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MS Office for OSX? Why not for Unix as Well?
technode asks: "Apple
has released OSX, which appears to be an amalgam of NetBSD, and
NexTStep, and other stuff. There is, or will be, undoubtedly, a
'native mode' office suite for OSX. If there is an Office suite for
OSX, then why not for other Unixes? To do it once requires solving
the basic problem of mapping Office onto the Unix/X-windows API. Once
you have that piece, it seems like the only thing preventing a Linux
MS Office Suite is MS desire to preserve their OS market share. Technically,
this begins to seem a little bit like using one's market share in the
applications business to protect one's market share in the OS
business, which would, on the face of it, seem to be an anti-trust
no-no. What gives?" Most people don't seem to understand that
"native-mode" OSX isn't necessarily Unix compatible. Macs have had their own GUI toolbox for a long time, and I would assume that if
Office does show for OSX, that it would be an easy port to
other Unicies. This doesn't even go into the horrendous track record
with regards to security that Microsoft has garnered, especially
over the past few years. Does Unix really need Office at this
point? Update: 12/29 1pm EDT by C :The wording above is incorrect. To clarify: an OS X
version of Office would not be an easy port to Unix. Sorry for the miswording, there.
mac OSX is based on nextstep and freebsd, and it's not a question of if Microsoft will port Office to osx, because they already have, it's been out for months. I dont really understand this agrument, obviously MS could make a version of Office for linux, but i dont think the osx port would make that any easyer, the gui of mac osx is a lot different from X11.
Its about the document format. Microsoft controls the future of what is called .doc file and what isn't. Same with .xls spreadsheets. Any desktop will need robust interaction and access to the future of those file formats.
The weak link in Microsoft accomplishing an Office on Linux or Free/Net/OpenBSD, unfortunately, is XFree86. Apple gets around this with Aqua/Quartz and video-card integration (nVidia and ATI).
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
- Bloat. MS Office defies the basic principles of UNIX. It will
probably need to run as root and make our systems unstable. Do we need
this?
- No freedom. This is a step in the wrong direction for those of us who
prefer to use 'cvs update' instead of service packs to update our systems.
- Monopoly leveraging. Microsoft will undoubtedly engineer their
.Net
"features" into new versions of Office. Don't be surprised if you, as a
UNIX user, will need a Passport account just to run Word.
- Monopoly extension. Why would anyone work on improving Koffice,
StarOffice, or LaTeX if MS Office exists on the UNIX platform? The
competitors would start out at a huge disadvantage and know there's no
place in the market for them.
Now, on the plus side:- User friendliness. MS Office provides a seamless transition for
lusers who have grown up with Windows and don't know anything else.
- World domination. Anything that helps us replace inferior desktop OSs is a good thing,
evolution-wise and principle-wise.
- Hackability. UNIX is a far superior platform for hackers because of
the wide array of debugging tools available, so it will make reverse
engineers' jobs easier.
It is obvious that the cons outweigh the pros here by sheer numbers. But given the recent strides made by the Koffice team, it will only be a matter of time before their product is superior to MS Office in every respect.-Uncle
Exchange is horrible for the Internet, but an absolute godsend for inter-office and intra-office communications. Honestly, I would not give up internal exchange servers for anything (except for a free, open source *NIX variant with all the functionality). The shared calendars alone are worth the liscencing fees.
AWG
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
Read about it here.
Do those shots look like the X Window System to you? No? Maybe that's because Office X isn't written for the X Window System, but rather is a port of Microsoft's previous Mac OS codebase (dating back years) to updated Mac OS services and API's.
Furthermore, if Linux is the antichrist to Microsoft, why would they want to make their office suite available on it (or other similar free unix-like variant)? That would only provide more reason for people not to buy into Microsoft. (And look at how well commercial Linux office suites *cough Corel Office cough* have sold in the past.)
