Slashdot Mirror
OpenOffice.org for Mac Delayed Two Years
Athyra writes "According to their Mac porting page, OpenOffice.org will not release a native version of their software for Mac OS X (not counting the X11 version) until 2006. According to the project timeline, no real development can happen again until OpenOffice.org 2.0 hits Windows, Linux, and Solaris in 2005. Looks like Microsoft's got a cozy ride ahead on the Mac side of things for a while."
Crap.
I don't think Mac has field tested enough viruses yet for OpenOffice to properly develop security on their platform yet...
But if enough people buy OSX Macs and then start helping out on the OpenOffice 2.0 project, then it could come out first on the Mac. Two years is a lifetime in this industry. And I expect SCO's life to be up right around then...
Rumour has it they're enhancing their own products, so this may turn out well in the end, after all. Just not via Open Source products...
With the way that Apple has been swinging recently I wouldn't be surprised if they released an office suite of their own for OSX. They already have a powerpoint replacement in Keynote. In panther you will be able to read/write MS Word files with cocoa text apps. They have a simplistic email client in Mail.app, but it could easily be buffed up into an outlook like app, using iCal for calendars, etc.
Apple has shown that they can make seriously kick-ass software, so wouldn't it make sense for them to make a seriously kick-ass word processor already???
Even if they don't, I think that cocoa's newfound ability to read/write MS word files will probably spurn the development of some nice third party office apps.
Ack, the silly lameness filter says that I have too much repetition, so forsooth fair lassy, may thine future be full of ripe cheese and bountiful eggplants!!! Godamn it! Fuck you you stinking lameness filter, accept my post.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
Apple has announced that X11 will be installed as part of Panther. So what's wrong with the X11 version?
While it may seem more *elegant* to have a native version, what is wrong with the X version? It runs great for me -- would there be better functionality from a native version?
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
Or have they heard something about Apple using OpenOffice code to come up with their own office suite? After all, Safari was built on top of Konqueror code.
An NDA might keep them from talking about it directly, but it might not keep them from changing their public schedule.
For now, I'll continue using OpenOffice in Mac OS X with X11.
Why do folks pirate software?
If it is good enough to use, pay the price for it. If it is not good enough to pay the price for it, don not use it.
Anyways, its a shame that OOo isn't ready for the Mac. My wife who does the church bulletin has been using MS Office 97 (she tried OOo 1.0.x and it didn't cut it) just tried out OOo 1.1 and was very impressed. Starting soon she plans on switching over.
I bet once OOo is ready for the Mac they will be in for a real treat.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
Cocoa in Panther can handle simple Word document formatting natively, and will be publicly available around September. Various folks (in this thread and others) have pointed to that feature as a precursor to either Apple or 3rd-party Word-compatible apps. But what happens when, one month later, MS Office 2k3 comes out with its new "XML" document format? How quickly can Apple release a Cocoa patch that handles it?
You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
I think the reasons for leaving it out may lie with the philosophy of OOo production
It's open, and it's a competitor/replacement for MS Office. That means the way to create the most use for all people needing an office suite is to replace the majority of office installs, so Windows gets preference there. That makes a quick easy fix to get people away from MS
Now as a secondary goal being open source advocates, if OOo aids towards getting more than just an Office suite switched over to open source, but also an entire OS, then that option has to be there; hence, the unix/XFree86 version needs to be sitting in the wings waiting and ready to help those who want to use the open software philosophy.
Macs end up left in the dust. They don't have the massive market share to need switching like with Windows users, and as a replacement for windows they're still "another proprietary system" in the eyes of open source defenders. Better to have the linux version ready and waiting instead of Yet Another Company's OS.
Still, it'll come eventually.
