Final Version of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X Released

Ant writes "After two years of work, OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X (X11) is golden master and ready for immediate download by all Mac OS X users. This release marks a major milestone. It uses the Unix standard X Window and takes advantage of the immense wealth of open source material. To name but one feature, fonts are anti-aliased, making documents look smooth and clean and wholly professional. If you use Mac OS X there is no reason to wait. This will address your needs. And, as with all in the OpenOffice.org 1.0 family, this free release reads and writes Microsoft Office documents and works freely in heterogeneous environments where one might find Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X machines working side by side. The next step is to finish the Aqua version."

Comments

This will address your needs.

[zangdesign]

So does Mariner Write (it's not free - but really, really inexpensive). When Open Office is native to OSX, then I'll consider switching. Until then, I'll stick with non-free.

Re:This will address your needs.

[gerbache]

The mere fact that X11 on OSX is still using a separate clipboard is enough to keep me from wanting to use it. I find it really annoying when I have to struggle to copy and paste between my word processor and the rest of the apps in my system. There is one thing I will say in it's defense, however. It makes it really handy for me as an engineering student because currently Matlab only runs on X11, so I can use it to integrate my plots and such into my reports. Otherwise, I'll stick with commercial office suites until oo.o goes aqua.

Re:Why not just pirate MS Office?

[seinman]

Why break the law when you can get what you need legally for free?

woohoo

[P145M4]

Gr8 news.
I'm using my Mac only for web compatibility tests, but it's good to see that M$ gets more and more under pressure :)

Selling points?

[Martin Kallisti]

Really, is there nothing more worthy of mention than (gasp!) anti-aliased fonts. I mean, this is supposed to be a productivity suite, not just a Microsoft document reader, right? Apart from that, I would love to hear from people having used recent versions. Is it actually good enough to fully replace Office v.X?

Re:Selling points?

[mashx]

One of the most useful things about OO for me has been this: being the only TiBook user in a company awash with Compaqs and very many different versions of windows, I get many different versions of Word documents, and some of them would force Office 2001 and Office v.X to quit: open the document, application quits! However, when I opened them in OO, it accepted it perfectly. I could then save them (type a space, delete the space) in the same format, but OO would save them in a format that either MS Office would then play nicely. Incredible but true!

However, I wasn't able to use the last beta for my work, simply because it didn't support the number of features that I required for working e.g. version tracking, embedded tables, full bullet point customisation, spacing between bullets etc. It has some of these, but doesn't pplay the same way as office, and in this company I can get away with using a Mac, but for presentation purposes, I need to play the same unfortunately.

If there was one thing I didn't like which I couldn't forgive it for was that you had to set all documents the same size - at least - I couldn't find a way to set them differently.

Still. having said that I have downloaded this latest version, and will again see how well it works. The IT guys want to get rid of Office (purely for the licensing), and are waiting for OO to be possible as a replacement..

Re:Selling points?

[TheRaven64]

Is it actually good enough to fully replace Office v.X?

No. It's slightly better than Office '97, although 1.1 looks like it should be quite a bit nicer (and hopefully the OS X changes can be merged with the 1.1 changes without a huge amount of effort). The real problem with OOo is that it is a Win95 app in terms of look and feel, and so will be quite alien on a Mac, and to quote Greg Lehey (FreeBSD core developer) 'OpenOffice is not a good example of the UNIX way.' so it looks a bit out of place.

For my use it's fine, I don't do any really complicated spreadsheet work (nothing that a 16-bit version of works wouldn't be able to have handled), most of the presentations I give are printed for OHP (although the OOo powerpoint clone is much better than the one that came with SO 5) and I use LaTeX for any non-trivial documents. OOo does everything I need it to do, but I doubt that the same could be said for someone who uses it in a commercial setting.

Re:Selling points?

[1010011010]

Here in our Microsoft-ridden office, I use OpenOffice to recover corrupted Word documents for others. We all love it when Word creates files it can't read back in.

No reason to wait?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use Mac OS X there is no reason to wait

Except for the fact that it doesn't run on Mac OSX of course, it runs on X11. You might as well get a linux box and remote display it back to your OSX box.

What about native aqua?

[Yonder Way]

X11 is nice and all, but I'm going to risk losing some karma here and say that it is not going to be useful to me for day to day use because of simple little things like lack of system clipboard integration (X11 apps have their own clipboard). When/if OOo runs natively as an aqua app I'll be glad to switch.

Re:What about native aqua?

[EricHsu]

I'm using a beta of OOO (not the latest). Apple X11 lets you take X11 clipboards and paste to the Mac side. OOO had a bug that limited the clipboard to 255 chars, but I think they are working on that. There is another little issue with creeping windows in Apple X11, but overall I'm quite pleased with it. It's the only program I've ever used that comes close to decoding the (criminally obfuscated) MS Office formats. I think the interface is really clunky, but not more so than the Office that they are cloning.

