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Aqua OpenOffice for Mac OS X
rhetland writes "An article on O'Reilly network discusses the new port of OpenOffice to Mac OS X. The public beta, due out next week, will be posted on the OpenOffice Mac site. I have been waiting for this for months, and can hardly wait."
Now I can hopefully migrate the last of out machines from any microisoft code. $ months ago we got the go ahead for open source (after a 2 year battle) and now this!
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
I think MS Word looks better...though that is my opinion. What is that dock program that looks like a world? Never seen that before...
This is great news, but consider what this really means. What we really want & need, a fully native version, is still someway off. The subtext is the more people who can help the faster and better off we will be.
MAK
No more Microshaft stuff on my beautiful OS X!!!! I can't wait to use the beta, just wish I could do more than just beta test, but you do what you can, I hope all OS X programmers help out this project where they can!
With an Aqua version of Open Office soon available, and Open Office shipping as default install on Red Hat 8.0, are we seeing a dominant #2 player in the Office Suite market?
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Lots of people would say that having three different suites is a bad thing, but I don't think so anymore:
My father is a blogger.
X11 is going beta next week, not aqua. the aqua version is still in the planning stages.
This is still the X11 version. Sure, it'll be nice to try it, but it won't have Mac look and feel, and certainly won't obey the Human Interface Guidelines yet. It seems that the Aqua demo was of NeoOffice, which is just a proof of concept for developers, not a real distribution.
Looks like there's a lot more work to be done...
Oh wait, what other competing companies are left?
The link above should be http://www.neooffice.org.
Although I have open office for OS X in X11. It makes it a real hassle to run. I usually end up running Appleworks except for open office. Although I would prefer to use Open Office then Apple Works but it takes a while for XDarwin to start up which in most cases gets in the way. And the fact the interface is differnt from the rest of the application on the Mac so it effect my productivity because I have to adjust my way of thinking to switch to apps.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Are you sure it was such a kickass licensing deal, or did your school get blackmailed by MS and as a student you now how to spend a large portion of your student technology fees on these products.
If its anything like my school, MS blackmailed the school out of Five Million Dollars a year that would have gone to upgrading computer labs and paying technology consultants fair and equitable raises, forcing a maximium numb of non-Windows Servers on campus as well as placing a cap on the funny hardware systems faculty might buy such as Macs.
Don't kid yourself, MS came to your school and threatened to sue it for piracy and otherwise if it didn't agree to the terms as it has with all the other schools.
But but but ... it's inaccurate! The landmasses aren't all green! Where are the deserts, the mountains, the clouds, the subtle silhouette of the atmosphere??? (see http://www.solstation.com/stars/earth.jpg) I liked the abstract Aqua one better, though I realize Apple is mercilessly aggressive about its intellectual property.
OK, I'm a Mac (l)user.
Having digressed to browsers, I hope everyone has tried the very nice free beer/speech Chimera for OS X.
hmm...interesting subtext: openoffice.org is released under the LGPL and SISSL which allow for closed source extensions to the source base and commercialization. According to the next to last NeoOffice FAQ entry the prototype is under the full GPL license and Sun employees know they can't use its source code directly.
Is this the first salvo in a free source vs. open source war?
open source companies have to give any of their GPL stuff away for free... isn't that the point of OO versus StarOffice???
I have Open Office 1.0 running on my OS X machine, but it is so buggy that it is unusable. I hope the new version works better. An aqua version would be awesome; I don't mind running XF86 in rootless mode, but an aqua version would make the whole experience more seamless.
.doc format anyway. it is such a piece of crap and there are major privacy issues with it...don't beleive me? open up a .doc with BBEdit or something...
for now, I use TextEdit which comes with OS X. It is very stable and usable, though not too good at advanced formatting. And why of why does everybody have to use
IMHO, Apple knows what they are talking about when it comes designing an interface, so the HIG seem to be a great resource for anyone to use.So, any of you programmers for windows and *nix pay any attention to them?
A lot of people talk about trying to get linux on the desktop and how to do it...call me crazy but perhaps if developers kept the HIG in mind it would push things forward quite a bit as far as linux usability goes...
note: I am not saying the HIG must be followed to the letter but it seems like it would be a great starting point for developers of any GUI based software...
Any thoughts on this? Can the HIG be a valuable resource for anyone?
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
We have the same deal at the University of Cincinnati. Techically, the apps are free - the 5 bucks covers the cost of distributing the media, so I can legally copy my friend's office x disc if I am too lazy to walk to the bookstore and get it. It's microsoft though, so I feel a little dirty participating in this deal. Maybe I'll try openoffice and then be rid of all my microsoft software.
We also have a similar site license agreement with Adobe, but somebody (either Adobe or the university) decided to be a jackass and extended it to everybody EXCEPT students. So the people who can least afford it because they are busy paying the tuition that partly pays for the license agreement have to pay full price. Nice.
Yes it is way cheap, but you have some really wonderful clauses in the licensing:
At least the license converts to a permanent license if you graduate (your parting gift!).
I've been using Open Office for a while now and it's great. Not quite as polished as commercial apps but certainly nothing to laugh at.
The only problem I've experienced so far is that after a certain size (haven't quite narrowed it down yet) Open Office refuses to open a file. This isn't any wierd file, just a simple plaintext file, yet for some reason Open Office won't open it. It opens fine under other programs, but not OO. Has anyone else come across this problem or does anyone know how to fix it?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I work for the IT department at a university (not yours). We have a number of licenses for software, some of which cover both staff and students, some cover only staff. The claim that "the people who can least afford it... have to pay full price" is largely unfair. Students love to throw the "I pay your salary" argument at the staff at a university, however exactly what proportion of these fees do you think the IT department gets versus the Buildings/Facilities department versus the faculties, etc, etc? And how much of that budget do you think can be devoted to buying software to give away to you?
When you include students' own computers in a site-license, the cost will corrspondingly multiply by the ratio of students to staff. We have about 3000 staff, about 35,000 students. If the license covers a certain number of seats, the cost suddenly multiplies by about 12 ((35000+3000)/12). For many other universities, the multiplier would be even more. How many universities can afford for every student to have a free or reduced-cost copy of an (otherwise) commercial Adobe product?
Some license agreements include students as part of the site, some don't. Some count the number of seats, some don't, some require a certain percentage of university-associated use (versus personal use). We have a Macromedia license which allows the Studio suite (Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, Freehand) and Director and Authorware to be installed on all staff and lab workstations. To extend this to all student home machines would cost several million dollars more.
You make it sound like your university just snubbed you, however these license agreements go backwards and forwards between universities and vendors multiple times before they get signed. Our new and renewed licence discussions constantly include the question to the vendor of whether we can include student home machines and staff home machines, and it simply depends on what the vendor is demanding to extend the license.
As it is, our students receive a CD with in excess of $200 of licensed (and freeware) software. That's certainly not being unreasonable - there are just limitations on what we can do.
Note that the beta release is for Darwin, which means you need an X server running on OS X to use it. This really isn't worth much to OS X users until the Aqua part comes along.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
Sorry, but I don't see what the commotion is about. I don't need office tools. I think the idea of an MS word processor format is about as about as archaic as their BMP desktop graphics spec. We don't need this and we should be moving onto something else. As for Excel - all I have to say is visit John Walker's fourmilab.ch if you want the lowdown on that application. Spreadsheets are cool, and necessary, but proprietary word processing formats are ridiculous.
Give me a way for me or my corporation to get out from under MS Office shite once and for all. Don't give me a free version of the same thing.