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Aqua OpenOffice.org v2.0 Cancelled
Ant writes "According to MacSlash's story, a recent post on OpenOffice.org said no Mac OS X work has been done since 2003 and that there are no longer any plans for an Aqua version 'due to various licensing, political, and fundamental engineering difficulties'. :("
Open Source fail it? That's unpossible?!
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
Forgive my ignorance, but doesn't OS X include an X11 server? Is there any major drawback to running OpenOffice as an X11 application rather than a native one?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
FTA as a reason not to do Quartz or Aqua "X11 Will Always Look like Other Platforms: Many people deploying OpenOffice.org count the identical look and feel on all supported platforms as a major benefit. It helps them reduce training and, in many cases, implement a single multi-platform solution using OpenOffice.org as middleware (such as extendedPDF). Any native work that changes the interface would remove this as a critical selling point for OpenOffice.org for these users."
;)
Umm, I have yet to hear one negative comment regarding Aqua interfaces (done right). This comment appears to be nothing but pure FUD. If anything, an Aqua UI would make an OOo suite EASIER to use on an OS X system.
But, again, whatever. I can't wait to get ahold of Pages. Apple seems to have finally woken up and realized they need their own (updated) office/productivity suite. OOo is great and all, but if their team seems to have the attitude "one platform, one UI" is better, I'll pass.
Besides, there's always NeoOffice/J to root for!
It's disappointing news, but at least there's still the NeoOffice project. Its was originally intended to be a place for experimenting with the issues involved in a native OS X port, but if the office OOo project won't be doing it hopefully NeoOffice will get more support as the primary (er, only) Aqua version.
neooffice does it very well
Except for that in the first paragraph of the article it says that a port is being released by NeoOffice. Did anyone even rtfa?
Thank you. Billy
With Apple now getting into the office suite arena, I'm far more inclined to buy it then get the free Open Office anyways.
Yes, I'm willing to pay for superior alternatives.
It's possible to compile OpenOffice using Qt for the interface (e.g. in OpenOffice/KDE). Since Qt is available with an Aqua frontend, why not use that?
It wouldn't provide overly tight integration with the MacOS X user interface, but it would be way better than today's X11-based OpenOffice.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
I like Neo Office just fine. All the grit and power of x11 with the nice aqua wrapper and menus.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
I'm not too familiar with the office products for a Mac, but doesn't Microsoft offer an Office product for it?
If open source hopes to compete with Microsoft, they are going to just have to offer support for THE open office standard.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Honestly, how many Mac users would bother with the perpetually vapourware Aqua OOo when they could get iWork? Free software (both senses) is great, but there are some times when it's worth it to pay. Once iWork adds a spreadsheet component, there won't be much reason to think about using OpenOffice stuff on a Mac.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
One more point to bring up when people ask my why on earth I'm running linux on my ibook. :-D
Seriously, that's bad. I knew that there weren't many people involved in porting it and I expected it to take longer than planed, but I never imagined it would simply be canceled.
Does somebody know what those political and licensing issues were in particultar?
The story isn't very informative, but since the Neooffice people seem to have a good port underway for OS/X, there isn't a lot of reason to go after pure aqua anyway. If this brings more resources to the Neooffice folks, then I don't see this as a bad thing at all.
Just a happy Neo Office user who loaded in a bunch of Excel sheets annd got a lot of work done.
Other than being free, I don't see what OpenOffice has to offer on the OS X platform. KeyNote works great, version 2.0 looks even better, and for those who care (and I'm one of them), the file format is xml-based and completely transparent. The OS X paradigm of encapsulating applications and documents in a directory instead of some gigantic kludgy single file means you can go into a .key file and see all the images and movies you've added to the presentation, as well as a single "presentation.apxl" file that contains the presentation itself in a completely obvious xml format.
.edu discount.
The new word processing program for the Mac announced at this year's MacWorld, called Pages, was written by the same team that wrote KeyNote and presumably uses the same open file formats.
And these programs together are $79; even less if you can get the
There's no Apple spreadsheet program (yet)...
This makes AbiWord's introduction of a Cocoa port even more newsworthy, in my opinion. Yes, I know it's not as robust an offering (I'm not sure how it could be with drastically different methods of development), but being able to read documents across the three major platforms in the same native format is a huge plus for me. YMMV, though.
Ant writes "According to MacSlash's story, a recent post on OpenOffice.org said no MacOS X work has been done since 2003 and that there are no longer any plans for an Aqua version 'due to various licensing, political, and fundamental engineering difficulties'. :("
It says nothing of the kind. From the link:
Due to various licensing, political, and fundamental engineering difficulties it is likely, for the near future, that native Aqua porting work will be based off of the NeoOffice.org project and not under the direct aegis of OpenOffice.org.
and
For the last year and a half all engineering work focusing on a native Mac OS X OpenOffice.org version has been concentrated in the NeoOffice/J project, using a combination of Java and Carbon technologies to replace X11.
What it looks like is that they have recognised that NEOoffice is a valid port, and any Aqua port by themselves would be a duplication of effort. The Slashdot story blurb makes it sound like they just gave up because it was too hard. They call this journalism now?
OpenOffice is one of those "business" applications that engineers need. Spreadsheets are used to draw graphs predicting the ascent of your own products and the demise of your competitor. Wordprocessors are needed to write engineering reports.
IBM has exited the PowerPC workstation market. Apple could be the de factor manufacturer of PowerPC workstations. A tieup between IBM and Apple would be a formidable force.
The workstation market is large enough for 2 major competing processors: AMD64 (and the Intel clone!) and PowerPC. (UltraSPARC is already dead.) Having two competitors is better than having monopoly (i.e. just AMD64), for competition spurs development and price reductions. The ultimate winner is the consumer.
remember, OOo is very much sun backed, the company who believe that a native java UI (Swing) is better than tight integration with the base OS.
Its interesting that the windows version doesnt have a native X11 version (obviously) and the standalone download does look different from star office. So consistency in look and feel isnt that high.
First of all, this is NOT related to Apple announcing iWork. At all. No, there's no conspiracy.
Second, this is OLD news. Anyone who's even remotely followed OpenOffice.org Mac OS X porting work knew any potential Aqua port was on the back burner. Way on the back burner. With the stove unplugged.
Third, the X11 port will ALWAYS continue to exist.
Fourth, there is a Mac OS X graphical port, albeit via Java, in the form of NeoOffice (1, 2). This project has come a LONG way since its relatively recent inception, and is an impressive work melding OpenOffice with the Mac OS X look and feel. There's more work to be done, but the latest 1.1 development release is impressive.
Fifth, there are gargantuan technical hurdles to maintaining a full Aqua port of OpenOffice without greater engineering support (perhaps from the likes of Sun, who has shown zero interest in maintaining OpenOffice for Mac OS X, much less maintaining a commercial StarOffice for Mac OS X). These are all detailed here, incidentally by one of NeoOffice's chief representatives.
So calm down. This isn't an Apple conspiracy, or the end of OpenOffice for Mac OS X. OpenOffice will continue, in X11 form AND in the likes of things such as NeoOffice. If anyone is to blame for the official OpenOffice.org Aqua port going by the wayside, frankly, it's a lot closer to Sun than anyone else.
The x11 port works as well as it does on other platforms, i.e. it's great unless you want ms-office compatibilityl. The OSX port would add eye candy and a more conventional OSX "feel." I suppose it would also support fonts (which mac users have in massive numbers). But would these things be enough to make users switch? I think not.
Folks who want full ms-office compatibility will use ms-office or, perhaps, the upcoming iWork. nd folks who can live with something that is not ms-office compatible (and I stipulate that OO is not) will probably be just as happy to use the existing x11 interface.
Me? For committee work (which demands ms-office compatibility), I'll use ms-office. For presentations I'll use keynote, unless I'm sharing it and therefore using PowerPoint. For my research writing I'll use latex. For my friends I'll use a fountain pen. Hm... OO doesn't fit in anywhere :-(
it's a scam
it's a scam
it's a scam
The way such free offers work is, they recruit you to spam all your friends (or slashdot as the case may be) and in the process of collecting referrals, start selling off your contact info and email address to companies. Intelligent spammers at work.
> Umm, I have yet to hear one negative comment
> regarding Aqua interfaces (done right).
Icons on the red, green and yellow buttons are first
seen when you have the mouse pointer over them.
I belive this is *negative*.
"But C is portable, why are they having portability problems when C is sooooooo portable? Thank god they didn't do it in Java, because java isn't really portable, not like C, and it'd be slow if it was in java, even slower than it's already glacial performance, and it might use lots of RAM, more than that 100 MB it uses now. It'd also slow downt he probject, because C is easier to write than Java, everybody knows C, but there aren't any CS departments that base their courses on Java, who cares about java...."
Seriously, we really need a suite of JAVA tools, like word processors, spreadsheets, web browsers, etc... No more of this "well, it works on Windows, if you want it on Linux or Mac though we'll have to sit down and write it all over again, and probably introduce a ton of bugs....." stuff.
What good is a program that depends on exact versions of 50 libraries (yeah, like I'll be able to reinstall that in 5 years and have even an outside shot at it working) and only works on a couple platforms, if you're lucky. Portability isn't an advantage, it's a requirement. If you're portable spatially (to different platforms) today, then you'll probably be portable temporally (to different time periods) tomorrow. If you can't even get it to run on most of the platforms that exist TODAY, then what makes you think it'll run on the newfangled computer that is going to come out 5 years from now? You've just given you work a lifespan of only a couple years, why would you do such a thing. I know I don't get up in the morning and say to myself "I think I'll do something excruciatingly difficult, and I'll do it in such a way that I'm guaranteed to have to come back and do it again in a couple of years".
Let the C loving rants begin. I'm sure there will be several responders who say "But C is portable and fast" utterly ignoring the ponderous quantity (OOO, Mozilla, virtually every game ever made, etc..) of evidence indicating that the difficulty faced in porting is immense, and when you make your own custom hacked windowing system to speed the process (Mozilla), it ends up being a slow RAM hog, even more so than it would be if it was written in JAVA, or another portable language to begin with.