Re:What about native aqua?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditto, I totally agree. This set up with X11 is a total piece of crap. I won't be switching to OpenOffice until it is a native Cocoa app. PERIOD END!!!!! Got that OpenOffice developers!!! It's like running M$ office in Virtual PC.

Unfortunately...

[anarkhos]

Unfortunately the Aqua version will behave just like this version so it'll be even worse.

Re:Unfortunately...

[TheRaven64]

No, the Quartz version will behave exactly like this version. There are three threads to the OOo on OS X development effort.

1. The first is to get the whole thing to compile and work under X11 on OS X as it would on any other *NIX. This is the one that was released today.
2. The next stage is to replace the X11 code with native Quartz code. It will still feel the same, probably look the same (although they may introduce some more Aqua-like graphics at this point) but it will be a native OS X / Quartz app, with no need for X11.
3. The final stage (and I'm really hoping that Apple will get involved at this stage and bundle the resulting office suite with the OS as iOffice, or something) is to redo all of the menus, dialogs etc. so that they look just like a real OS X app. Once this is done (The roadmap says Q2 2004) then it should be a competitive office suite on the Mac.

Hopefully now that the OOo OS X team has a working release build they will be able to keep it synchronised with the main trunk.

Re:Unfortunately...

[anarkhos]

Uh huh. Are you even going to change the file i/o so it uses FSRefs and AliasHandles instead of file paths?

I mean c'mon really, all you're doing is changing the appearance, NOT the behavior.

Re:Unfortunately...

[repetty]

Well, your message was modded to 0. I think it deserves a 1.

Your assumption about OpenOffice not being worth much until Apple's X11 hits version 1 is wrong.

I've been using it for a couple months and it's excellent. No crashes or other bad things.

Your hang-up is with the "beta" label... I share your grief. Nowadays, many developers use alpha/beta/release version names correctly.

Let me state this for the record: If you release it, it's not beta.

Quit sucking on that lemon and try it before condemning it.

--Richard

Someone with the dev release of Panther respond!

[amichalo]

The key here is that with the (development) release of Panther, with integrated X11 client released (currently, X11 is Beta 3), will Open Office also enjoy an integrated clipboard, new Font Book, and other (as yet to be named by this author) features that limit the adoption of said orphan (huh?) office suite?

If someone attending WWDC who was given the developer release of panther (and high quality, brushed metal, $129 retail value kaleidoscope) would let us know ASAP, "that would be great".

Office Space, the poor man's lite beer

Well good

[AvantLegion]

As an OO user on Linux and Windows, and someone about to get an Apple laptop, this is good news.

Re:Well good

[haikvr]

man your sig. - awesome.

The Day of the Apple?

[xyrw]

Whoa! In the last 24 hours:

• G5 computers
• Safari 1.0
• Panther
• Will Linux pass Apple?
• OpenOffice.org 1.0

Damn cool. This is one of those days when I feel especially proud to be a Mac user.

Re:The Day of the Apple?

[rice_web]

It's unfortunate to see OpenOffice being overshadowed as it is, because it really is a great app, if for nothing else but its price tag.

Hell, I just plopped down $1999 for a PowerMac, and I don't really care to waste a few hundred more on Office. OpenOffice it is.

Apple X11 clipboard

[Jimithing DMB]

Hmm. As far as I can tell the clipboard works just fine. Selecting text in an application will make it the PRIMARY selection and it can be pasted with the middle mouse button in to other X11 apps.

Using an X11 apps copy feature will place the selection into the CLIPBOARD buffer which will make it available to all applications (including Mac ones).

In GVIM you can do this by prefixing your commands with "+ (quote plus). As in 4"+yy or Vjjj"+y or "+P or "+p among others. With GNOME and KDE apps you simply use their Copy/Paste features.

If your X11 app does not support CLIPBOARD, then you can use xcutsel to transfer PRIMARY to CLIPBOARD which will allow you to paste into OS X apps. Likewise, you can select text in OS X, copy it, then transfer CLIPBOARD to PRIMARY and use middle-mouse paste.

Granted, I'd love to see middle-mouse paste implemented across the board in OS X. It's a feature that would not confuse novice users as all OS X apps already have normal Copy/Paste and novice users don't have middle mouse buttons anyway and it would really benefit those of us who appreciate having that extra quick select and paste a la X11.

It seems to me that Cocoa could easily support this as most Cocoa apps that do anything with text use the absolutely wonderful NSText system which could have this feature added quite readily.

I for one would be willing to live without the ability to do this from Carbon and Classic apps.

Come to think of it, I'd be willing to bet this could be done using an Objective-C category. Actually, I'm absolutely positive it could be done that way without even having Apple's source. Any takers?