(to start out with, the development of the next-generation graphics/userinterface/toolkit stuff doesn't go on in the normal OpenOffice mailing lists, but rather at http://gsl.openoffice.org/)
Currently, OpenOffice's interface is based on two different subsystems: UNO and VCL. UNO (Universal Network Object) is the component model that OpenOffice uses. It is roughly comparable to Microsoft's COM. Unlike popular thinking, UNO is NOT COBRA-based, although it does use a COBRA-like IDL. VCL (Visual Class Library), is how OpenOffice draws it's interface. VCL is cross platform, and is designed to maintain a common look and feel in all the platforms that OOo runs on (mainly, Windows, OSX-X11, and non-OSX-X11..)
Now, the problem is that VCL doesn't interface with native widgets that well. There are some crude hacks to try to integrate OOo slightly better, such as Ximian's OOo, but they arent' as effective as using native widgets. It'll take quite a lot of work to make VCL do this, and won't happen before OOo 2.0. The current plan is to reimplement VCL to make it a very abstract library that eventually calls native functions.
Now, there are several ways that this can be done, and it hasn't been decided by OOo developers which course to take. First, there can be a mapping of controls themselves to native controls. For example, OOo could tell Cocoa/Carbon to "draw a button at 300,100", etc.. Another approach is to map windows and dialogs as a whole with native windows and dialogs. This would be akin to OOo asking an Aqua frontend to "display a print dialog". The final approach is to make VCL a simple UNO interface and make each OOo frontend "do their own thing". This is how existing applications like Abiword. Thus, each OOo frontend could look completely different.
There are several OOo frontends that are planned for OOo 2.0. A Win32 frontend, being the most important platform that OOo runs on, is a foregone conclusion. Also planned for certain is a Java-interface for platforms that don't have a native frontend yet. A native OSX (using Cocoa or Carbon) frontend is also likely to happen. On X11, there has been a strong commitment as of late from OOo developers not to focus on one toolkit, but to support several. A gtk+ frontend is a very certain frontend. It looks like there might be a Qt frontend too. Less likely is a wxWindows frontend.
Now, there have been many people who question why OOo just doesn't use a multi-platform toolkit like wxWindows, gtk, or Qt. The answer is that the OOo developers don't want to focus on any single one. Additionally, there are problems with certain toolkits, such as wxWindows, which lacks a significant amount of accessiblity support.
It seems like it would be in Apple's best interest to donate to, or fork, or assist the OpenOffice project. The payoff should be excellent since the product is already mature, and they've had good luck with open-source in the recent past (OS X). Why not? Is it politics?
Actually this is not so big a deal - it didn't work natively under Aqua/Quartz, so we haven't lost out on much.
That being said, there are existing commercial non-Microsoft solutions. Mariner Software has decent word processor and spreadsheet software available for a reasonable price. Redlers has a nice little word processor for a shareware price.
The thing is, Mac users have (or used to have) a tendency to monitor what's available for their platform. It comes from being treated like the bastard stepchild of the neighboring axe-murderer by the rest of the computer community.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
That "one type of customer" in this case; Mac user, is a strange breed. They are more willing to spend money than your average x86 user. They also have the option to buy MS Office for their platform (unlike linux). Most corporate users (a minority in the Mac niche) will buy MS Office instead of using something less compatible (they have to swap files with MS Office users on the Windows platform in a professional manner). This leaves home and education users to push for OOo. Education users get nice discounts from Apple on software, and most will buy MS Office that way. So we have the home user that is responsible for the push to use OOo. And remember, only about 25% of Mac users today actually use OS X.
The numbers just don't look good. No getting around it. It just makes OOo priorities that much easier to manage.
Sorry.
Anyways, its a shame that OOo isn't ready for the Mac. My wife who does the church bulletin has been using MS Office 97 (she tried OOo 1.0.x and it didn't cut it) just tried out OOo 1.1 and was very impressed. Starting soon she plans on switching over.
My wife and I have been using OO for about three years for my university work and our Sunday school work. It has worked brilliantly and the new version with export-to-PDF is fantastic.
I just imported the entire FreeBSD online HTML manual (copied and pasted from Mozilla) and about 834 pages later I have a beautiful document with all FreeBSD's original formatting intact and it looks great. As the owner of an iBook (donated from mother-in-law), I would love to see Apple put some $$$ into porting it. It is one app that would stop me buying a Powerbook at years end.