I really just wish lots more programmers would grow up, then there'd be more good toys to play with.
You can't ignore the largest Unix vendor in the world: Apple. You're just cutting your own throat if you ignore a huge segment of the market for your software. Projects succeed when people USE the software.
That's why. It's not native to Aqua and it shows. Mac people like polished apps, and Qt apps simply look like they've been poorly ported from Windows.
Apple is not OSS friedly. Sure, there is that whole Darwin thing, but really, they take a lot and don't give much back. If companies aren't going to give back a little for as much as they have recieved, I say this is good.
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Why on earth would Apple sue OpenOffice.org to death? I don't buy the 'just because they can' argument, since it simply doesn't make business sense.
If Microsoft has so far restrained itself from suing the OOo developers (though, from what I've heard they've come close), why would Apple do it?
In my view, what Apple should have done is included support for the open standards that OOo, StarOffice (and, i'd guess NeoOffice.org, but i don't know) in iWork. I can understand why they left out spreadsheet functionality -- they realise that it is important to keep MS producing Office for the mac, as it's going to be a long time before there is serious enterprise takeup of open standards, and even those who work in macs core industries (print, design, etc.) need to have office functionality for it to make business sense.
"Nothing can shake my belief that this world is the fruit of a dark god whose shadow I extend." - Emil Michel Cioran
I'm personally not very certain the bloated Office for Mac will continue forever. Not certain at all. Each time it looks like less and less of an effort was made.
OpenOffice is fast, pretty sleek, and pretty dang compatible. If Office SBE didn't come with my XP laptop, I would have just passed on it, and used OpenOffice. It's more than enough for most users.
This makes Apple depend more on Microsoft for it's remaining business market. This isn't good. AppleWorks/i{Product} isn't good enough for corporate use.
IMHO Apple would be wise to invest a bit to bring OpenOffice to the Mac. Even if it's not quite Aqua. Something simple to install, fast, and stable.
Apple needs a business suite. OpenOffice is currently the only non-microsoft product with potential to stand up against Office. It's got the necessary features, and compatibility.
Apple would be wise to put a few employees on OpenOffice and get some builds churning. Apple needs that security.
http://www.ragtime-online.com/ it beats Openoffice hands down. just my ,02
thank you captain obvious.
Mod parent down! No one has ever claimed Slashdot is any way related to journalism. Geeze, talk about building up a strawman just to knock it down. :)
(Actually, mod it up. Pretty informative.)
STFU, at least i have my iLife with my ibook and my imac and my ipod and my iphoto and my ishuffle and my imac mini and my imovie and my itunes so fuck off go play with your "l33t nix boxen d00d"
The java-nised NeoOfficeJ is the project you're talking about. It runs in darwin and works. The official openoffice requires xdarwin and runs as good as your X.
i've been a Linux user for about 10 years and a Mac user for about 2. when i went to install OpenOffice on my ibook i had to jump through hoops i hope to never have to jump through again.
So bad where these hoops that i've pretty much tossed OO (using X11) and am using NeoOfficeJ with fairly good success.
If the OO team wants Mac users to migrate from MS Office to OO it would probably be smart to focus some time and energy on a native port. Very few people are willing to take all the necessary steps to get OO running on OS X with X11. not only that but it's slow, doesn't have nearly as nice an interface, and DRINKS DOWN the memory.
nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
Ask Microsoft how well Word would be accepted if it didn't follow the basic UI outlines of the Mac OS. There used to be a time when Word (and all Microsoft products) made up their own key combos, their own look and feel and were generally willy nilly -- a lot like many X11 offerings now. Word was the same on Windows (albeit 3.11) and Mac (6 or 7) but it didn't play well with the other programs.
As a tech support, do you think you'd get more questions from people about why copy and paste doesn't use the same buttons on the Mac/PC/Linux versions or do you think users are more likely to not understand this one program that doesn't act anything like the other Mac programs? How many users are going to hop from machine to machine versus program to program? And then consider that it is just a word processor. Screw it. I wouldn't want those support calls.
This has been the downfall of many otherwise fine pieces of software on the Mac OS. It's users expect consistancy.
I looked at OOo with the thought of helping out with the native port, but recoiled when I actually looked at ths sheer size and complexity and skill necessary. Another important point in the linked post is that moving to Aqua will take "a couple thousand hours of developer time," which I actually think is being optimistic. Unless an experienced somebody or, more likely, team of sombodies is willing to put their nose to the project 40 hours a week, like it's a full time job, it's not going to happen. And even if it does happen, it will break compatibility with the rest of OOo.
OOo, I'm sorry to see you go. At this point it might be easier to start from AbiWord and move out to develop a full office suite on the Mac. The tension between being "Mac-like" and coordination with the rest of OOo -- which isn't anywhere near as mature as MSO, yet, anyway -- is too great.
They could even outsource it to the good guys at The Omni Group, who seem to have a handle on making beautiful Aqua applications, and have experience porting applications to the Mac platform.
At any rate, they need to be prepared for the inevitable dropping of Mac support from MS Office. Internet Explorer was just a warning shot, but now that Apple is poised to step further into Microsoft's perceived territory, retaliatory strikes are simply a matter of when, not if.
First of all, we have some nice, juicy, out of context quotes like this one:
no MacOS X work has been done since 2003
when in fact the page linked to states:
all engineering for OpenOffice.org Mac OS X has been focused on X11 graphics, that is, OpenOffice.org Mac OS X (X11).
Then, faithful Slashdot reader, we are informed that: there are no longer any plans for an Aqua version 'due to various licensing, political, and fundamental engineering difficulties'. :(
When in fact, although there will not be an official OOo in Aqua, there is this:
For the last year and a half all engineering work focusing on a native Mac OS X OpenOffice.org version has been concentrated in the NeoOffice/J project, using a combination of Java and Carbon technologies to replace X11.
So you can just use NeoOffice/J
So basically what we have are a group of developers not willing to take the time and effort to go headlong into learning a specific OS's nuances and tweaks, and majority reworking the code to run natively in OS X, but who will keep making an X11 version that keeps up with the other platforms, and there is a 2nd set of developers working that into a native port. Doesn't seem like the end of the world to me.
So have no fear, OOo is here to stay on OS X, and NeoOffice/J is here to work on a native port.
e to the pi i plus one equals zero
The only overlap to me is really PowerPoint (or whatever the OO version is called) and Keynote - the second program announced, Pages, is really more of a simple layout program that a word processor.
So I don't think Pages will take away much market from either Word or OO Word, as it is meant for different things.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just want to say how much my stomach lurched when reading this on the front page.
I love OS X, it's the only platform for me, it's incredible 'fit and finish' makes it such a nice place to be, and I have been hoping for over a year now for the Aqua OOo to be delivered.
Currently we only really have MS Office on the platform, and some smaller individual app (non-suite) offerings... this is such a disappointment. I have known for a long time that the project was struggling, but I had never imagined it could be cancelled.
I'm really upset I now have to keep using MS Office, but I do offer my extreme thanks to those people who have put work into the project so far... I'm sure they are more upset than me.
- Nex
This sig has been deprecated.
I read awhile ago that Sun and Apple were talking about this and it was pretty clear Apple was not fused about getting OO working %100 in OSX. And now with there own one coming out I can see why.
"The most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to lose." - James Baldwin, American author
Why? I thought this also. I think that iWork might've been the final 'push' to this decision...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
One problem with this is that X11 is not installed by default in Panther. You have to choose "Customize" and then click on X11. As most people don't know what it is for, most will not install it. This, more than perhaps anything else, is a hurdle for basic Mac users.
I really was hoping for an Aqua port that worked well. X11 is just a bit of a pain for those who thrive on Apple's consistent UI.
iWork looks nice (I played with it more than a bit at MacWorld this week), but I would prefer OO in Aqua (Pages, to me, seems more of a page layout tool than simple text editor that replaces Word).
In short, there's still plenty of options (even TextEdit is a fine basic editor), but I had really been hoping this would come through. Let's hope that things may change and a port comes through in the next few years.
I like Apple stuff too, but this is just stupid rapid fanboyism.
1) Do you have iWork yet? Can you say what about it makes it "superior"
2) What part of the "superior" iWork replaces the spreadsheet functionality of OpenOffice.org?
Undoubtedly, the iWork stuff is going to fit in with the Mac "experience" flawlessly, but to say that there is no value to OOo now is ridiculous. I haven't seen any indication of iWork's MS office compatibility, have you? That tends to be a fairly important part of an office suite these days.
GCJ
for stringing us along!
http://www.apple.com/opensource/
How do you like the contributions to KHTML that Apple provided? What about the PPC additions to GCC?
They are fully compliant with the licenses of the software they use and modify. Did they have to give the Streaming Server to Open Source? No. Did they have to open source Rendezvous? No.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The licensing, political, and fundamental engineering difficulties=introduction of iLife and paper and stuff...
They wouldn't be able to do it right anyway. Seriously, a lot of people are under the misconception that Aqua is a set of nifty-looking widgets. It's an interface standard for clean apps.
If your app has some shitty Office-like toolbar consisting of a row of 20 NSButtons, that's a shitty design. If your app's preferences are organized into 3 rows of 10 tabs each, that's a shitty design. If you can find the same function in 4 different places, that's a shitty design. Doesn't matter if it has an Aqua titlebar and Aqua buttons. Look to Office 2004 as an example of how Aqua cannot save fundamentally bad UI design. The OO.org guys would've just made the same mistake.
Since Apple is now friendly to hackers by having made OS/X and Aqua open, it should be ease to port Open Office to the Mac.
Openoffice is a great office suite, but it reminds me of mozilla, what we really need is a set of re-engineered applications with the same core (smaller-lighter-easier just like mozilla's firefox and thunderbird).