-benmyselfmusic
yes and no. os x's ui has been tagged "aqua," which refers to the visual style (i refrain from saying the phrase "ui standard" as aqua is an inconsistant mess -- but that's another rant). however, the 2d imaging model is called "quartz." this is based on an apple version of an open pdf-based standard.
also, carbon is the set of apis that are a modified subset of the standard mac os toolbox. it is used for applications that can run native in os x as well as mac os 8.6 through 9.2. it's not a windowing system.
that said, the office v.x team had to rejigger all the graphic doodads in the applications to make them all lickable... ick. to the aqua theme. double ick.
1. OSX isn't a real UNIX.
/usr/ports, gcc, libc... what did you expect? OSX has Just Another UNIX Kernel. This shouldn't amaze you.
Actually, OSX's Darwin kernel is completely FreeBSD-compliant. We have shells,
2. Yeah, but it's some Mach stuff
Yeah, it once was, when it was called Openstep maybe. Since that time, the microkernel and microkernel server layers have bled together to become a monolithic kernel that happens to support Mach IPC.
3. Okay then smarty guy, What's the deal with MS Office
Mac OS X does not use the X Window System, or at least it doesn't ship with it. The display system that is Mac OS X's trademark, is PDF-based (not Display Postscript based like Openstep, and certainly not caveman bitmap based like X Window System). In the case of Mac OS X, there are two native graphical APIs: Carbon, which is a polished up version of Mac OS 9's API, and Cocoa, which is the old Openstep API, and more closely resembles (or is resembled by) Microsoft MFC. Neither of these really has much in common with X Window System at all.
FWIW, Macs did suck, and Mac OS 9 and older are the steaming piles that prove it. But after NeXT acquired Apple for a negative sum of cash some time ago, they put a great OS on the desktop, and it sucks less than most. Check it out.
One of OS X's gifts to the world, however, is the end of the reign X Window on UNIX. The GUI environment under OS X is Aqua. Anyone writing for the Mac writes their GUI as an Aqua GUI (Java apps are Aqua). You cannot easily port an Aqua app to the X Window System.
> ...Carbon an Cocoa which are distinctly Macintosh libraries
An older version of Carbon (the so-called Macintosh Toolbox) already exists, and is called Mac-on-Linux. As for Cocoa, it's GNU GPL'd POSIX implementation is GNUStep.
> porting Office [...] to Linux probably would be just as much of an undertaking as porting it to Mac
You mean, porting it *from* the Mac... Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint were all created in and for the Mac, later ported to Microsoft Windows, and only after some years ported back to the Mac -- at least PowerPoint was acquired from other company, but the fact is that the original Macintosh versions worked better than today's Microsoft Windows versions and their Mac ports. In fact this was true even of Microsoft Word for DOS and OS/2 -- being simpler and better thought, it was more precise and failed less than today's versions for Microsoft Windows.
Also significantly, the most ambitious and unsatisfactory of them all is the only one created on Microsoft Windows: Microsoft Access and its Jet engine.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
MS invested $150 million (a very small chunk) in Apple around 4 years ago, but has since sold all of its holdings (the anti-trust case being one reason for this action).
The real reason exists Office for the Mac OS? It's often cited as MS's 3rd most profitable product, which is undoubtedly why there is already an OS X version out.
Why not port it to other Unices (including Linux)? Office, as its name implies, is meant for workplace desktops -- a space where Unix isn't exactly prominent.
Posting anonymously because of NDA/SPA/DMCA/whatever...
Microsoft has already ported everything from Internet Explorer to Windows Media Player to Microsoft Office. Only IE and WMP were ever made available to the public (for obvious reasons). These ports were done with the Mainwin kit from Mainsoft. Mainwin is similar to Winelib except that it uses real Microsoft source code (including all secret API's, also explains why IE and WMP are so bloated on UNIX) and runs on more platforms (Linux, SunOS, HP/UX, AIX, IRIX, Tru64).
1. I use Linux on my laptop as my primary desktop. I run SO 6 beta and have absolutely no problems exchanging files with others in the publishing biz using Word on Mac and Win9x.
