Porting OpenOffice To OSX

jeffy124 writes "ZDnet has an interesting article on how OpenOffice, Sun's Open-Source version of StarOffice, needs some serious help in being ported to the Macintosh OS-X. With Microsoft about to release Office 2001 for OS-X and demo it at next week's MacWorld Expo, support in getting a Mac OS-X port out for OpenOffice is critical to keeping a Microsoft dominance of yet another operating system's office suite to a minimum. The project is need of someone to step up to the plate as a project lead."

Comments

Re:no thanks

[PCM2]

Please keep this to yourselves. MacOS does not need any programs with inconsistent interfaces that don't obey the user interface guidelines.

Yeah, no kidding. Whoever is out there making software like QuickTime 4/5, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Sherlock, iMovie, iTunes, and iDVD -- they're the type that's screwing up the Mac platform for everybody.
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What about Abiword?

[VValdo]

Right now there's a one-man effort at Abiword to port this cross-platform, GPL'd word processor to OS X. I know that Hubert Figuiere would appreciate any contribution to the project.

To read the latest discussion on Abiword development, check out this page.

I wonder how many people have tried MacGIMP because Adobe's taking so long to release Photoshop for OS X? Judging from some of the chat boards, I'm guessing a lot.

W
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Issues with OpenOffice.

[GiMP]

First, before anyone asks.. OpenOffice is licensed under the following licenses.
GNU General Public License (GPL)
GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)
Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL)
further information: http://www.openoffice.org/license.html

The problem I find with contributing to OpenOffice is that they will not accept code submissions over 10 lines of code if one has not assigned copyright to Sun. This can not be done electronically, only by snail mail or fax.

I was considering helping but I'd like to keep my copyright. Also, I'd have to sell out the bucks for the upgrade to OSX :)

BTW, to those who asked.. openoffice just opens a large window and draws its own widgets inside of it, so the platform issue of toolkits/apis is at a minimum.

Too little WAY too late.

[ShieldWolf]

MS Office X will be available sometime i the forth quarter, OpenOffice is well over a year away from even having a rudimentary presense on OS X. This project should have started two years ago if it wanted any hope of acheiving the stated goals (have an open solution on OS X at the same time Office X is released). Furthermore OpenOffice is being pulled in ten directions at once - gnome/gtk+ - windows - XUL. Pulling in one more (quartx) won't help matters much. Microsoft _will_ achieve dominance on OS X, it is a certainty, the question is whether others will be able to crawl up or pull it down. That question is open, but a jihad to beat them to the punch is an obvious distaster.

-Shieldwolf

It's not about dominance

[scotpurl]

It's not about dominating one market. It's about options being available, AND people actually making use of the options.

I'm sure I could write a mission critical application using the Atari 2600, thereby making sure that someone doesn't "dominate" the market. Whether or not anyone will actually use it.....

Rushing a port of this thing out is exactly the wrong thing to do. Having a buggy piece of software available will delight few, and alienate most. You want to be best to market, not first to market.

Enough With The Monopoly

[Utterer]

I am a Mac user and I *gasp* use Microsoft products. I just can't stand the constant bashing of MS by Mac users. Don't get me wrong, MS has messed up on the Mac before with just about everything before Office 98, but that was 3 years ago, time to move on.

I use Internet Explorer, Outlook Express and Office 98 daily with no problems at all. Compare this to bloat/shovelware Netscape and their inability to release a stable browser in years that requires less than 30 megs of RAM.

I will continue to use MS office products as well over some unstable open source port that will never have the dedicated update support that a money making company can provide.

There's a lot of work to be done

[tb3]

Sun has released the project to the community (which I intrepret as dis-owning it) with a lot left unfinished. 42 of 89 modules don't compile, there is no UNICODE support, no printer support, no sound support , no drag-and-drop support, and the Windowing code is X-11.

They're recommending using C++ and C to call the OS X Windowing APIs, which doesn't sound like a good idea, since the GUI could be built much quicker with Objective-C and AppBuilder.

It almost seems that building a MacOffice from scratch would be easier than this port, but I'm no expert in porting projects.

"What are we going to do tonight, Bill?"

Sucking even more is not the solution

[sjonke]

Trying to transparently support all Microsoft Office features and file formats is doomed to failure. It's not that Microsoft Office is better or not, it's that they are the standard and when Microsoft adds a new feature (and they always do, whether or not it is actually a good thing) all the software trying to be 100% compatible is instantly behind the curve. You can never do better than remain behind. I.e suck even more. Sucking even more is not the path to success last I checked.

The only way to go is to create an open file format for documents and then get enough companies/groups on as many OSs as possible to create much better applications than what Microsoft so pathetically offers. This does not mean, as Microsoft believes, piling on the features whether or not they are actually a good thing nor whether or not they are implemented well. It means doing the basics the best and innovating intelligently. We need to put them behind the curve, and in an open source, widely available, very easy to use way. That and perform a whole heck of a lot of human sacrifices.

Microsoft dominates without justification, as always, but I believe it is possible to topple them. Everyone gave up on being better a long time ago and instead tried to emulate. Now it's time to bring back real advances.