_________________________________________________ Just another Crazy Linux/Perl Maniac
So there could be as many as three OS X versions -- NeoOffice/J, X11 and "native." With different license possibilities for each. It gives me a headache just trying to keep it straight on paper, let alone trying to somehow coordinate all three of these efforts.
If Microsoft has so far restrained itself from suing the OOo developers (though, from what I've heard they've come close), why would Apple do it?
/. story)
well Apple is actually one of the more trigger-happy companies when it comes to suing. Even suing their own fan web sites for talking about coming products (ref. earlier
Has anyone tried hiring a MacOS X developer or consultant to port OO.org to MacOS X? It seems like a native OO.org isn't really desired if all people do is complain that a nativa MacOS X OO.o doesn't exist and someone else won't do the work for free. Perhaps a bunch of MacOS X users would be willing to chip in US$20 to pay for something that can get the ball rolling.
Digital Citizen
Heard about iWork! It totaly did it! Nothing more, nothing less.
Given the fact that a pyramid scheme is guaranteed to leave the vast majority of the people who get sucked into it with absolutely nothing, do you actually expect you have a good chance to get your free stuff? What makes you luckier than the next guy?
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
There is a certain amount of logic to the idea that they should focus on X11. But the truth is that if Apple really wanted an Aqua version, there would be one. Apple has been known to be rather snobby, and they're probably suffering a bit from the NIH complex, because they're working on their own productivity suite.
It's kinda like expecting really good support from Apple for Mozilla when they'd rather push Safari.
It's not native to Aqua and it shows. Mac people like polished apps
Me: "Check out this cool new Open Source iPod app. It's on Linux and Windows too, I think."
Them: "Neat. It does a lot more than iTunes. Flac and Ogg transcoding? Cool. Syncing to multiple machines? Wicked. Built-in web server to browse/share my collection online? Awesome. Wish I could use it too."
Me: "Hey, here's the OSX version. You can use it!"
Them: "Hmmm. The buttons look crappier than iTunes. Scroll bars look weird. I'll keep using iTunes, thanks."
Well, I do understand their reasoning, and as others have pointed out, Apple will always be a "niche market" for OOo.
Of course, as a mac user I am somewhat pissed off that the platform is being relegated to the status of a second-class citizen. OSX X11 takes quite a while to start up, and incurs a NOTICABLE overhead compared to the Windows native version of OpenOffice.
Also, on a platform that makes it name based on simplicity, having to install X11, with its cumbersome (and possibly confusing to users with no *NIX familiarity) configuration choices may drive users away.
On the flip side of this coin, Apple's iWork suite may get a boost from this (OpenOffice will never be native, iWork is native & integrates seamlessly with the rest of the iEverything world), which will help Apple's bottom line - so this isn't all bad.
Still, I was hoping for a native OpenOffice in v 2.0. Cest' la vie.
/~mikeg
I personally feel that while in an ideal world Java would be good solution, I'm not convinced its the answer to all the world's software portability problems.
ANSI C is very portable. It's also utterly useless for things like GUI applications, unless you feel that writing your own GUI toolkit and low-level system interface is fun. Portability problems are introduced by the system APIs and GUI toolkits used to do interesting things - not by the language.
Java provides a standard GUI toolkit, plus some very good abstractions of platform APIs. If, however, you want to go beyond those platform APIs, you're back at square 1 - re-implementing the platform service, or writing an interface to it to abstract it for cross platform use. Bang! Your Java app just ceased to be portable.
To get the sort of OS integration the mac users rant about, I'd be very surprised if you didn't have to write a few extensions for platform API interfaces.
Another issue with Java is the GUI toolkit. IMO Swing is clunky, ugly, and gives everybody the SAME poor "user experience". Even tools like JEdit that I've seen held up as examples of how well things can work feel pretty painful in my experience when compared to a native app. I'd find Java a lot more interesting if Sun would bite the bullet and put their weight behind SWT.
In the mean time, I'll be sticking to C++ and Qt - IMO the next best thing for portability, and much better when it comes to GUI work. Of course, Qt borrows liberally from the Java APIs where they're good, and I'll for that.
As for Mozilla, I'm pretty sure they implement their own GUI toolkit - not a window system. I'm with you on the slow RAM hog, though.
I'm not one to argue that Java is fast, but IMO until they Sun addresses the Swing albatross Java won't be a viable first choice for implementing serious GUI applications where "user experience" is a major concern.
I think more "real" concern is that there's no native language input support though.
For example, there's no practical way of using Japanese input system like ATOK and Kotoeri under X11 app, and even simply making it display Japanese, I have to tweak a lot of different files, and then it looks ugly as font choices are pretty limited to fonts that sucks. (beside, I actually ahve to get special font, just for it -- can't use built in fonts.)
So, for most Japanese users (or Chinese, Korean, or others who use many two byte languages, OpenOffice won't ever be a viable choice on Mac.
Many others have mentioned GCJ, and that's all fine. Personally, I'm not convinced compiling to native code is necessary a lot of the time. The JVM is awfully fast for most tasks already (though RAM consumption can be an issue).
My (admittedly limited) experience has been that most of the performance issues with Java have been with Swing. I'd be interested in seeing how that was affected by native compilation, but I'm not aware of any project that can do that yet. A native _implementation_ of Swing for a platform would interest me more.
I do not agree!
... Mac users like that.
t er_osx.png
- 20040101.png
a re_ms_osx.png
Qt apps can look quite nice on MacOSX, okay it OpenWriter will not look as native as Apple's own 'Pages'.
Pages:
http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/word.html
Native Mac apps often have different GUI layouting. An as you say...
> Mac people like polished apps
OSX apps do not just use Aqua for the Widgets, they have a completely diferent approach to GUI design!
I think the Qt NWF http://people.redhat.com/dcbw/ooo-nwf.html
will be a good basis for a version of OOo that blends in with MasOSX, since:
- Qt uses more native Aqua routines in every new release
- if there is a MacOSX version of OOo using Qt-lib then it will be much easier to just ajust the GUI of OOo that it matches the OSX feel (i.e. get some nice big icon in that toolbar)
Conclusion:
Yes, I do have confidence in the Qt road to a MasOSX port of OOo, because it is a much better startingpoint than the current OOo version running on OSX:
http://www.openoffice.org/screenshots/images/swri
Which is plain ugly (as you can see) and needs X11 AFAIK.
Just see how KOffice (using Qt) is doing in comparison:
http://ranger.befunk.com/screenshots/qt-mac-kword
And this is only a proof-of-concept kind of quick-port. No addional GUI refactoring has been done! Since that is what every GUI apps that is ported to OSX needs!
Last screenshot to prove my last statements:
http://www.openoffice.org/screenshots/images/comp
This is the current difference between OOoWriter-for-OSX an OSX' most used wordprocessor: MS Word. This prove 2 things IMHO:
- OSX users do massively use badly intergrated apps (i.e. MS Word)
- OOo cant get much worse...
_cies.
Surely if they maintain their positioning and colouring, then one doesn't need the icons at all.
In graphite mode, they may be all the same colour, but are still in the appropriate positions.
If I know the leftmost button closes the window, what does it matter if there's an icon there or not?
If you listen to Steve Jobs' presentation where he describes iWork, notice he says that they are hoping iWork will entirely replace AppleWorks. For those in the know, AppleWorks integrates a word processor and spreadsheet (and other stuff).
iWork is the potential M$ Office killer on the Mac platform. Is it free and open source? No, but Mac folks will stick to iWork like krazyglue in a nail salon.
If you want free and Aqua, NeoOffice or AbiWord are the way to go.
Microsoft to Apple: "OWNED!"
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
No offence, but your problem seems to be much more a user issue, than a computer one.
I'm a fairly recent Mac convert (who still works with x86 boxes), but the Mac has done nothing but continue to impress me with both its speed, and with it's depth (Most of the time, if you're still finding new capabilities with an app after 6 months of usage, it's indicative of a poorly designed GUI. With the Mac, there's just so damn many features/capabilities that they're often not evident to the casual user).
The file copying example you refer to could be many things, from software conflicts, to physical issues with the memory. There's just so many variables, it's not really answerable without more details (not that I'm trying to troubleshoot it... Just pointing out that your complaint can be applied just about any PC, dependant upon circumstances.). My guess is that your slow Mac may be running less than the optimal amount of memory (OSX is much more "memory hungy" than any MS OS).
I know that in my case. my Mac often copies small to medium sized files (less than 40mb) so quickly, I'll have to re-verify that the copy actually took place. And this is on a dual 2ghz Mac, with 512mb ram (which really needs to be upped to 2.5gb ASAP - Speed should increase quite a bit just getting it up to 1gb, as right now I've got a lot of disk swappin' going on).
I'm also unsure as to your Mac experience from your posting, but daily use of my Mac continues to improve my efficiency. You seem to be growing more frustrated with your Mac experience (which begs the question of why you're using it - Toss it my way if you'd like, and I'll put it good use!), whereas increased usage continually reassures me that my Mac was money well spent (and believe you me, it took me awhile to finaly take the plunge and buy me a Mac).
It's all been said before, but features which make the Mac great are many: Fast (contrary to your experiences), well thought out GUI and features, it's incredably easy to get to grips with just about any Mac program, and once you're ready, most apps offer a small ton of features which increases their value/longetivity even further.
Then of course, we have its Unix capabilities, Applescript, built in PHP, Perl, Ruby, Java, and all the dev tools one could ask for. All capable of system programming.
Then there's those programs which which make the Mac stand out so much over its competition: Delicious Monsters Library, the very impressive Platypus, and of course the "can't do without" Quicksilver.
I won't turn into a gloating "Mac Fanboy" here, but the Mac is a power users dream. Its power and efficiency continues to amaze me. I only hope that the MacMini allows "John Q. Public" to experience the joy that is OSX first-hand.
But, if people don't know how to program it..... This is what it becomes...
