft Access, a graphical database design program. Novice or casual users do not want to learn PHP.

Look at the "Database User Tools" or the "OpenOffice.org 1.0, ODBC, and MySQL 'How-to'" for an overview of how it works. This is much improved in OOo 2.x, which will be out early next year. Snapshots of OOo 2.0 are available for download and testing.

OpenOffice.org is still missing a replacement for Microsoft Access, a graphical database design program. Novice or casual users do not want to learn PHP.

Look at the "Database User Tools" or the "OpenOffice.org 1.0, ODBC, and MySQL 'How-to'" for an overview of how it works. This is much improved in OOo 2.x, which will be out early next year. Snapshots of OOo 2.0 are available for download and testing.

OpenOffice.org is still missing a replacement for Microsoft Access, a graphical database design program. Novice or casual users do not want to learn PHP.

Look at the "Database User Tools" or the "OpenOffice.org 1.0, ODBC, and MySQL 'How-to'" for an overview of how it works. This is much improved in OOo 2.x, which will be out early next year. Snapshots of OOo 2.0 are available for download and testing.

Also, we have to admit that some of the critical software for Linux isn't as good as the software for Windows. Last night I discovered that KOffice's KSpread program won't let me make a non-contiguous selection. KWord doesn't feature paragraph grouping or widow and orphan control. I *want* to use the free software programs, but I find myself using Crossover Office to run MS Office because MS Office works. It's expensive, but it does the job.

I agree... Bittorrent is a perfect method to distribute Free Software, especially programs as large as the Gimp.

Since a huge chunk of bandwidth is used by downloading, using Bittorrent could really reduce the costs of hosting the Software.

OpenOffice is available via Bittorrent.
Most Linux distros are available via Bittorrent.

If I had the time I would start up "legittorrents.org" or something, but then you'd need to spend alot of time policing-- make sure that people aren't using your tracker/index to distribute non-legit files, adding software as it became available, etc.

Because as we all know, it's virtually impossible to run Linux software on any other systems.

Here's a guy that had such a need and built a teleprompter with easy-to-find materials, a camcorder and a laptop.

Yeah, it's called PowerPoint . Or what I like to call Impress.

A KDE Part which allows OpenOffice.org to be run in a Konqueror window.

There's SVG support. It's just not particularly good.

http://graphics.openoffice.org/svg/svg.htm

However someone is working on it, and there's enough documentation out there, you can too.

Oh really?

The one thing I think needs much much more attention is the OS X (Cocoa/native interface) port for OOo2.

It is apparently in a dire state at the moment (Ooo Mac Homepage), I have some Cocoa experience but am only a student so I lack enough experience to help at the moment, but I find it very depressing to hear again and again how the native Mac port is slowing down, or is *way* behind the X11 port.

If anyone wants to help, I know they need you.

Or you could just get a copy of OpenOffice and have the ability to track your stats AND open other Excel files as well. Not to mention Word and Powerpoint.

Anyhow, there is the solution the google link above. "Ask Slashdot" to the rescue, clicking on google for you 24/7!

It looks like Open Office is targeting MS Access in their next release.

I have been testing the 1.9.mXX releases (currently preparing for their first beta release) for a few weeks now, and most issues have been minor formatting changes, and a couple crashes here and there -- all of which have been reported. The one major issue I have come across is the problem where graphics are lost after saving changes to a document Issue 36459 where the fix has already been checked into 1.9.m64.

The pre-beta milestones have improved import/export filters, and many new features most people will like. It needs people to stomp on it in their worst way (ie, regular usage :). Does Open Office 1.9.mXX render a document differently than your other office suite (be it Word, Wordperfect, Works or etc)? Do your part:

o Create a seperate file with only the portion that changed from the other suite.
o Create a PDF of the document from the other suite.
o Create a PDF of the document from the latest development snapshot of OpenOffice (using the same pdf program if possible -- I use the Open Source PDFCreator which is a ghostscript front end).
o Zip the files (I use the Open Source 7-zip program)
o Report the issue (and create an account if you don't have one) with your best description of the problem with a step by step list of what actions need to be performed to reproduce the problem.
o Attach the zip file of the three files you created before.

The development code needs more people who are able to write bug reports -- that means don't install it on grandma's computer. If you think "it doesn't work" is a good bug report then please move to the next message, thanks.

It looks like Open Office is targeting MS Access in their next release.

I have been testing the 1.9.mXX releases (currently preparing for their first beta release) for a few weeks now, and most issues have been minor formatting changes, and a couple crashes here and there -- all of which have been reported. The one major issue I have come across is the problem where graphics are lost after saving changes to a document Issue 36459 where the fix has already been checked into 1.9.m64.

