Friday Mac Release Roundup

An anonymous reader writes "The new RealPlayer 10 beta was released for Mac OS X. It's got a built-in web browser built off Apple's WebKit. This, along with all the Mac-specific UI tweaks, makes for a pretty solid release overall, imho." lucadex writes "Open Office 1.1.2 has been officially released on Mac OS X. This is the first official O.O. upgrade since version 1.0.3." Tom Davies writes "Oracle has released an early adopter's release of 10g for Mac OS X." adamhauner writes "Mozilla.org released final version of Camino 0.8, a Gecko-based browser optimized for Mac OS X with a Cocoa user interface. This version, besides having other new features, also upgrades the Gecko HTML rendering engine from Mozilla 1.0 to Mozilla 1.7."

Comments

OO.o still requires X11

[Vandil X]

As much as I enjoy using OO.o, I really hope an OSX-native version comes out some day.

A lot of people who install OSX for themselves never get around to installing X11.

Re:OO.o still requires X11

[otuz]

The native version is postponed to the 2.0 release.
It will be released in late 2005 or early 2006.

Re:OO.o still requires X11

[Aram Fingal]

The NeoOffice/J version of OO is much more OS X integrated than the main OO.o. It is still dependent on x11 but it allows cutting and pasting with other applications outside of x11 and runs much faster. The reason for OO.o's slowness is not x11, it's JAVA. Try out The GIMP in x11 on OS X. It's quite snappy, even on my 400 Mhz G3 PowerBook (Pismo). In fact, it seems faster than Photoshop 7 for some operations. I suppose that it would be better not to depend on x11 because it would allow for a UI more familiar to the average Mac user and because of the extra install but NeoOffice/J is quite usable.

Re:OO.o still requires X11

[squiggleslash]

The NeoOffice/J version of OO is much more OS X integrated than the main OO.o. It is still dependent on x11 but it allows cutting and pasting with other applications outside of x11 and runs much faster.

NeoOffice/J doesn't need X11.

I'm not sure that OO.o's slowness has anything to do with Java or X11, it's just slow. It's slow under Linux and under Windows and was slow when it was StarOffice and had nothing to do with Java. I suspect over time the code is going to be reviewed and this particular issue resolved.

Re:OO.o still requires X11

[.com b4 .storm]

I'd like to point out that there is a semi-native hack for OpenOffice called NeoOffice. It wraps OpenOffice in Java, which means you don't need to run X11 first, you can use native key bindings for everything, the system clipboard works properly, and (best of all) the native OS X print system is used.

Sure, the UI is still an ugly Windows-esque menu-in-the-window scheme, but it's better than nothing. :) I've been using it for my work and school papers, and found it to be as stable as an official OpenOffice build for OS X. It also seems to be a lot faster... initial startup time (because of Java) is as crappy as ever, but once it's running, it's a lot smoother.

Re:OO.o still requires X11

[soullessbastard]

Just an FYI, the slow startup time isn't actually due to Java. It's still 98% C/C++, and the slow startup time is actually due to inefficiencies in "ucb" and writing out an initial temporary registry database. That step is written in C++ and takes about 3 seconds by itself. Another large chunk of time is spent loading the hundreds of megs of shared libraries, all of which are written in C++.

The parts of it that are Java are actually on par, if not faster then their X11 equivalents. Feel free to break out Shark and take a look for yourself :)

ed

Re:OO.o still requires X11

[Ilgaz]

I have bought pure java office suite (thinkfree) as I got fed-up with OO problems (really, tried and tired)

It launches faster than X11 OpenOffice or MS Office :) Also made some evil tests while I was on trial, e.g. downloaded 400 page word docs, reformatted them etc, no speed problem while running.

So, your point must be right. Also if I understand it right (not a developer here) only "fast" launch time will happen when they move to 2.0 , e.g. native so it will be prebinded.

OO.o people, if you want to impress Mac users and really set an END to MS Office tyranny on Mac, go native. Real native I say. More native than MS Office even.