Take forexample this demo program here:
http://weston.kicks-ass.net/imsg.jnlp (Java webstart Required)
There is a 1/4 million row Table in this app. Just try doing this in any Gui toolkit rather than swing?!
Cheers,
Tony.
On the Mac platform, there's Microsoft Office available natively, and now Keynote and Pages. OpenOffice arguably competes with MS Office essentially only on the basis of price, not by being better. However, people who buy macs have already demonstrated a willingness to pay a premium so that things "work". Therefore, it's not worth the manpower to maintain a native port for a small percentage of a small market. I keep MS office around solely for opening other people's files, and use LaTeX, Matlab, and the Adobe products for preparing documents.
about usability, consistent interfaces, and Human Interface Guidelines.
Open Source cares about Programmer Interface Guidelenes, or rather Tweaker Interface Guidelines. And as usability isn't something that you can bolt on, Apple has to roll their own. And the clincher argument is those who think "Aquafication" consists of getting translucent dialogs into the app.
My mother can use apple software pretty well, but no way in hell can she use OOo or MS office. We'll see about iWorks.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Firstly the anouncement is purely for the Version 2.0 codeline. This is an excellent idea because it focusses everyones attention on getting the best Mac Port possible in the timeframe, not scattering resources trying many things.
The Mac effort is one of the most intense efforts in OOo today by FOSS developers. There are many volunteers and almost daily offers for additional help. So as they say, news of my (OOo) death is premature.
Ultimately the NEO office port will be merged with the mainline OOo. At this stage there are some issues with doing this cleanly so it is managed (extremely well) by a third party. This will continue until the whole thing becomes clean enough to merge. Try NEO if that works for you that is still a win for OOo in my book, I do not care about the brand name frankly my effort in making OOo better in a number of small ways is paying off, I am proud.
Finally do not forget that this is an Open Source development. Any predictions that something will not happen are just very unlikely because someone with a bee in his or her bonnet will do what you do not expect. If you want an Aqua port more you want a serious stable Office Suite using X on Mac then please by all means, do that.
I like the MAC hardware, I hate OSX. I have two MACs . A new one (g5) and an older one. I have Linux on both of them. So much better than the bloated OSX.
When rumors started spreading that Apple was making a new Office suite I was really really hoping they'd make it open and save using the standardised OpenOffice formats. Imagine - document compatible with OOo (which would have benefitted both Apple and OOo) yet a proper OS X interface! How sweet would that be?!? I'm so disappointed that they didn't do it! Likewise I think it's a shame that no other non-OOo programs (correct me here if I'm wrong!) fully support the OpenOffice formats.
OpenOffice is very nice, but like MS Office it has loads of features that I as a casual office app user rarely need. It would be great if I had a choice of office apps - some fast and basic ones for people like me, some feature rich ones like OOo for power users and maybe some inbetween too.
iWork, Abiword, K-Office, Gnumeric and of course OpenOffice/NeoOffice would all be so much more useful if they used compatible formats. And since OOo's formats have already been submitted to a standards organisation they seem a good one to use!
Ah well, one can dream....
Why can't X11 apps get dock icons in Aqua as they do in GNUStep? I realize Aqua's dock format isn't as powerful, but there has to be enough common ground for X11 apps to have their own icons.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
now not even open source guys want to support apple - let them do it all themselves and cater to the preppy's of the world - the rest of us will use linux :)
There ARE still plans to do OpenOffice.org 2.0 in Aqua. It's just going to be done as NeoOffice/J and not as an official OpenOffice.org port. Which is fine because the people who WERE working on the official OO.o port are now working on NeoOffice/J.
So it's the same thing. The guy who wrote that recent post on OO.o linked in the article *IS* one of the two main NeoOffice/J programmers.
This is a pretty misleading story headline.
Have you actually turned the computer on?
You deserve to be flamed for such a waste of a post that obviously is just an excuse to bitch about the Mac for no real reasons whatsoever.
A response to one of the oldest trolls ever is insightful?
reality is apple no longer encourages 3rd party developers on their platform... they have a 'holier than thou we can do it ourself' - open source is all about collaboration and if apple wont help then why should anyone help them?
A swing UI with a metal look and feel is often better than a UI with a native look and a developer's-platform-of-choice feel, since at least this way Java apps are consistent (at least in theory) and the user gets visual clues that they are different from the rest of the system (as happens when running Mac classic apps on OS X, for example).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yes - the Compatibility page for Pages says
and the Compatibility page for Keynote 2 has a table showing that it can read and write PowerPoint presentations.
Nothing about Excel spreadsheets, but given that iWork doesn't have a spreadsheet....
ANSI C isn't portable; it's only standardized.
Take a look at a wonderful list of C weirdness which is mandated by the ANSI C89 standard, but which is supported spottily across different platforms.
ANSI C doesn't even specify how large a char should be, for crying out loud. C is many things, but portable ain't one of them. Try taking a codebase written in ANSI C for an embedded microprocessor and compile it for Big Iron. Dollars to donuts says that somewhere in your codebase there are going to be implicit assumptions (about the size of a word, about how memory is allocated, etc.) which are going to be wildly platform-dependent.
ANSI C is standardized, which for some reason people confuse with being portable.
All this update to the timeline is saying is that the Aqua porting effort is being focused in NeoOffice/J. The headline that "Aqua OpenOffice 2.0 Cancelled" is misleading..
You'll get your 2.0, it'll just be called NeoOffice/J 2.0.
The guy who posted that update on OO.o's website is one of the two primary programmers for NeoOffice/J btw. He's just saying "I'm working over here instead..." but it's being taken WAY out of context.
iSee your point.
First, this isn't a surprise. They announced a while back that they might not even have an X11 port of OOo version 2 for OS X. While it is kinda crappy that they are completely abandoning it, there isn't much they can do if they don't have the developers.
As for their reasoning that an X11 port is better, it is completely flawed. Firefox shows that reason 1 and 2 are bogus as it is to market at the same time on all platforms with equal stability, reason 3 is actually a draw-back that they are trying to market as a feature (gotta love the Microsoft-ian logic there), and the last one is basically a way of stating that we already have an X11 port so it means less work for us. If any of these were valid points, Windows users would be running it in Cygwin right now. They're all just a way of saying "we don't care in the slightest about your platform, but we don't want to look like we don't care." Frankly, if you don't care, that's cool. This is your work. You don't have to support Mac OS X if you don't want to. Anyone is free to come along and pick it up if they are interested. That's what is so great about free software. Just don't trip me and tell me you did it because I looked lonely and you thought I could use a hug from the ground.
More importantly, OOo just isn't that good. It's amazingly slow and ugly, uses a fileformat that takes forever to save and creates huge files, and just plain worse than the other options out there. It's why there haven't been a lot of developers flocking to it from the Mac community. Something like Adium gets developers because it is the best. It's fully native, it's fast and clean, etc. There are a lot of other OSS projects on the Mac as well that are all good projects. OOo, by comparison, seems to employ a pretty terrible codebase and interface. While it has more features than AbiWord, AbiWord is clearly a better base. When you add Mac uses tendency toward well-done software with the fact that Mac users also don't mind paying for software as much as users of other platforms (lets face it, even Windows users don't pay for software - they pirate it), it means that OOo on the Mac doesn't have as much interest.
One of the big problems is that OOo only has the "free" aspect to draw users. WordPerfect Suite and Microsoft Office are still much, much better applications - this is coming from a user whose computer only has Ubuntu on it, not some OSS hater.
I've come down pretty hard on OOo here, but as a long term Mac user and now an Ubuntu user who loves Gnome, OOo is just terrible. Now, if you want the most featured office suite available, OOo is a great option for you. For a user like myself, and most Mac users, the features of OOo don't make up for the bloat and interface. Things like AbiWord and Apple's new Pages are much more attractive options even though they do less. Hopefully, OOo will become better in the future (I've run some of the 2.0 previews and wasn't that happy). Maybe AbiWord and OOo will start to converge toward each other like mySQL and PostgreSQL. But until OOo cleans itself up a lot, there isn't going to be the interest needed to bring it to the Macintosh because of how Mac users like their applications to work.
Yo, dude, Windows is the worst non-OSS friendly OS out there! Are you gonna say now that people should quit making free software for Windows?!
Didn't think so and fyi, OS X has a hell of a lot more OSS under the hood arriving at your doorstep than M$ ever will. So I'd say this is, if anything, not good!
Luckily NeoOffice/J will pick up the slack.
They should make the product better, not work on a half-baked Mac port. I can't stand to use office software anymore, and all because of bloat.
Who moved my sig?
Calling iWork an "office suite" is a bit of a stretch. Yes, Keynote is roughly analogous to PowerPoint, but Pages is more of a publishing package (a la Publisher) than a direct replacement for Word/WordPerfect/OOoWriter/AbiWord, and there's no Excel/123/Quattro/OOoCalc/Gnumeric equivalent anywhere in the box.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
maconlinux.org
You can run OS X from within Linux - you could even use a really really clean window manager (or an artsy one like Enlightement), perhaps "fullscreen" that OS X window on one virtual desktop, and then do other linux apps on other virtual desktops or something like that.
Probably not the best idea for the cutting edge latest hardware, but it could probably breathe some new life into something a little less brand new. Interesting, anyway.
This is a By-The-Book troll people. Move along, nothing to see here
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
You should read Apple Human Interface Guidelines. For your reference, toolbars DO NOT look like this in Cocoa. Also, UI elements are not placed at random within Aqua. Apple Interface builder shows dynamic guides when you place controls, and these guides help you to comform to HIG. Items should be aligned. Push buttons should have descriptive text on them, there should be sufficient spacing between UI elements.
Merely using Aqua controls is not enough.