The pre-beta milestones have improved import/export filters, and many new features most people will like. It needs people to stomp on it in their worst way (ie, regular usage :). Does Open Office 1.9.mXX render a document differently than your other office suite (be it Word, Wordperfect, Works or etc)? Do your part:

o Create a seperate file with only the portion that changed from the other suite.
o Create a PDF of the document from the other suite.
o Create a PDF of the document from the latest development snapshot of OpenOffice (using the same pdf program if possible -- I use the Open Source PDFCreator which is a ghostscript front end).
o Zip the files (I use the Open Source 7-zip program)
o Report the issue (and create an account if you don't have one) with your best description of the problem with a step by step list of what actions need to be performed to reproduce the problem.
o Attach the zip file of the three files you created before.

The development code needs more people who are able to write bug reports -- that means don't install it on grandma's computer. If you think "it doesn't work" is a good bug report then please move to the next message, thanks.

It looks like Open Office is targeting MS Access in their next release.

I have been testing the 1.9.mXX releases (currently preparing for their first beta release) for a few weeks now, and most issues have been minor formatting changes, and a couple crashes here and there -- all of which have been reported. The one major issue I have come across is the problem where graphics are lost after saving changes to a document Issue 36459 where the fix has already been checked into 1.9.m64.

The pre-beta milestones have improved import/export filters, and many new features most people will like. It needs people to stomp on it in their worst way (ie, regular usage :). Does Open Office 1.9.mXX render a document differently than your other office suite (be it Word, Wordperfect, Works or etc)? Do your part:

o Create a seperate file with only the portion that changed from the other suite.
o Create a PDF of the document from the other suite.
o Create a PDF of the document from the latest development snapshot of OpenOffice (using the same pdf program if possible -- I use the Open Source PDFCreator which is a ghostscript front end).
o Zip the files (I use the Open Source 7-zip program)
o Report the issue (and create an account if you don't have one) with your best description of the problem with a step by step list of what actions need to be performed to reproduce the problem.
o Attach the zip file of the three files you created before.

The development code needs more people who are able to write bug reports -- that means don't install it on grandma's computer. If you think "it doesn't work" is a good bug report then please move to the next message, thanks.

• Portable Firefox - Web browser
• Portable Thunderbird - Email client
• Portable Sunbird - Calendar application
• Portable NVU - HTML Editor

• OpenOffice (PDF) - Office Suite
• Miranda IM - Instant messaging
• FileZilla - FTP

Or you can steal one from other open source projects.
OpenOffice.org license permits just do that, or it doesn't.

Or you can steal one from other open source projects.
OpenOffice.org license permits just do that, or it doesn't.

Or you can steal one from other open source projects.
OpenOffice.org license permits just do that, or it doesn't.

Or you can steal one from other open source projects.
OpenOffice.org license permits just do that, or it doesn't.

Or you can steal one from other open source projects.
OpenOffice.org license permits just do that, or it doesn't.

Or you can steal one from other open source projects.
OpenOffice.org license permits just do that, or it doesn't.

Or you can steal one from other open source projects.
OpenOffice.org license permits just do that, or it doesn't.

Who'd use IE?

The demand is out there. Whenever I show or tell about the options avaiable, the non-tech people ask afterwards why haven't they received this information earlier.

Perhaps one reason for the decision by the Finnish agencies to advise against MSIE and for Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, etc. is to compensate for harm done from the computer "security" campaign earlier this year, which amounted to nothing more than a state funded 8-page, 4-color MS ad delivered to every home, apartment or dorm in the country. Telling die hard Chairman Bill fans to update and patch is one thing, but neglecting to even name other options appears to fall somewhere between irresponsible/incompetent and graft.

Maybe this will lead to discussion of other useful tools and operating systems. Obviously, Mozilla, Firefox and Opera are drop in replacements. Likewise, MS-Outlook has a worse track record than MSIE and should be shunned in favor of Eudora, Mozilla, Thunderbird, etc. Home users that just want a computers that works should look at OS X, though I bet there would be a good cottage industry in upgrading old x86 machines to a Linux or BSD distro.

There are also issues like file incompatibility, technological obsolesence, and platform lock-in that those and options like OOo avoid.

Native system theme integration will be available for Gnome (version 2.4 or higher), Microsoft Windows (including XP and future versions), and KDE (version 3.2 and higher) desktop environments. On Windows XP the "Windows XP Style" must be chosen under Settings->Control Panel->Display->Appearance to achieve the correct look.

Theme integration will be the default for desktop environments that support it (listed above). Systems that do not support it (e.g., Windows 98/ME/2000, CDE) will see no visual change in OpenOffice.org. On supported systems OpenOffice.org will always adopt the theme of the system and cannot choose not to do so.

The OOo 2.0 beta definiately improves on native integration. Here's a shot of a recent beta version: http://www.cs.montana.edu/~ryanh/openoffice2.0beta .png The same old ugly icons, but those will probably be easier to fix. Also, the list of targeted features for OOo 2.0. http://marketing.openoffice.org/2.0/featureguide.h tml

It's going to be a while before we see a true OS X version of OOo.

For example this document.

OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 with KDE integration is now available for download. It also features a lot of other improvements over the stock OOo (including the GNOME integration bits; but do not be afraid, it does not link against Gtk+ in KDE, and vice versa), because it is built from the ooo-build codebase.

Download: Installation set for Linux i386 (~80MB).

Features:

• The current stable version of OpenOffice.org with many ooo-build patches and improvements
• KDE Native Widget Framework
• KDE (Crystal) icons
• KDE file dialog (Open, Save As)
• KDE splash screen by Dariusz Arciszewski
• Gtk+ NWF and file dialog when executed in Gnome

Known problems:

• You need libstartup-notification installed, otherwise it fails to run with "no suitable windowing system found, exiting."
• The KDE file dialog seems to hang OOo on Fedora Core 3 when it has Preview on (F11 in the dialog), but most probably it is a Fedora bug (treats unrecognized file types as sound).
• The new systems that build their packages from ooo-build (e.g. SUSE 9.2) do not need this package; check whether you have the KDE file dialog in your OOo before installing.

The project's homepage http://kde.openoffice.org is a bit outdated at the moment, but the work still continues. The main concern is OOo 2.0 now, see the ooo-build ChangeLog. Help of an artist is needed for OOo 2.0: It contains a lot of new icons, the default ones are not acceptable for modern KDE desktop. Please drop me a mail if you are able (and willing) to draw some of them. :-)

OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 with KDE integration is now available for download. It also features a lot of other improvements over the stock OOo (including the GNOME integration bits; but do not be afraid, it does not link against Gtk+ in KDE, and vice versa), because it is built from the ooo-build codebase.

Download: Installation set for Linux i386 (~80MB).

Features:

• The current stable version of OpenOffice.org with many ooo-build patches and improvements
• KDE Native Widget Framework
• KDE (Crystal) icons
• KDE file dialog (Open, Save As)
• KDE splash screen by Dariusz Arciszewski
• Gtk+ NWF and file dialog when executed in Gnome

Known problems:

• You need libstartup-notification installed, otherwise it fails to run with "no suitable windowing system found, exiting."
• The KDE file dialog seems to hang OOo on Fedora Core 3 when it has Preview on (F11 in the dialog), but most probably it is a Fedora bug (treats unrecognized file types as sound).
• The new systems that build their packages from ooo-build (e.g. SUSE 9.2) do not need this package; check whether you have the KDE file dialog in your OOo before installing.

The project's homepage http://kde.openoffice.org is a bit outdated at the moment, but the work still continues. The main concern is OOo 2.0 now, see the ooo-build ChangeLog. Help of an artist is needed for OOo 2.0: It contains a lot of new icons, the default ones are not acceptable for modern KDE desktop. Please drop me a mail if you are able (and willing) to draw some of them. :-)

OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 with KDE integration is now available for download. It also features a lot of other improvements over the stock OOo (including the GNOME integration bits; but do not be afraid, it does not link against Gtk+ in KDE, and vice versa), because it is built from the ooo-build codebase.

Download: Installation set for Linux i386 (~80MB).

Features:

• The current stable version of OpenOffice.org with many ooo-build patches and improvements
• KDE Native Widget Framework
• KDE (Crystal) icons
• KDE file dialog (Open, Save As)
• KDE splash screen by Dariusz Arciszewski
• Gtk+ NWF and file dialog when executed in Gnome

Known problems:

• You need libstartup-notification installed, otherwise it fails to run with "no suitable windowing system found, exiting."
• The KDE file dialog seems to hang OOo on Fedora Core 3 when it has Preview on (F11 in the dialog), but most probably it is a Fedora bug (treats unrecognized file types as sound).
• The new systems that build their packages from ooo-build (e.g. SUSE 9.2) do not need this package; check whether you have the KDE file dialog in your OOo before installing.

The project's homepage http://kde.openoffice.org is a bit outdated at the moment, but the work still continues. The main concern is OOo 2.0 now, see the ooo-build ChangeLog. Help of an artist is needed for OOo 2.0: It contains a lot of new icons, the default ones are not acceptable for modern KDE desktop. Please drop me a mail if you are able (and willing) to draw some of them. :-)

You have two choices at the moment - OpenOffice.org for X Windows, the official port, but development is very slow, and recent version(s) do not compile... or, NeoOffice/J, a port that runs in Java, with the OpenOffice toolkit although this is being worked on to have a native Aqua interface.

In other words, be patient, (or in true OSS-style) join either or both project and start helping ;)

I use NeoOffice/J on my mac - its a little slow, but i prefer it to running X just to use an office app

You say that ... We need you to DONATE MONEY (paypal button on openoffice.org)
One way of getting people to donate money may be to change the contribute page. At the moment it says "We strongly prefer that people become contributors. In most cases, being a contributor will go much further than a monetary donation. However, for those who cannot offer time, we would gladly accept a monetary donation to the project."

In the past, I've been put off of donating because of this message.

The trademark for "OpenOffice" belongs to someone else.