Re:Apple X11 clipboard

[gerbache]

I would be thrilled to see an across the board middle-click copy and paste function in OS X. Perhaps with Panther including X11 out of the box Apple will think of that. Wishful thinking?

I've managed to get X11 apps to copy and paste decently between normal OS X apps and other X11 apps, but I'm afraid that I can't get it working with my Matlab plots. Anybody know how to do it? I admit that I haven't tried for very long (I was in the middle of a project and didn't really have time to play with it forever), but it would be really handy for me! I'll give it another shot using your suggestions above, but I'm not sure it will works with the plots easily because I can't figure out how to highlight them...

Re:Apple X11 clipboard

[hmccabe]

The key to this would seem to be an Input Manager bundle. I'm not sure how they are programmed, but I have a utility called Cocoa gestures that interprets mouse gestures ( similar to a feature in Mozilla, I hear ) and passes events to the current application. If something like that were to monitor for the third button to be pressed, then pass the paste command to the application this would give you paste in Cocoa apps, but not, like you said, in Classic or Carbon apps.

Re:Apple X11 clipboard

[Jimithing DMB]

That's not quite what I'd need though.

The thing is, PRIMARY and CLIPBOARD are two different beasts. You can select text (which incidently makes it PRIMARY). You can copy that text (which often means copying PRIMARY to CLIPBOARD, but not if some other application has since taken over PRIMARY). You can select text in another app if you haven't done so already (making it PRIMARY) and you can then paste the two selections independently. Clipboard via the usual paste and PRIMARY via the middle mouse button.

For instance, right-click a link in Mozilla and copy it to the clipboard. Then select some text off the page. Now, paste the link via the copy command, and hit the middle mouse button to paste the text.

Yeah, I know it sounds confusing, but if novices never even know it's there and some X11 people really appreciate it then I think it's worth it.

no luck here

[Anonymous Coward]

I decided maybe I'd give it a try. The installer launched a second installer which hung, (or was planning on taking more than 2 hours with no visible progress.) Oh well, what can you expect from beta software.

dual g4 533, osx 10.2.6

Re:screenshots

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

woah! that's foul. NOT the screenshots ppl are looking for.

Re:Why not just pirate MS Office?

[King of the World]

Because OO.org takes one minute to load? (nothing wrong with my system - don't bother asking the specs as if there is a problem.. OO.org is worse than Mozilla in that regard).

which is better

[an_mo]

If I have to chose do I download openoffice or staroffice? Do they bear the same relationship as mozilla and netscape navigator?

Re:which is better

[Jucius Maximus]

"If I have to chose do I download openoffice or staroffice? Do they bear the same relationship as mozilla and netscape navigator?"

I would choose OpenOffice -- StarOffice is Sun's own blend of OO.org. I find that OpenOffice tends to work more 'smoothly' and it has a better presentation program than StarOffice. Not to mention that you have to pay for StarOffice 6.0.

Re:which is better

[flabbergast]

I didn't know StarOffice was available for the Mac OSX platform. I doubt it would run on in OSX.

Unfortunately...

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenOffice isn't good for much on Mac OS X without X11--still in beta. Wake me when the final version of Apple's X11 is released. =)

I need to print

[Funksaw]

As a guy who's stuck with AppleWorks (since he's sworn off pirated software) and doesn't want to give money to Microsoft, I'm waiting for a usable port of OpenOffice to MacOSX.

However, I'm not sure that I can consider the MacOSX port of OpenOffice as "usable" until it has the capacity to -print- the documents I create in it.

An Aqua/Cocoa port would be great, but right now, I just want full functionality.

Re:I need to print

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using it (in beta) for months and it prints fine.

Re:I need to print

[Funksaw]

From X11? How did you get it to work? Or are you just yanking my crank?

-- Funksaw

Re:I need to print

[EricHsu]

I'm not sure that I can consider the MacOSX port of OpenOffice as "usable" until it has the capacity to -print-

Then rejoice, for OOO under X11 can indeed print. I think there may be some inkjets that have driver issues (Epson?) but I've used it to print very nicely to two Postscript laser printers (HP4000, Brother HL1470N) and even to PDF.

If you're complaining about the NeoOffice "Flaming Yeti" build, then yes. This is an in-progress Cocoa port. The X11 build has been the focus so far. Now they should make faster progress on the Cocoa one.

But the main juice of OOO is working all right: MS translation. I've found Word 5 documents arrive DOA, but Word >97 docs read in okay. There are formatting glitches here and there, though. Your mileage may vary.

If you just want a kick-butt Cocoa wordprocessor, maybe consider Nisus Express or Mariner Write. They both try to do Word decoding, but in my experience the translation is inferior to OOO.

ps. The OOO work would go faster if Apple pulled a Safari and built a monster WP on top of the OOO translation libraries, and contributed fixes back. He said wishfully.