/me agrees; MOD PARENT UP
Amazing ... all these posts and nobody is talking about file formats. What I'd like to see, is to have Apple's new office suite speak the OOo XML file formats. This would provide an even greater incentive for vendor-neutral formats to be used -- and then it won't matter if you're using OpenOffice or Apple iOffice (or iWhatever it's called now) because they'll all be interoperable.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Maybe if Apple fans could realize that 99.9% of the world doesn't use Aqua, then they could understand the wisdom behind Open Office's stance. Instead of complaining to the OO.o folks, they should complain to Apple. Apple should provide a killer X11 SDK which would allow porting of X11 apps to an Apple "look and feel". Apple is responsible for supplying the "magic", not OO.o.
Doesn't it seem that Apple and its minions have quietly abandoned the traditional desktop office computing realm? Does't it look like Apple has decided to focus on consumer electronics, multimedia, video and mastering. Doesn't it look like Apple is poised to become the ultimate sealed box to do every kind of mulimedia 'thing' under the sun and the hell with desktop productivity applications and systems altogether?
Don't blame Mac users if you don't write an application to look like the platform you put it on.
You wouldn't write an Apple IIe-type program for Windows and expect people to think it looked nice.
Why would you expect to write a program for one type of GUI, port it, but keep exactly the same interface, and expect the people on the second platform to think your program works very well?
Programs on different operating systems should not look exactly the same. If you have a program for one OS that looks like it was written for a different OS, you can expect people to see that application as a half-attempt, and you can expect them not to regard the program very highly.
And as for open-source on the Mac OS, most Mac users I know love open-source software. I have nine open-source applications in my dock right now, and numerous others on my system. Most of them have been much more successful than OO.o. I would say that 99% of the problem OO.o has on the Mac is that it doesn't look like other Mac programs and doesn't try to.
Most Mac users don't want to run second-hand programs, and second-hand is exactly the impression OO.o leaves on the Mac.
I was really looking forward to an Aqua port of OO.o.
Albuquerque PC
This screenshot is integrated with kde and it is similar to what I use.
http://www.gentoo-portage.com/Image/136
No ... really. Under X11 on OS X, at least, OOo is incredibly ugly and slow. (dual Ghz G4 tower, here). I'm sure it's faster, at least, under Linux, and at the very least the UI doesn't stand out so much, but he's not trolling. It really does hurt to use, at least in my experience.
A Minesweeper clone that doesn't suck
If, on the other hand, you don't know that, you're going to spend half an hour trying to figure out how to make the window go away, and then once you do, you're going to wonder whether that little gumdrop closed the application, made the window go away, or just sent it somewhere else.
Well, it's a pleasant response. That in itself deserves *some* kind of attaboy.
It's what everyone has been commenting on. The big thing left out of iWorks. If Jobs has any sense, he'll listen.
Unless it's a deliberate attempt to pander to Microsoft. Killing off "Office for Mac" would be a Very Bad Thing for Apple. Outside Slashdot, a large chunk of Mac users think Office is vital. And to be fair, MS has done a good job of making Office Mac friendly. It's not just a Windows port.
OO just isn't neat and simple enough for Apple's Volvo image. And again, it would upset Microsoft.
This is absolutely pitiful on the part of the Oo team. For YEARS now they have said "we don't work on an Aqua port because it makes no sense to do so before 2.0 yadayada bla bla" and what do we get now? a cancellation!
:(
I have been using Openoffice for many years. even on Mac (grinding my teeth every hour I had to make do with it) because it's the only real cross platform office suit worth anything. Stab me in the heart, will you!?
But it's okay. In the future, I won't be needing cross platform support anyway. Linux is - for me anyway - going the way of the Dodo, as I have simply no time anymore to fiddle with stuff. I'll kill off my last linux installation, and I'll order another Mac (maybe one of the Mac minis) to be my desktop PC instead of my iBook. I'll be buying iWork from Apple instead. At least I can be sure that will work decently.
My PC will get Windows... for gaming.
See, Oo team, that's what you do to people!
I do hope you feel at least a little bad
[quote]Ant writes "According to MacSlash's story, a recent post on OpenOffice.org said no MacOS X work has been done since 2003 and that there are no longer any plans for an Aqua version 'due to various licensing, political, and fundamental engineering difficulties'. :("[/quote]
I not sure why people are blaming/flaming Sun like a bunch of idiots.
It is never a good idea to jump to an extreme conclusion,
Sun is only one sponsor, IBM, various governments and business users also contribute levels of funding.
Apple is to produce an Office suite very soon, and the OpenOffice may be related,
Apple recently likes the stability and cut costs of open source software.
The MAC osx core is based upon the linux Kernel
Safari was based on the code base of Konqueror webbrowser
Iwork based on OpenOffice is quite probable.
It takes years to produce a fully functional Office Suite and maybe Apple has quietly funded OOo and contributed apple coders
to produce a better functioning OOo suite to suit MAC OSX better.
Take a look at Apple's XCode (and Interface Builer), it makes it a lot more difficult to ignore the Aqua Human Interface Guidelines (like your apps does, as another poster commented). It will give you a much better idea of why native Mac OS X (Cocoa) apps integrate as smoothly as they do and why even clever fakes just don't cut it.
You can get the latest version of XCode, etc., from Apple's Developer Site with a free registration.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
I believe that's closer to "95% of the computer world doesn't use Aqua".
Your point is still significant, but by no means as overwhelming as you present it. Probably, however, what they are realizing is that 99.9% of their developers don't use Aqua.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Sorry, that previous post was a bit garbled. This is a corrected version:
I believe that's closer to "95% of the computer world doesn't use Aqua".
Your point is still significant, but by no means as overwhelming as you present it. Probably, however, what OpenOffice.org is realizing is that 99.9% of their developers don't use Aqua.
Apple may well have a good point, but that doesn't help OpenOffice.org do the development.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
How expensive is Apple's PowerPC?
I bought a whole skid of PowerPC Macintoshes (beige case) at auction last summer for a dollar.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
Apple should provide a killer X11 SDK which would allow porting of X11 apps to an Apple "look and feel".
That might bring in a lot of competition and piss off loyal Mac developers.
Most old-school Mac users won't care -- they'll either want or prefer their old AppleWorks (or the new Apple offering, iWorks,) or stick to using BBEdit (or similar) for word processing tasks, and new Mac users will be getting either iWorks or MS's Office X. Old Mac users are not averse to paying for software they want and like, and new mac users will probably want to stick to what they know will work -- Office X would win out, even despite the cost, I'd guess. So this appeals to...linux and unix users who alreayd know and love OO.o.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
Of course its not that simple since the features of the the system also have a big influence on what you might desire in the format.
On poster mentioned that you can browse the files of the Pages files as directories earlier - er, an did you check that you're not violating copyright if you were to write another app that did that? Long live the OpenDocument initiative - even more necessary now.
.sig
Umm, I have yet to hear one negative comment regarding Aqua interfaces (done right).
Here's one, you can't type a path into a find/open dialog. Man that bothers me. GTK is doing it now too.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Type Command-Shift-G when you're at the dialog. Problem solved.
"I was really looking forward to an Aqua port of OO.o."
So what are you going to do then? Now that insulting the OO guys and berating their work didn't result in a native build of OO what's left?
Will the mac userbase start an open source office project? Will they try and port OO themselves? Will they try and port koffice or something.
Honestly will the mac user community do anything about this or will they simply pay for msoffice and call it a day?
evil is as evil does
What nobody seems to have realized is that the important issue is open standards. Whether a program is based on Open Office, MS Office, or even WordStar* is irrelevant, as long as it's well coded, reliable and fully standards-compliant. That is all most users care about, OSS ideologues can go hang.
This idea the we all MUST use OpenOffice-derived code if other programs are capable of the same functionality is absurd and irrational. Its like insisting that everyone must drive semi-trailers, even if they only need mo-peds, because semi-trailer parts are fully documented. Who cares, if the road (the standard) works equally well for both and people still get from A to B (tasks done)?
*Sometimes I feel really old.
I don't think the JVM supports such things directly. If it does, I'll be very impressed, since it certainly didn't have anything like that when I was last using Java for my own code (admittedly in the we're-still-using-AWT days).
Java does provide the ability to build extensions, so there's no reason you couldn't provide extensions to do these things. Ideally you'd write a platform neutral API and then implement it for each platform you ran on, so your Java code didn't have to care about what platform it was on. For some stuff, of course, this just won't work and you'll have to handle each platform differently or port some of your java files for each platform.
It may well be worth looking into third party tools to do some of this. For example, I'd be very surprised if OLE wasn't availible either built-in with the JVM, or as a 3rd party add-on.
You may run into more trouble with things like making "feel" like apps for your platform. SWT is probably worth looking into for this, and may be what you're after when it comes to Java GUIs.
In the end, this is part of my gripe about java - while its cross platform, it doesn't really fit in well on any platform.
Apple provides no detail on how well their compatibility with other formats really are. It took years for OpenOffice.org to reach the level of compatibility that it presently enjoys, and it still cannot claim to be 100% compatible with the proprietary MS formats.
OLPC Australia
That's a very good point. One certainly does have to jump through more than a few hoops to get sensible sizes, deal with endianness and word size issues, etc.
Very ugly hoops.
I should've said that it is possible to write portable apps in C, and that an app written with portability in mind shouldn't be too painful to port to a new platform. This is especially true if you make a point of testing on, say, a big-endian 64 bit PPC machine.
Then why do they worry and complain about Windows so damned much? It doesn't effect their life in any way. Windows and OSX are main stream desktop OS's, GNU/Linux is a server operating system with desktop enhancements cobled into it. Now before you go calling me a troll, saying that OSX is based on BSD let me say this, BSD is not Linux, and OSX doesn not run on top of BSD. OSX runs on top of Apples own BSD based fork, which was designed to be stable in both server and desktop enviroments. It is not laden with 20 text editors, 5 e-mail applications and loads of daemons most users will never need.
Basicly what I'm saying is that if GNU/Linux wants to compete on the desktop, it will require alot of work to the OS it self, no mater how hard the Gnome and KDE teams work. Also X11 alows each program to use it's own GUI kit, while is is great for hobbyists, it's a kick in the pnats for desktop use, it limits the ability to quickly switch between apps and feel "at home."