So what's wrong with the X11 version?
With the time I wait for X11 to start up, I might as well be running my paid versions of Word 5.1 and Excel 98 under Classic.
Have you used the spreadsheet? Full-screen redraws for something that causes cells to recalculate. Actually, half-screen, then full-screen.
For those of us using third-party USB scrolling mice, scrollwheeling scrolls twice for every ratchet of the mouse, and the redraws are so slow you find it's buffered your impatient scrolling and you're pages from where you wanted to be.
Inserting/deleting rows occurs on the row with the selected cell, not on the row you right-clicked. And slow full-screen redraws as you do it, undo it, and do it again.
And each time I open it, the window gets taller. Eventually it gets so tall that the resize widget is off the screen. I just had to scale it down manually again yesterday as it was getting too close to the edge of the screen.
Did I mention the redraws are slow? Quartz Extreme must be amazing if that's tolerable with it enabled. My system is PCI-based, not AGP.
I also have no idea if 1.1 is going to fix these problems because they don't promote builds for 1.1 RC3 for Mac X11--the links from the download page for 1.1 RC3 for Mac go to the 1.0 page--and attempting to download what looks like it could have been the 1.1 build (only 79.4 MiB) failed to complete overnight (over DSL).
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
The only thing that the timeline states is that the 'official' OpenOffice.org 2.0 won't be available on Mac OX X until 2006, and it won't be on ANY platform until 2005.
There is still a port (branch, aquafication, quartzification, whatever) going on, a couple in fact. Check out NeoOffice and NeoOffice/J (Java):
www.neooffice.org
www.neooffice.org/java
trinity.neooffice.org
I tried to sign on to help work on the Mac version of OO...they were looking for a steward at the time, and simply rejected any 'outside' ideas for direction, etc. Seems they were and still are rudderless for the Mac port effort.
I spent 6 months trying to get someone to take my offer to help seriously, and gave up. And don't get me started on the squabling on the Mac dev forums for OO...if you're not on the good old boys list, you ain't spit.
We may get a native StarOffice for OS X much sooner than OpenOffice. Sun Microsystems is pushing the Unified Desktop, debuting their new Solaris OS with a very Apple-ish dock. In fact, Sun urges its employees to utilize Macs at home.
If Sun and Apple start work together on this whole Unified Destop thingy, I would bet StarOffice would be one of the first things ported to OS X. It would be a big boon for both Apple and Sun, anyway. Sun would squeeze into the desktop market, and Apple would squeeze into the enterprize market.
doesn't vi come installed by default?
experimental audiovideo minimalism: Rebuild All Your Ruins
I am quite amused by the fact that a proper Mac OS X port of OpenOffice quite literally could pay for itself... buy 20 developers some nice refurbished 1.25GHz G4s and OS X 10.2/10.3, and then charge $100 a copy for OpenOffice Pro while providing a slimmed down 10mb OpenOffice Express...
If Microsoft can make a lot of money from Macs, why wouldn't/couldn't OpenOffice?
GPL Deconstructed
1) Thanks to that sumbitch George "Government do take a bite, don't she?" Bush, I can no longer afford to move (anywhere).
Yeah, I hear he can be a dick.
2) It get's COLD up there. I don't mean just cold, I mean cut-through-the-bone painful cold. At least I won't have to worry about a cooling system on my PC, I guess.
It's pretty cold, its true, but many parts are warmer or the same as the states.. don't forget a good chunk of Southern Ontario is below the 49th parallel (lot of Americans get very confused by the idea of any part of Canada being south of them...)
3) Quebec.
Point taken. Counterpoint: Quebec women.
6) No Tex-Mex food that I know of.
Huh?!? That's not true...
7) High tax rates.
Yup. Gets you stuff though. *ahem*medicalcare*ahem*
8) Quebec. Again. I really don't like Quebec. Nor does the rest of Canada, I suspect. I could be wrong, but every time Quebec wants to secede, I bet the rest of Canada is muttering under their breath: "Go ahead. Please. Do it. For the luvva Bobby Hull, just do it. Now!"