Good to see...

[plj]

...that OOo finally reached 1.1 on Mac, too. It has been pain for me to always print a PostScript file and then throw it to Preview just to get a PDF.

Btw, does anyone on /. have any suggestions for Windows/Linux/OS X cross platform office suite? We're currently planning to migrating most of our Windows desktop to Linux, but as we have to leave few boxes for specific purposes at least in the beginning, we will need cross-platform compatibility - and we also have Macs, which have to stay, although they need to be upgraded to OS X first.

OOo just isn't quite there, as I really can't force X11 apps down our Mac users' throats - they just feel way too different, and I haven't been able to find anything else, either. We could use different software for Macs, like we are actually doing now, and wait for OOo's upcoming Aqua-based 2.0 -version, but if anyone here does have better suggestions, I'd be glad to hear them.

Re:Good to see...

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Here's two options; I haven't tried either (but at one time the Apple Stores were selling ThinkFree office, if that means anything):

• AbiWord; appears to require X11, although the pages aren't clear from a skim.
• ThinkFree Office; java based. I think it might be ok, but only you know if it has the sophistication of features that you need.
  
  FWIW, a place to look for this sort of stuff is the Apple Products Guide as they'll list pretty much anything that works on the Mac. That means a lot of crap in the hits, but it's better than doing a "macintosh word processor" in Google. Usually.

Re:Good to see...

[Quobobo]

I'm not sure I completely understand (I might be totally off on this), but if you're printing that postscript file from the same Mac, couldn't you just save it as a PDF from the print menu, and bypass the middleman?

Re:Good to see...

[plj]

Well, if OOo would be an Aqua app, I could. But OOo as an X11 app has whatever print dialog it has, and no such an option. 1.1.2 should fix this, though, as it is able to create PDFs on its own, although release notes mentioned some limitations in compatibility of those PDFs.

RealPlayer is actually quite nice

[TomorrowPlusX]

You know, we all here have a tradition of saying nasty things about Real player...

Well, I want to stand up, stick my neck out, and say "Sorry! You guys seem to have made up for it!"

As a Cocoa programmer who just doesn't understand why big companies don't dive in and *properly* port their software, I'm impressed that Real has written what seems to be a real, honest-to-god cocoa app. The preferences window is a *real* Mac OS X prefs window. The app behaves like a proper document-based app, where the program won't shut down if you close all the files. And so on, and so on; I'm really impressed.

And, while I have no idea what it's like on windows ( I haven't touched a windows box in at least a year ), real player is being quite nice about not stealing your file associations, unlike what I remember a few years ago on Win2K. It doesn't hide anything as far as I can tell, and the default associations are not only few, but reasonable.

Good show, real. I think I'm *finally* going to pay for your product.

Re:RealPlayer is actually quite nice

[TomorrowPlusX]

I want to add something regarding porting software to native mac OS X. Last year I ported a program I've been working on which allows for development of behavioral AI for robots in a relatively nice physics simulated environment. The whole thing isn't that big, about 50 kloc, ( not including the physics engine, which I got from http://ode.sf.net ).

Anyway, when I ported it from Qt/KDE on linux, I decided to go native, and wrote a full cocoa gui.

http://home.earthlink.net/~zakariya/files/TooCom pl ex3.png
[the filename refers to my current project to refactor the gui]

Not only was it not hard at all, but the overall design of cocoa makes separation of core logic from presentation relatively easy. My simulation, my core APIs and so on were completely unchanged. All I really did was write some new interface code. In fact, Cocoa made it so damn easy my Gui became richer and and order of magnitude more complete.

My smooth and comfortable experiences doing this make me frustrated when I see shoddily written ports to Mac OS X. Cocoa is like mana from heaven. You get to keep your core C/C++ and just make a binding to the UI. Who can complain about that? Plus you get to use one of the most beautiful procedural languages available ( IMNSHO ) Objective-C.