I always look at these threads with amazement. How can anyone really believe that a major corporation supports OSS for philosophical reasons? They do it because of basic economics, which they expect to benefit them in the long run. Typically, they are attempting to commoditize software on a particular hardware or OS platform they control, in order to increase the value of their position in that hardware/OS market, or more likely today in related service sectors. It is not surprising at all that Sun won't divert resources to support OSS on a competing platform!
It's also amazing that a few OSS evangelists can still chant the "if you don't like the development direction, you can just fork" mantra and maintain that OSS is future-proof and highly portable on this sort of basis. To an impartial observer, it's obvious that most of the major OSS projects (from Linux on down) are developed principally by a small number of commercial concerns, who have those same reasonable economic drivers for doing it. Unfortunately, it just isn't realistic for a handful of individuals who haven't been involved for a long time to pick up projects on this scale and carry on development. It has never been a good situation in the commercial, closed source world, and just opening the source to everyone (typically laughable documentation and testing included if you're lucky) doesn't make it any more likely that it will happen. Sun apparently understands this, and knows that in reality they still have far more control over StarOffice/OpenOffice development than anyone else, and will therefore use it to their advantage if they're even remotely smart.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
By native code I mean machine language vs. bytecode, not platform-specific C vs. portable C or Java.
Is this distinction useful? Compared to RISC platforms' machine language, x86 machine language is a bytecode, and a few companies have demonstrated products that decode and execute JVM bytecode in hardware.
Besides, where does GCJ + SWT fall down?
Different kind of Free. BSD license instead of GPL. The OS X kernel, Darwin, is based upon BSD Unix.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
Yeah, only 4 of them (if you don't count TextEdit), unless I've missed one - vi, GNU EMACS, pico, and ed.
Yeah, just Berkmail.
Yes, OS X has a smaller load of such daemons (I suspect most users aren't going to use distccd or the CORBA Object Request Broker Daemon orbd, for example).
I had been using an ancient version of MS Office on System 9 under OSX. I decided it was time to move forward, but really did not want to support Microsoft. So, I installed OpenOffice and gave it a try.
In no time at all my Office needs were resolved. OpenOffice ran like such an ugly slug that it overcame all my Microsoft objections. I immediately bought MS Office for OSX. Without the OpenOffice experience I could never have been happy buying a Microsoft product.
Thank you, OpenOffice team, for peace of mind.
"Doesn't it seem that Apple and its minions have quietly abandoned the traditional desktop office computing realm?"
...well, try it for yourself, I'd bet an iBook (widescreen+superdrive, please) it will take longer than 15 minutes.
Except for a few die-hard oldies who bought Excel version 1 (Mac only, the 8086 couldn't cut the mustard for spreadsheets) and have brand loyalty, most of the desktop office world shifted to Wintels years ago.
Macintosh has long been the platform of choice in audio, video and publishing (Does anyone remember Sonic Solutions, ProTools pre v.5, or Avid pre v.6 for Windows? They didn't exist. And PhotoShop under DOS? Come on...), and although many of those titles exist on the PC, the Mac is still dominant in pro shops*. Apple are choosing to focus on the market that never abandoned them for cheaper Wintel boxen (professionals for whom reliability is more important than the capacity to tinker or achieve 140,000 fps on Quake), and trying to push the same capabilities into the lower end market without sacrificing reliability or ease of use. iMovie is the best example: cheap DV camera + cheap Macintosh = easy home movies, within 15 minutes of opening the box. Cheap DV camera + cheap PC =
So to paraphrase your observation from Apple's perspective: "PCs are jumped-up typewriters & games consoles, Macs are what you use when you want to be creative. Oh, and you can use a Mac as a typewriter, if you haven't got anything better to do". The only real difference is Apple's marketing focus and software development strategy.
*An example: a few years back Sydney's Daily Telegraph tried creating an all-PC network (NT 4), including the art department (naturally, the consulting firm had no idea you could attach Macs to a PC network, and management wanted cheaper boxes). The new computers lasted 2 weeks, extra mouse button not withstanding. One of the major problems was the graphics tablets (big, expensive ones, not cheap little Wacoms) simply wouldn't work, and all the designers started calling in sick with RSI from mousing. Not a good situation for a daily publication!
Agreed.
Short version:
More people run multiple apps on one platform than run one app on multiple platforms.
Appendix:
Dur.
The parent is a re-post. It's a copy and paste from an older article.
Why would you expect to write a program for one type of GUI, port it, but keep exactly the same interface, and expect the people on the second platform to think your program works very well? Programs on different operating systems should not look exactly the same. If you have a program for one OS that looks like it was written for a different OS, you can expect people to see that application as a half-attempt, and you can expect them not to regard the program very highly.
The success of iTunes for Windows suggests that this is not universally true. I know some people who avoid it because the interface is weird compared to what they're used to, but there are plenty of people who really don't seem to have any problem running something that looks like a Mac app on their PC.
For example... I'm trained to use OpenOffice on Windows... Everything is where it is should be if I move to Linux... but then I got to a Mac and have to relearn the interface? That throws all my training out the window... as I now have to get up to speed....
There argument is very relevant, ask any Designer who started with Photoshop on a Mac, and then had to move to a Windows version and relearn the interface... because it was designed to accomodate the Windows Users.
I have always believed that interfaces should function relatively the same across platform if you are calling it the same product. Thus, when you tell someone you are proficient in Photoshop or OpeneOffice, you can sit down and get tow ork right away... not muck around with trying to figure out all th enuances in every interface.
I fucking hate you, dude.
...
How the hell did you pull that shit off?
And wanna sell one for $2? 100% profit! Can't beat that!
+++ATH0
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I meant to say "windows and solaris SPARC" not "solaris PPC". Preview, preview.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
It is possible to put X11 apps in the Dock, provided you can work out which UNIX executable file is the core of the program and drag it there yourself (I used to do exactly this before I gave up on OOO, since I found the launcher to be less than reliable). This is not something I would expect the average user to accomplish, or even realize is possible.
Part of the problem is that programs running inside X11 are treated as sub-processes, so are invisible to Aqua (just like terminal commands which are also UNIX executables can only be accessed through the Terminal and not the Dock...probably a Good Thing(TM), since its kind of hard to distinguish between one Unix executable and another if function rather than file type is the only difference, and you don't want users playing "click the generic icon" in low-level-land). Its almost like expecting to be able to launch IE inside Virtual PC from the Dock; of course it won't work, because without the shell program, the link is meaningless (X11 isn't even part of the standard system installation on the Mac). GNUStep, IIRC*, uses X-windows for the Dock itself, so having it communicate with other X-windows programs is easy.
So it really has nothing to do with the Dock format being more or less powerful (a matter of opinion, anyway), its about hiding non-user processes that are best left alone where they can't be fouled up. No UNIX executable appears in the Dock when running, and this is intentional.
*IIRC="I have no idea what I'm talking about, but I do have dim recollections of something someone said late at night after about a dozen drinks, so rather than exercising caution I'll talk through my arse and post anonymously"
"Mac people don't want what open-source people think is a good interface"
Mac people want whatever jobs tells them they want.
For instance, the recent debacle sueing a fan site because it printed a rumor.
The debacle of their installed base dipping to a historic low of 2%.
The debacle of introducing an ipod *with no display, and no way to choose songs* (I'm just waiting for some a55hole fanboi to defend that bit of stupidity)
The debacle of having a "Powerbook" which has a FSB of 167mhz and the performance to match the state-of-the-art in 2000. Unfortunately, its 5 years later. The real fanbois will tell you "The Powerbook is fast enough! Just buy one"
Please. If Jobs were killing babies with a pitchfork, Mac people (fanbois) would defend it.
The funny part is most of these guys never do anything more than buy used Macs. People like me buy new stuff from apple from time to time and you idiot fanbois tell us we're wrong when we point out the numerous stupidities that Apple does because its run by a one-man cult instead of like a normal business.
"and don't want to shell out money for Microsoft Office"
[rolling eyes]
"on my 1Ghz G4 Powerbook"
You know what's funny? This speed was marginal when it came out, 1.5 is too goddamned slow for a POWERbook and yet people are buying them.
Is it any wonder I'm hanging onto my Pismo until Apple get their head of out of their collective bungholes and make a G5 POWERbook?
I still jack off on my Liono action figure daily.
Sincerely,
Michael Moore
this is so patently not true its laughable.
1) drag and drop is supported (just tested this on my powerbook), just drag a file to "start OpenOffice.org.app"
2)Copy/paste works fine for X11 (in fact apple stresses this in their promotion of having an X server in OSX, I also just tested this on my powerbook, I use this all the time between gaim firefox and openoffice), you just need to use control instead of command.
should I assume this is a troll or a clueless mac user?
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Maybe this indicates a more serious disagreement at a fundamental level between the Stallmanites (developer-centeric vs. Mac/Design centered folks (Customer-centric).
IMHO, as someone who isn't enirely broke, I would pay the extra $200 or whatever for a superior product. People want to use the best tools...look at the success of Firefox which is clearly better than IE.
I think the success of projects like this will depend on ditching the Stallmanite mentality of "good enough" and moving to what customers want.
Sure, it is java, but NeoOffice/J is a pretty nice non-X11 dependent OS X port of OOo, complete with an aquafied menu, and continued development. Check it out: http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php
http://www.sampletheweb.com
"Honestly will the mac user community do anything about this or will they simply pay for msoffice and call it a day?"
Since when did buying software become a bad thing?
Setting up X11 on the Mac is non-trivial, and it is impossible for X11 applications to behave like normal Mac applications. Basically, if you must, you can get it to work, but it's not a solution you would want to deploy for a whole computer lab.
The solution to this problem is, however, not to convert every X11 application under the sun to Cocoa, the solution is to fix X11 integration on the Mac.