2. Why do we need IE on Linux? Galeon is by far the best revision of a browser I've seen on Linux as far as rendering and functionality goes. The only problems I've had thus far is when trying to access a site that requires Netscape or IE and does a JS check to insure browser type. That's poor coding and has nothing to do with the functionality of Galeon.
The whole idea behind open source isn't that it's free - although in most cases it is and that's a nice fringe benefit - the idea is that if YOU don't like what you have or have a good idea that you can extend and improve upon what's out there and give back to the community.
If SO or Galeon/Opera/Mozilla aren't what you want, code up what you do want - or make suggestions to the guys writing it. They're more likely to take your opinion into consideration than the guys at MS.
And lastly, I don't want to see MS products on Linux. Bloated, insecure applications with "technical support" backdoor trojans are not what I want out of an OS. If I want MS to know what hardware/software I'm running I'll write them a freaking letter and tell them. Otherwise, it's none of their damn business. Tell that to Dell and MS, who by default install 3 different accounts on XP machines for "technical support" remote access. Or how about the scripts in ME that run periodically to ship an XML document off to Microsoft detailing the hardware/software on your PC.
Is this the kind of crap you want on your Linux? I don't.
-----
I don't have a solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
I'm astonished no one has mentioned this.
MS has no need of emulators like Wine. MS, I believe, actually owns MainSoft, and in any case, has allowed them to port Win32, COM MSXML, and a boatload of other junk to SysV Unix and Linux.
If MS doesn't release applications under Linux, it's because they don't want to.
Matt
Microsoft Office for Mac OS X IS already available. It is a native version, written using the Cocoa libraries to take advantage of some of the features of the Aqua interface - e.g. transparency in graphs. They haven't just mapped APIs - it is a full and well implemented re-write that really outshines the Windows version of Office.
As said in the post it would be very tricky to port this to other UNIX systems running X11 - I suspect it would almost be a complete rewrite again.
MacOS X owes a little more to FreeBSD than it does to NetBSD, and is based around the Mach kernel.
Were none of the facts checked before the article posted?
He is absolutely right, but what is really bad is that not only does it not use X11, it doesn't use anything even remotely POSIX-compliant (AFAIK) anywhere. Carbon is as he said, a transitional API.
They hacked off the parts of the MacOS 9 APIs that would be too difficult to implement in OS X's environment (especially things like OS traps that opened up potential conflicts and created instability). Unfortunately, a lot of things in OS 9 required these traps to work correctly instead of access sockets to other processes and the like. This makes it difficult for programmers that worked with these unusual parts of the APIs just to port to Carbon.
Cocoa is even worse to port to, since you have to write the app from scratch. The good news is that a Cocoa app is setup in such a way that Apple can add new features or tweak with the UI slightly and the app will automagically adapt without needing an update.
Porting either Carbon or Cocoa over to another *nix is as difficult as porting Win32 code to a *nix. Of course, some of these apps being written to be run as daemons under OS X with the POSIX libraries will be rather easy to port to another *nix, the problem being: They are trying to make money off of a webserver, ftp server, etc. Marketting to a group already with free ftpd and apache is a tough sell. MS Office could be just as tough a sell once OpenOffice truly matures.
It's plum ironic that you read all about Linux, BSD, Solaris, hacking, personal freedoms, and all other sorts of stuff on Slashdot, and yet no one ever seems to be able to get it right, or care to try very hard, when it comes to the Mac OS or Mac OS X. Even the initial post didn't seem to me to have looked very hard to see if there IS a Mac OS X version of Office.
I wrote the MacNN article which sparked this thread last year, and saw a complete and total lack of understanding in most of the following posts. The tone of the followups expressed a lack of understanding on Apple's part for using BSD and not Linux - that Apple is not savvy enough to be in business, etc. This thread has reinforced that most dotters don't really understand what Mac OS X IS.
-++-
Mac OS X is NOT Unix. Mac OS X is NOT *NIX, or Linux. The architecture of Mac OS X is focused on leveraging the Mach kernel to provide services, do VM, handle threads, and more. Then, the tools on top of that are crafted to the Mach kernel, such as all applications being a Mach thread, and networking through BSD sockets. There is no compatibility layer which speaks Mach, there is only Mach.