Welll.. its sorta true. Sorta. My solution was to let them secede, then invade immediately. Conquer 'em fair and square like we used to.
On the plus side - 1) Real snow
You will re-evaluate that plus side. Or, move to British Columbia where snow is totally optional.
2) Politeness. Canada may be full of assholes for all I know - but you never hear about them. Maybe they all live in Quebec. That would explain a lot, really.
No comment.
3) Vancouver - never been there, but I hear it rocks.
Vancouver does indeed rock other than the fact that it rains 90% of the time. But yes.
4) Quebec - all the pleasures of France right next door. It's hard to type with a straight face.
Nonono, you've got it wrong - it's 'All the Snobbiness and None of the Culture of France'
5) Hockey
Hey! You guys know about hockey???
6) Newfoundland - when you want solitude, I hear they got it by the bushel.
Well you've got that right - Newfoundland is basically the area surrounding the highway between Quebec and Nova Scotia. :)
Some other bonus points you may be interested in include topless women, pot smoking, and drinking at 18 but I won't bore you with the details.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Marketing! Branding! How well do many people know (or care) that Safari == KHTML?
If you produce a product called Productivity Plus and Productivity Pro, one being a word processor/spread sheet package, and the other throwing in a few other tools + integration with the iApps, and then give it the nifty Aqua finish...
Why would anyone expect it to be Free?
GPL Deconstructed
Surely the X11 version should be fine for 99% of Mac users? BTW, if you haven't tried OOo 1.1 yet, you're missing out on something great. Go fetch an RC now and try it out!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Yeah, I can afford a computer, but I have to steal to keep food on the table. Nope, you lose.
Computers are not a requirement for life.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
It is all about time. There are three very active Mac developers working on Mac stuff. They have had to fight bad compilers from Apple and have some a long way in an incredibly short time. There is a lot of people interested in the aqua port but few willing to scratch the itch in coding support. If you are volunteering I will see you on porting@OOo :-)
On the Mac port. The X windows for 1.1 is progressing nicely. The main porters get a lot of support from Sun in terms of answers but no other real support. One of them were given a new computer to ensure they work faster. There will be intermediate releases along the way but the full package will indeed take sometime to complete.
Frankly I am impressed by the amount of time and energy these Mac guys put in. They have had problems with compilers that have only really just been resolved by Apple.
Regarding support for new developers unfortunately there are still problems getting a build bedded down for new developers in OOo. All at dev@OOo will help anybody interested in having a go. Start at http://tools.openoffice.org and read the ximian hackers guide to start with.
Yes, it's business politics (also known as 'competition'). Apple would have to have major chutzpah to actively & publicly contribute to OOo on MacOS. Knowing their track record and specific software strengths, how good would an Apple-ized version of OOo turn out? It would be kick-ass, and immediately popular (see: Safari, iTMS, etc). In the ensuing paid office suite market meltdown, MS would drop Office for the Mac market faster than you can say "legally definsible reasons for doing so - Thanks Apple!" How would this then bide for Mac market position? Cue waves of articles with words like 'beleaguered' and 'abandoned', and this time they may have some merit.
That's not to say that the company isn't savvy, and could wisely be working on an Office replacement (OOo-based or otherwise) just in case MS decides to throw down the gauntlet one day. They have done this in the past (eg. Marklar), but you'd never hear them announce projects such as these publicly.
Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Am I just focused on a particular aspect of the open source landscale? or are there fair number of open source products owned by a corporation with a vested interest in its direction?
The Register spoke with Dan Williams (one of developers) whose said that they "may be able to wrangle a 1.5 release with our required changes or something. Others, like Ximian, want to add stuff to. So the long and short of it may be that there isn't an "official" Aquafied OpenOffice.org release until 2005 and OOo 2.0, but there could be an interim release". There is heaps more info in the article, so have a peek.