First, X11 on OS X is slow; that's not X11's fault, it's a problem with the X11 implementation on OS X. In fact, run natively, X11 is much faster and less memory intensive than Quartz on the same hardware. Second, as for "ugly", that's a matter of opinion. People shouldn't take the FUD of Macintosh zealots like you as a fact, they should look for themselves.
At this point, Gnome and KDE are probably better desktops than Aqua: better integrated, more consistent, more efficient on comparable hardware, and better looking. And it's only getting better with X.org.
Don't believe the Macintosh marketing FUD: Gnome and KDE are excellent desktops.
Rather than wasting time on porting OOo to Cocoa, the time is better spent on improving the integration of X11 into the Macintosh desktop and improving X11 performance when run as a guest under Quartz. That way, all developers of X11 applications benefit.
OOo might, for example, have a little wrapper that tries to find X11 (it is usually around as an uninstalled package on the machine) and install it if it's not there.
And X11 might get a small Macintosh-specific extension or helper app that allows things like drag-and-drop and the menu bar to work better.
And the OOo developers are exactly right about consistency: consistency of OOo (and Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc.) is more important than consistency within the Mac environment, both for development and for many end users (who usually end up having to use multiple platforms anyway).
This is the nature of BSD: BSD developers Do Not want to burden users with an obligation to give returns. You can only "rob" from BSD by not crediting the code you use or credit yourself for others' BSD code.
Since Apple and others have been known to use OpenSSH and other BSD code without supporting BSD developers, we don't need to and we shouldn't support them. Besides, Apple is full of DRM and lock-ins anyway.
So what is really true is the fact that a mac app looks like gold on any platform and apps for other platforms look like crap on a mac desktop. What does that say about the general desktop experience of other platforms........
You hit the nail on the head. Mac users want consistency and they'll pay for a commercial product just for that. Eventually though, if OpenOffice gets popular enough and becomes a standard in itself, Apple will step in and do an Aqua port so that its customers give their money to Apple instead of Microsoft. For the time being the gains just don't outweigh the risks for Apple or for their customers so they're not going to do it but in time it will have value.
Who really thinks that iWork is only about word processing and presentations... it's just the beginning of Gen 2 of their office suite.
But it works, and since we got so fed up with different file formats at home and switched everything to the free OpenOffice XML (OASIS) format, this is what counts here. Those of you who think OpenOffice XML is some isolated open source thing should keep in mind that the European Union (400 million people and counting) is probably going to make OASIS an ISO standard (Sun is pushing this like mad), and that open source projects of all kinds are converging on it as a common standard: Koffice is the biggy next to OpenOffice.org. The standard is here to stay. If you want to play the game, sooner or later you either have to have a monopoly or support it.
Which brings us to the reason why this new announcement is more of a problem for Apple than for the average Slashdot user: The OS X platform does not offer a free full-fledged office suite. AppleWorks is a joke, basically one of those toy apps left over from when they had that toy operating system OS 9, and iWorks is neither a full suite nor does it support OASIS. And there is no way I am going to pay for Microsoft Office, since it does little more than OpenOffice for some ridiculous price. I mean, when it comes down to it we're talking about the choice between buying an iPod or buying Microsoft Office. Duh!
I've said this before and I'll say it again: Apple should do a Safari (Darwin, Cups, GCC...) here and admit that they can't produce a first rate office suite by themselves. Keep Keynote if you must, but get the rest of the people wasting their time with iWorks behind an Aqua OpenOffice port. This would rid Apple of the last area where they are dependent on Microsoft, and give them the office capabilities the Mac currently lacks.
It's amazing how basically nobody seems to know the history of StarOffice.
It originated as a DEMO of a multi-platform (Windows, OS/2, X11, MAC) GUI toolkit! Only later did it grow into a usable office suite. It's strange that guys claiming to have worked for Sun on StarOffice don't know that ("whatever company did the OS/2 port" stuff). I and many other OS/2 users remember downloading StarCalc when that's all there was.
It seems to me that the people currently involved with the code have broken the portability that the original developers intended. That's really too bad.
Anyway, there is a native version of AbiWord, and soon there's iWork. OOo can go ahead and start fading into obscurity as far as Mac users are concerned.
Everyone has managed to completely forget the clue train. As usual.
So, I have a question.
What the hell happens to your documents 8 years from now? You know, the MS Office docs that require a new version of Office. How about when Apple grows tired of supporting all of those old iWork installations?
For shit's sake, OO may be ugly, but at least when I save my data, I know that it's gonna remain my fucking data - forever. Explain to me how the ability to unzip a file and extract ASCII-based XML is going to "force me to abandon" this? Oh, could it be that I will not be able to compile the damn program myself? Would it be that the software - OpenOffice itself - ceases to exist? (Hint: it's the source code, stupid)...maybe I'll be incapable of figuring out XML from the structured text, no that's not it...ah! we'll forget that ASCII exists...but everyone's been using it for decades, that's not it either...oh, I know, the Zip standard will be hidden from view and erased from memory as our new Neural implant DRM chips are grafted to our skulls by our American Emperors... (in which case, (a) the nation of zombies won't give a shit and (b) we all have bigger problems)
- Who cares about 8 year old documents? At that age, it's worthless anyway...
- But it's so ugly...I can't stand it...
- But there's Microsoft Office...
- There's NeoOffice...
That's what I thought - none of you have an answer for this.Complete horseshit. Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. Those who use proprietary formats to store their hard-worked data in will be condemned to recreate their work. There's no arguing this point, and if you think you can, then I suggest you go to your local library and tell the librarians to "remove all of the books on the shelf that are over 8 years old - because they're obsolete." How long do you think it will take for them to stop laughing at you and tell you to get the hell out?
There's practical, and then there's goddamn picky. Keep looking that gift horse in the mouth, Mac Community, keep looking...(emphasis on the GIFT portion of that last sentence - OO is a gift that you have chosen not to take. So be it...)
This is probably the dumbest excuse. The only reason you have MS Office is because the Microsft Mac Business Unit (aka. the folks that make MS Office for Mac) are making a shitload of money (like, some $500 million - gee Johnny, can you say "half a billion dollars"? I knew you could!). Of course, if Steve-o comes up with a workable spreadsheet, people will shitcan MS Office quickly...guess what happens then? Of course, I doubt that many of you remember when you lost your Word for Mac documents years ago because MS wanted to fuck the Mac crowd over for some money...
Ahem. There's a fork of OO that may or may not stay compatible. Or maybe it will break in 1-2 generations of OS X (remember how things broke between 10.2 and 10.3? Oh, that's right, I shouldn't mention that...)
No, wait a minute - you have an answer. It's the same answer that the Microsoft customers have. It's bend over and lube up (be sure to use the plain kind - I hear that the icy hot stuff stings).
Flame away if you like, but I'm merely the messenger. Mac community, you need to wake from your slumber, and realize just how precarious your position is...the Mac is a great platform, but you can't mold the world to fit it's shape, you'll just pay the price in the end...the Linux crowd has been trying that for some time and have already paid dearly...heed the words you don't want to hear before you REALLY are hurting...
P.S. It's actually not too hard to figure out a way to put Apple out of business in 5 years or less. But I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader...
It said that X11 version continues and it will be Aquafied by NeoOffice/J. It said that an Aqua fork was not sustainable. This has been the case for quite some time now.
realkiwi
Most Mac users don't want to run second-hand programs, and second-hand is exactly the impression OO.o leaves on the Mac.
The very first chapter of the original "Inside Mac" talked about how GUI programs should communicate with the user. One major point that was made over and over again was consistency. If Mac does something one way, then anything else just isn't "Mac". Every OS has a feel like that, but on the Mac it's more consistent.
Pushing the rules of another interface guidline make OO.o appear clunky, and ill conceived.
I was really looking forward to an Aqua port of OO.o.
Yep.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
For lots of other things, it's really, really great (I'm using it to write this post).
US$ 499
I didn't say it was a bad thing. I simply pointed out that it's an option.
Just pay for something and call it a day.
evil is as evil does
Honestly will the mac user community do anything about this or will they simply pay for msoffice and call it a day?
As long as nly MS Office is available. YES.
If OO was available we would pay for that as well.
Most Mac users are USERS, not coders. I asume your question wants to imply: get up your ass and start coding if you want a native aqua app. Sorry. 85% of the mac users are USERS. The other 15% are coders who code aqua based software or multiplatform software in Java.
And yes, like some other posters point out: OO sucks big time on a Mac. It starts with installing. On my Mac Jaguar upgraded to Panther I needed several days to get X11 running. As I had the option to use Apples X11 or a X11 app included (or recomended) with OO.
For some reason I did not get it running
Suddenly it worked, no idea why. My girlfriend has a younger Mac. She jsut downlaoded it and double clicked teh installer
Anyway. OO on a Mac is difficult to use
Finally, to answer your question: I rather payed $400 for OO than $400 for MS Office. But the former I can not even get for good money as native aqua app
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
When Microsoft Longhorn makes Linux it's bitch!
ahhh.... they can't compete with MS Office...
Wah! A product that isn't meant only for us isn't going to waste their time catering exclusively to our infantile wants!
Wah! It's gotta look just like all the other crap on our system or we'll whine!
Wah! They suck because they won't give us exactly what we want!
You know what? If you don't like it USE ANOTHER FUCKING PRODUCT YOU FUCKING CRYBABIES!
Or get off your asses and devote some of your copious free time and dubious talent to the actual development efforts instead of being leeching little fucktards.
Yes. I know this will get modded as a troll. I don't particularly care. It needs to be said.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
There's often a difference between things working (performing a function) and looking nice.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Well. This is too bad.
As far as for my small company this means that we will throw out our Linux desktop machines and replace them with Mac Mini's. The tie that tied our Linux machines together with our Mac- and Windows machines, OpenOffice/Win/Mac/Lin, is no longer there. Out goes Linux desktops and OpenOffice, replaced by MS Office/Mac/Win and Mac Mini desktops. We had hoped for a "unified" cross platform office application that would enable us to use all three platforms, but this will clearly not be the case.