Perhaps the work to change this would not revolutionize the field of Computer Science, but there is no true reason for Apple to switch, and having application *NIX personalities is a feature almost no "Mac" user would ever care about.
Quartz is not X11. X11 is a protocol, Quartz is an API. The better analogy would be Quartz and KDE - both of which feed a display engine, and provide widgets and graphical tools. Without getting into a side by side comparison, which you choose is going to be a matter of choice as to which you like better.
But, Microsoft worked hard to leverage the Quartz API for many of the features in Office - graph generation being the primary target, so a good amount of work would have to be done to reengineer major parts of the display engine just to get around these sections.
Consider further, if you will, how hard it has proven to be for most programming firms to take a Win32 application to the Mac using the Mac Toolbox (aka Classic) or even Carbon, much less fine-tuning it's graphics for the platform. The more impressive quick translation applications for Mac OS X have been written in Cocoa, the framework that has evolved from the NextSTEP/OPENSTEP frameworks/APIs, and Cocoa isn't even close to being link Carbon.
With the Mac Office codebase written in Carbon/Classic, it would take quite a while for any porting to take place, and in such time, I am confidant a newer version of Office would have already been released...
-++-
I'm not saying Slashdot should become, overnight, more Mac OS X conscious, but really...no one would spare the whip on someone who said Linux and Windows were the same since they are both operating systems...
We bought 2 copies of Office X for the 2 Powerbooks we have at work and while reading the description on the back of the box I found something funny.
.. i never thought Microsoft would tout Unix as stable on ANY of their products.
Office X brings you the power of Office, with the simplicity of the Mac on the stability of Unix.
Funny
What is all this jazz about you can't do this or that, say Windows X, under OS X?
:-)
There's an explantion of how to set up mod_ssl in PDF, installing links (the browser), even an OS X port of zork from Unix, and a Solution Guide written for the novice for installing XFree86 (the X Window Server for OS X), fink, WindowMaker and GIMP, among other things, at http://homepage.mac.com/rgriff/index.html This "home page" is really a download site and has other items and belongs to the guy who does MacOSXHints at http://www.macoshints.com/. They speak a little Unix and Linux there in the forums. What _is_ this problem about X Windows on a Macintosh running OSX?
Mac people have been putting up Linux and FreeBSD web sites for years. We talk a little *nix ourselves, we just prefer the colorful flavored brand and like having the best of all *nix worlds in one.
Why fool around with Office for Unix? Run it on a Mac. Exchange files in business easily. Run Windows 98, 2k, or XP under VPI 5.0 (OS X version). Boot into suse or redhat, pick your flavor, all on one drive. Use all the "classic" software like Photoshop 6 or Quark Express while running Classic under OSX, both coming to OS X in carbon or cocoa form in 2002. Let's see, there's Adobe Illustrator X and Macromedia's Freehand 10, there's a complete business suite for small business in OS9 or OSX, and students may be interested to know that the two top math apps used in grad schools are available in X, along with a host of biological science and chemistry apps. Many of the BeOS folks are moving back to X.
Sales pitch? You betcha Red Ryder. I used to do Unix, then Linux, and now I do it all with a base of OS X with built in Apache and a host of *nix shipping with the user version of X, not to mention a Developer's Toolkit tossed in with everything from the basics (like a free compiler) to advanced scripting support with AppleScript Studio, a free download if you sign up for Apple Developer Connection. Cost: free. http://www.apple.com/macosx/
Did I mention that Darwin is open source, a derivative of FreeBSD, and is the heart of Mac OS X?
Hey dudes, this is where *nix for the desktop is headed, jump on board.
(duh....what a rant).......
Thanks for the information, I stand corrected.
OTOH, just as an educated guess it seems to me that, should there be need, a POSIX implementation of Carbon would be easier than WINE, just because of the higher quality and consistency of the target. But with Mac developers going for Cocoa (OpenStep), I doubt there will ever be such a need.
