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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.
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
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
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...
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
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.