Sorry for those that spent money on OOo/Mac-native. And thanks for the 1 update on 18 months on the "porting OOo for mac"-homepage.
Trustworthy development
I am truly sorry
"I think the success of projects like this will depend on ditching the Stallmanite mentality of "good enough" and moving to what customers want."
OO doesn't have any "customers" because nobody is paying for it, so (as many others have said) just what incentive do OO developers have for supporting Mac users with a native port? Probably rather less than all those commercial software shops who also ignore Mac users. At least OO actually runs on Macs, which is more than can be said for many closed-source programs!
Is that at all possible, or is that silly? Wouldn't the whole porting issues we have now disapear. If we did that.
I suspect that database and spreadsheets are things Apple sees as "not used" by about hapf of the potential iWork audience. Everybody writes letters, but how many use the spreadsheet program?
Instead, I think Apple will refer these customers to FileMaker, I personally find works fine as an Excel replacement. All of my spreadsheet needs are elegantly filled, and if I want I can slap a graphical mask on it.
Besides, Apple wants other companies to write the software for the Mac so they can concentrate on making hardware. Maybe the spreadsheet hole is one they left open on purpose to encourage third-party solutions. (I can see the ad copy now: "the spreadsheet solution that seamlessly fits together with iWork!")
I think iWork is intended to play the same relation to full-fledged office suites that iPhoto plays with Photoshop: a low-cost alternative that meets basic needs well, for those customers who don't need all the tools the high-end programs offer.
It'd be nice, but as explained in the article wouldn't solve the whole problem. You still have event model integration, you still have the nightmares that are fonts and printing, etc.
It'd still be nice, though.
I think that for cross platform gui builds you should really be looking at buliding your apps abstracted to use Wx libraries. I've heard lots of flame on the subject, however Wx is pretty solid and good today. If OOffice wants to be seen as a viable all round alternative to Mircosucks Office, they should really make sure that Aqua, Windows and X11 are all supported. I don't particularly like using Open Office through X11 on my Mac. Mostly because I get the same non-tarnsparent feel as though I were running it through an emulator on my old G3. It crawls. I'm ashamed to say I actually prefer to use Mac Office on my mac; whilst I avoid using microsucks at work by using Open Office on my Blade. Anyway, as I said, they should use Wx as a wrapper around native widget sets.
I have a dozen or so PowerPC-based Macs (and one or two 68040 based ones) sitting in my attic. Attempts to give them away have so far failed completely. Of course, they're only 60/66MHz...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Right, so now it's Sun's fault for not using their infinite engineering resources to port OO to a proprierary API with less than 5% of the target user's marketshare.
If anyone is to blame, I would say it is Apple. OO is an open source project. Apple's could support the project and provide engineering resources if they really cared. Why should it be Sun's responsibility to support every niche OS out there?
Code to live, live to code.
When you constantly buy the same thing over and over again for more than 10 years.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
No.
Interfaces should conform to the guidelines of the platform they are running on. This is because most people use lots of apps on one OS, not one app on lots of OS's.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
First, let me say that the only microsoft product I still recommend, even if they're all free, is the Office suite for OSX, because there are no powerful, viable alternatives (except possibly iWork, now) and because it's the best software I've ever seen Microsoft come out with.
For a while I was using an OSX laptop that didn't have it, and despite having OOo installed I'd literally go to another machine with a different OS and use OOo there instead of using it on the mac.
Keeping in mind that I'm a geek and that I professionally maintain Windows, OSX and linux systems - Getting X11 and OOo to install correctly was a pain, especially for it only take one double-click to start OOo. Starting it up takes too long. It's tricky to exit cleanly out of it, because there's no X11 integration with the dock, which also means window switching doesn't really work right.
It's plausible they've fixed some of this...
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
I've got a UMAX s900 DP180 (dual processor, 180MHz PowerPC 604e Mac clone) that nobody loves, that I'd be happy to part with.
- chrish
I agree there, but also think that Eclipse's SWT kicks swings overweight butt, and, because it is OSS, can be used in Kaffe without any need to do a reimplementation...
Yes. And it's called "a pipe".
I'm not speaking about GIMP's built-in Lisp engine.
I'm speaking about the fundamental difference between "big iron OS" like Windows and Mac OS, on one hand
- where application are monolithic big irons the you must install from 1 if not many CDs. They're huge integrated monsters that should be self-sufisant (or that's what the marketing compagny thinks). And if you want to do something different : it's either "Sorry our GUI isn't intented for this. And we cannot waste ressource on some obscure feature that only 1% of our market share is interested in" (Windows World) or "Look ! It's incredible ! You can actually launch individual functions of our applications from your scripts ! The Mac invented the wheel !" (Apple style)
on the other hand, you have the Unix "keep it in small useful units" style
- an application is just a tiny bit of code specialized in doing only 1 single function. It it does it very well, with lot of parametrability. And it's up to the user to combine these function and do work the developper never though of before.
All this using a dead simple stuff like "¦".
Or using a nice GUI that ties everything together (see CDRECORD, CDRDAO, MKISOFS, etc... and K3B. I guess that using LAME inside a huge CD-Burning application, wasn't LAME developpers main purpose)
Mac people are happy because Adobe photoshop supports AppleScript ? So you can write scripts that automagically download pictures from your digital camera, convert them, and upload them to your blogs ?
We linux people have things like imagemagick, pbm, whatever... that can be glued with command lines, shell scripts, perl programms or whatever. And we can do most of the same things you can do in AppleScript. Except we don't need to install an application that comes on 2 CDs and costs 299$.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Looks like those UMAX Dual CPU that Be gave away as prize... Should work great on Linux. Is it still working. Were are you located ?
(contact info profile)
Hub
Sold.
:)
Email address is starkruzr@starkruzr dot com. We can talk price later
+++ATH0
I'll take one (or four). Where are you?
+++ATH0
Many posts so far have rightfully complained about the slow performance of OO.o under X11. But if you install NeoOffice/J instead, it boots and runs rather smoothly. This is still a wrapper of sorts around OpenOffice, so the actual window, toolbars, and so on are the same. But I think you'll find NeoOffice/J to be quite good enough for freeware.
BTW, regardless of platform, OpenOffice has just GOT to implement "Normal View" for its word processing module. This has been on their wish/bug list for a couple years now. What's the holdup?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Just replace that ugly toolbar, and trick QT into conforming to HIG. Nobody will tell you're using QT. Right now I can see your app is QT based from 10 miles away.
"Last updated: 2004-12-02"
Not really that hard to find.
way? How about just putting in that extra bit of effort necessary to be a first class citizen on a desktop platform that's more popular than your primary development platform? Or at least asking someone with a Mac to do it for you?
In order to fix the problem you need to acknowledge its existence. I'm not a Mac purist. In fact, I'm typing this from my Win XP laptop. However, I do have a Mac, and I know of at least one case where I didn't buy a product (Bibble from Bibble Labs) precisely because it was QT based. It looked bad. It was functional, it did everything I wanted but it looked bad. I've downloaded a demo version and after about an hour I decided there was no way in heck I'd torture myself with something like this. It used Aqua widgets, too, but it neglected spacing, layout and "feel". It was alien.
Luckily there was a native, polished version from another company (Capture One LE by Phase One), selling for the same price. They got my $100 that evening.
Why do you have to view everything in a negative way?
Because until this thread I have never received any complaints about the Mac version of my software. Quite the opposite, I've received dozens of letters of gratitude. But then there's this thread.
Apparently my widgets are layed out randomly. I've been called incompetent. My application doesn't cut it. And of course, it "looks like ass."
How about just putting in that extra bit of effort necessary to be a first class citizen on a desktop platform that's more popular than your primary development platform?
First of all, my primary platform is NOT Windows. It's FreeBSD. Last I heard it wasn't more popular than OSX, but I guess I'm behind the times.
Second, I've put in a LOT of extra bits of effort. But apparently I haven't put in enough extra bits of effort. Excuse me for not owning a Mac, okay? This is why I'm so pissed! I put in that "extra bit of effort" and it's not good enough! The lesson is that it's better to never have tried then to try and come in second place.
I'm not claiming that my software is finished. There are a lot of "extra bits" needing to be done, on *ALL* platforms. But I don't have to time to devote myself 100% to creating the epitome of the perfect Mac application.
All I said in my original post was that Qt/Aqua made my application appear to be native. I still stand by that statement, because "native" isn't synonymous with "perfect".
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
What exactly does Stallman have to do with "good enough" and not being customer centric? I can't think of a single quote of that nature in all of his writings. He has consistently advocated the opposite position that free software should aim to be far better than the commercial products, far exceed user expectations....
Perhaps an alternative solution would be to petition Apple to add OOo format compatibility to their new office suite.
Wow. You sound an angry little anti-fanboi.
I think you have it backwards. Jobs has a knack for making what some people want, and this in turn creates die-hard fans. It's not the other way around.
Also, I do not think that word you keep using (debacle) means what you think it means:
- the goal of the iMac mini is to increase market share
- the jury is out on the iPod Shuffle...pundits bagged on the iPod Mini when it was released.
- powerbook sales are good, despite rumors of a G5 Powerbook coming down the pipe.
Last, you ramble using "Mac people" and "fanboi" interchangeably in a most confusing way. You seem to be saying that all mac people are fanboi's, and that most mac people buy used mac's on eBay, sold by you, apparently, who is not a mac person, but buys new stuff from Apple from time to time. This makes little sense to me.
You may bag on Jobs, but the Q4 numbers speak for themselves.
> What exactly does Stallman have to do
> with "good enough" and not being
> customer centric?
Free Software values the freedom higher than the quality of the software. The quality will improve automatically because the software is free.
Of cause, this requires an apropriate environment and does not work well in the Mac "community".
But as the grand grand parent already pointed out, the people who prefer to be slaves to commercial entities (heil steve!) will die out sooner or later, hopefully.
I disagree.
Using Apple X makes it almost seemless