Anyway, that's just my 2 cents.

Re:RealPlayer is actually quite nice

[RdsArts]

Since you like Cocoa, you might also want to look at GNUStep on the GNU/Linux and *N*X side of things. It attempts to provide the next-step-after-OpenSTEP UI toolkit, and even brings some of the Cocoa APIs as well.

Best of all, I hear taking code from it to OS X is just a quick recompile for a native experience, which is always nice. You can see screenshots of a app that does just that here.

Camino is fantastic

[Lewisham]

To all those people who, for some reason, seem to enjoy insane load times and lack of real nativity at the Altar of Firefox, please try Camino. It is actually now quicker at rendering than Safari (or at least it appears to human usage), and is written in full Cocoa. Do try it if you're using anything else. If development keeps apace, I don't think even Safari 2 would make me change.

Hope Oracle actually ships it

[wandazulu]

I was really burned when Oracle failed to deliver a production quality "we stand behind it" version of 9i for OSX. I had been trying to convince my bosses that OSX could be a real contender for our back-office apps because not only was it an industrial-strength Unix, but that it also had Oracle (which is our DB).

They said they'd wait till it actually shipped, but it never did. There's a ton of stuff Apple provides with the XServe that we could use (XSan definately springs to mind), but whereas we don't do cool rendering or whatnot, we want the boxes for more mundane, database-driven stuff.

On this I sort of blame Apple too, they seem to push the XServes as great for scientific or graphics crunching, but seem to neglect the possibility that their hardware could be used for decidely less sexy roles like serving up text-based data to thousands of users. I am *this* close to convincing the powers-that-be that not every Mac has to run Photoshop, but without the database (specifically Oracle), it won't even be considered.

Re:Web browser?

[PsychoSpunk]

Yeah, that part about using Apple WebKit means that it's using the framework automatically provided by the OS.

Camino? Use Firefox instead.

[bahamat]

Ok, I love Aqua. My main gripe about Firefox is that it uses GTK widgets and not native Cocoa widgets.

I've given both Camino and Safari their due attention and a very fair chance to become my default browser. Safari gets an extra point because I like the brushed metal. Camino gets an extra point because of type-ahead find. But so far nothing beats the AdBlock extention for Firefox.

If could get AdBlock type blocking on Safari I'd finally make the full leap.

Re:The problem with Camino

[hunterx11]

What's bizarre is that the middle button works in Safari, despite the whole one button mouse policy. I'd like to know if Steve Jobs actually uses an Apple mouse :)

Read the Installer FAQ

[soullessbastard]

The first place to start would be to read through the official OOo 1.1.2 Installer FAQ which has answers to this as well as other support issues and questions. There are a number of other FAQs on trinity that can help you address problems.

Also don't be afraid to post and browse through the online support forums where users exchange hints, tips, bug reports, and the like.

All of us volunteers have put up extensive OOo support resources for Mac OS X users, and there are links to all of them on the "Support" section of our website and even in the README included with the installer itself! We spend a lot of time helping users get things working. If something doesn't work, why not try taking advantage of all the written documentation and live volunteer support? It seems that open source is no different then commercial apps...people still don't read the manuals ;)

ed

(PS: the answer to your problem is that OOo is already installed by that point in the install process...you may just be missing one or two fonts, but it works just fine)

There is no Java in OOo

[soullessbastard]

(Disclaimer: I'm the lead volunteer for OOo Mac OS X)

There is no Java in OpenOffice.org. It is just horribly inefficient C++. The only time Java is used in OOo Mac OS X is during the build process to validate some XML configuration documents; at runtime it doesn't need Java at all. That's why it's possible to run on DarwinPPC even though you can't compile it on DarwinPPC.

Remember, it wasn't written by Sun, but by Star Division. It was started back in the mid to early 1990s and was definitely back in the day before the AWT was anywhere near stable or cross platform. It may have even been started before Java, but I'm unsure of the timelines.

ed