Re:I need to print

[Anonymous Coward]

Printing works for me, too. Both to networked laser printers at work, and home.

Re:I need to print

[Funksaw]

AARGH! I've got the epson! Thanks Eric! I suppose it won't matter, I'm going to switch to a lazer printer soon. -- Funksaw

Re:I need to print

[Anonymous Coward]

It worked for me too. Even printing over a network to someone elses HP1200. I was impressed.

Re:I need to print

[Anonymous Coward]

Terry Teague's StartOpenOffice.org app (which ships with OOo) has a menu command called "Configure Printers". Use that to set up printers to be used from OpenOffice. Before he provided that, I had not been able to get printing going, either, but now it works fantastically well.

Re:I need to print

[Funksaw]

Actually, I tested it out - on the new version, I managed to print out a page perfectly :D Which means I'm now using it as my full time word processor! Now, if only there was a StartPan.app for news and StartXchat.app for Xchat.

Re:I need to print

[supertaster]

Well I'll be damned. I'm a lazy dork. Well, I knew that much, but what's new is that upon digging up said utility from the OpenOffice folder and running it, 1.0.1 is printing to my Epson 777 just fine. 1.0.3 is downloading right now...

I just kept trying to configure from the preferences within OO...

Thanks Mr. Teague!

Re:Why not just pirate MS Office?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's quite odd. I'm running a pretty old system (Pentium 3/650 mhz/256 ram) and Microsoft Office takes at least twice as long to load as Open Office. Maybe you're just stupid.

I use it full time with Windows

[Getzen]

I figured about a year ago that I would be switching back to a Mac (I am so sick of Microsoft) and started thinking about the transition, specifically a seamless office-suite transition for my small commercial real estate business. Using MS Office is out of the question.

I decided to use OpenOffice and its gotten better and better with each version. It is now up to 1.1 beta 2 on the Windows side, so the Mac version has a little catching up to do. It is excellent, although it has so many features that it is a bit of overkill for my purposes (read: bloat). It is a very powerful, full-featured office suite.

My only real complaint is the aesthetics, but then that applies to a lot of Windows software. The first thing I do when I do a fresh install of a new version is delete a number of the toolbar buttons and alter the color scheme. I am certain that they will address the appearance on the Mac side. Oh, and OpenOffice doesn't have the most elegant user-interface around. Hopefully they will work on that for the Mac version as well.

I will be buying one of the new G5 Macs in August (woohoo!) and look forward to loading up OpenOffice and following its Aquafication.

Getzen

after years

[minus_273]

and years of training.. i too am golden master!

OO 103

[djupedal]

If the installer would cooperate, I'd talk about it. I used 101, and found it very useful, but this thing simply will not install for me. Oh well...

Nisus+Mesa = cocoa non MS alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

Nisus writer is a beta and mesa is a quirky spreadsheet but cocoa is cocoa. The two will cost you about $100 total, oh and don't foget Keynote. At least you're not patronizing the evil one.

Re:Someone with the dev release of Panther respond

[RestiffBard]

I'll get back to you when I'm done downloading OOo

Re:Why not just pirate MS Office?

[King of the World]

Oh good, so it's just an isolated problem*

*on a default install of Windows ME, Windows 2000 Server, Windows Xp, Mandrake 8, MacOSX when I just click the next button and then start it up cold.

Re:Why not just pirate MS Office?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you just have your head up your ass and don't know how to fix things that don't work on your computer? Myself and almost everyone I know are using Open Office, on a variety of Windows platforms, all without problems. Loads fast, never crashes. It's not the program's fault that you're a dumbass.

Re:Someone with the dev release of Panther respond

[axxackall]

Correction: X11 from Apple includes windows server (where you various local and remote X windows) and client libraries (for a case if your local X applications are linked dynamically).

Differences between X11 and Aqua

[Anonymous Coward]

I've not used Open Office - but I tried using ZDE (Zend Developer Environment). My thoughts on using apps on other platforms are:

- Who gives a damn about the "look and feel". I need productivity so it can be excused.
- Consistent Menu Keys. That means [apple key] + c for copy etc. ZDE had a key mappings feature - so it was changeable.
- Copy and paste doesn't work with Apple's pasteboard scheme. (When you copy something from an app it pastes it in many different versions; text, rtf, pdf, jpg? and the app on the other end can choose which version it wants to use).
- There's an overhead in launching the JVM before an app launches. Will the panther release load X11 at startup, or will there be overhead?

Disclaimer: I acknowledge the difference between X11 and java, but it carries some arguments in this instance.

I CAN print

[Anonymous Coward]

I can print fine from my iBook to IP printers at work. Just set them up in PrintCentre.

Kae