Unless -- and that's next to impossible -- Microsoft Windows failed, and their main claim to a monopoly became Microsoft Office v.X, and they decided not to port it to Cocoa -- that could be if they decided this would restrict it better to the Macintosh.
Or if someone reached the not-so-farfetched conclusion that w32 is too much of a moving target, and decided instead to implement Carbon on POSIX. Provided again that Microsoft wouldn't port their Office v.X to Cocoa.
About NIB, check http://gnustep.org./ if you are really curious. If my memory doesn't fail me they were trying to get compatible with Apple NIBs.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
That would be Quorum's Mac compatibility library. I evaluated the Quorum library in 1991, for use in porting the Mac version of SimCity to Unix. But I decided it would be much better to do a completely native port of SimCity to Unix instead of using a Mac emulation library.
The application and Quorum library are compiled on Unix, and provided API level compatibility (not binary), layered on top of a lame-assed X11 toolkit (Motif). So the application would have to be ported the the native C compiler and recompiled on Unix, unlike the much more successful approach that Transgaming has taken with Wine and The Sims on DirectX.
The main appeal of using a Mac emulation library like Quorum was that it would not require changing (much of) the original SimCity source code (modulo compiler incompatibilities, which are numerous).
But there was really no point to that, because the code was already forked, and being able to compile the same code on multiple platforms was not an issue. The whole point of porting SimCity to Unix was to take advantage of Unix features that Quorum's emulation library could not support, like pie menus and the multi player ability.
Doing a native port required much work rewriting the user interface from scratch, but that was what I wanted to do. So I used HyperLook on NeWS (which is similar to NeXTStep and Cocoa in that it uses the PostScript imaging model), and then implemented Multi Player SimCity using TCL/Tk on X11.
Adobe used Quorum to port Photoshop 2.5 to the Sun Solaris and SGI Irix platforms. I still have my original CD and manual for Sun Photoshop 2.5, which was only ever useful as a coaster. It was totally unusable, because it was so slow, with many glitches in the user interface, and it would crash at the slightest misplaced mouse click.
Because of the way that the single tasking Mac-centric interruptable screen redisplay algorithm clashed with the asynchronous X-Windows protocol and bloated Motif toolkit, you had to take your hands off the keyboard and mouse and sit on them while you waited for Photoshop to finish drawing everything, before it was safe to use.
Of course there weren't any commercial plug-ins available on the Sun or SGI platforms, because porting Photoshop plug-ins to Suns or SGIs was extremely tricky, thanks to the Mac compatibility layer. (Plug-ins didn't have a dynamic linking mechanism to call back into X11 and Motif, to implement their control panel guis).
The Quorum library's approach is quite different from the more successful binary level compatibility approach that Transgaming is taking to run The Sims on Linux.
I've been harshly criticized by fanatic Loki supporters for justifying Transgaming's emulation approach, instead of native ports. But Loki had their chance to perform a native port of The Sims, and blew it. Don't blame Transgaming for figuring out a way to do it successfully after Loki failed to.
I'm not religiously beholden to one technique or another. I'm interested in getting the best results, so I've used many different approaches myself. An emulated port is far better than no port at all. And there are many different approaches to porting and emulation, some better than others.
The particular application as well as the particular platforms involved play extremely important roles in deciding how to best perform a port. There are also many economic issues. There is no one best approach that's right all the time. And porting software is always going to be a lot of work. If you're not willing to put enough effort into it, the results will always be horrible no matter which approach you take.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
I don't need my friend to tell me this.
Essentially, you can look for Office / Linux the day Democrats are back in the white house, and Microsoft is split into OS and Application companies. Until then, you will have to download Star Office with the rest of the world.
Anyway, don't confuse OS X with a Real Unix with Real X Windows. Support for X on OSX is a third-party effort at best.
On Mac OS X, you have to launch XFree. On Linux, you have to launch XFree. Where's the difference?
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas