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'. :("

Comments

What's the downside to using X11?

[Eric Smith]

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?

Re:What's the downside to using X11?

[Zelet]

Yeah, I run OO under X11 on OS X - but it is as ugly as it is on Linux. Which is pretty damned ugly and slow.

Re:What's the downside to using X11?

[JayDiggity]

Functionally, there is little difference except that is certainly slower than running it natively. Where the big problem lies is that Mac users (and I'm one of them) expect coherence and integration in their UI. A Mac version of OpenOffice that runs using X11 will not provide this.
Also, think of anyone who's switched over from Windows with a sour taste in their mouth - they want to avoid Microsoft at all costs, including MS Office. They've heard great things about OpenOffice, but when they go to try it, it's slow and kludgy. Not a very good impression at all.

Re:What's the downside to using X11?

[Dr_LHA]

It just doesn't work very well. It's interface runs slowly (on my 1Ghz G4 Powerbook) and it doesn't fit in well with the rest of the operating system. Also the Powerpoint clone doesn't actually work properly as I was unable to get it to run the slideshow full screen, which makes it effectively useless for anything other than composing presentations.

I use OpenOffice all the time on Linux, but for my Mac I went out and bought MS Office as I needed Office software. OpenOffice on X11 just doesn't work well enough for it to be any use.

Re:What's the downside to using X11?

[Yaztromo]

Forgive my ignorance, but doesn't OS X include an X11 server?

Ignorance forgiven :).

Mac OS X Panther (10.3) does indeed come with an X11 server. However, there are two caveats to this:

• It isn't installed by default, so if the user didn't select it for installation, it won't be on their system,
• Apple doesn't include the X11 server on systems with OS X preloaded (which is all of them). (It is included on the CDs/DVDs you get with the system, however),
• Installation of X11 after OS X is installed typically requires the user to reboot their system with their OS X install disc, and then install the X11 support atop their existing OS X installation.

Not a major problem for power users who need X11 support (this was virtually the first thing I did when I took posession of my first PowerBook last year), but hardly something you can expect your average user to do.

Is there any major drawback to running OpenOffice as an X11 application rather than a native one?

Yes, there are multitudes of such problems, including:

• Unlike every other OS X application, OOo has an in-frame menu bar, and doesn't use the system menu bar (perhaps worse, as X11 does provide a menu bar, you wind up with two menu bars that have some duplication -- for example, both the X11 server and OOo's frame have an "Edit" menu, which can be confusing to a user),
• The installation and program launching routine isn't terribly user friendly,
• Apple's excellent font subsystem isn't integrated into OOo, thus you don't get good anti-aliases text,
• No Aqua look and feel -- everything in it looks quite a bit different from every other application. No nice Aqua scroll bars, for example. Or list boxes. Or other standard controls.
• No desktop integration. The icon in the title bar can't be dragged (in most OS X apps, the icon in the title bar actually represents the document or data being worked on, and you can drag and drop it as if it were the applications icon in the finder, allowing you to do stuff such as e-mail a document by dragging it's title bar icon and droppinng it into the Mail applications icon in the Dock), no text drag-and-drop with the rest of the system, can't use any of the Mac OS X services (like summarization, or text-to-speech), etc.
• Doesn't even use the standard OS X mouse pointers. Even the plain old black arrow pointer is different as soon as you mouse over OOo,
• Doesn't use the standard OS X printing subsystem controls (which is too bad, as the standard OS X print dialog makes it easy to print, fax, or save to PDF all within a single dialog),
• In fact, all of the dialogs are non-standard. File load/save dialogs are another area where this is readily apparant.

That's just a sampling of issues off the top of my head.

The one thing they did at least do was to integrate OOo with OS X's clipboard support directly, making cut and paste between applications work as expected. But that appears to be the extent of OS X support.

I'm rather disappointed in the attitude of OOo in this regard, because OS X really should have a native port of OpenOffice. The only way OpenOffice can take on Microsoft is to not only build a better office suite, but to make sure it's available virtually everywhere in versions that integrate well with whatever operating system it's being used on.

Anyone other than me remember when StarOffice's target operating system was IBM's OS/2?

Yaz.

Re:What's the downside to using X11?

[Eravnrekaree]

I really dont see what the problem is with using the X11 version of OpenOffice on Mac OS X. Maintaining a seperate version of Open Office for another proprietary API would have consumed more precious developer resources which could instead be used to add new features to Open Office rather than endlessly reinventing the wheel to port old features to a million different OS dependant APIs. X11 is the most widely avialable GUI system and is available on most OSs, and works perfectly fine.

Some have said that the X11 version is "ugly", but the Open Office developers have only themselves to blame for that, there are numerous beautiful graphics toolkits avialable on X11 which wonderful and georgeous user interfaces can be created with. Its not like X11 actually restricts user interface design, in fact, X11 provides a stable, time tested and refined platform which doesnt limit the beautiful user interfaces that you can implement on top of it.

As far as performance, I get excellant performance from X11 on my systems, ussually better than Windows on the same hardware. X11 itself actually does not consume much memory or resources at all on your system. The X Server core consumes under 3 MB (this is around the executable size of the Xnest server which includes just the Xserver core, no hardware drivers).

In fact, It wouldnt bother me at all if Open Office was run on Windows using the cygwin X11 servers rather than have a native windows port. And, i do use Windows and Cygwin all the time, I would much rather see developer resources go to adding new features to one X11 open API based port rather than maintaining a bunch of native ports for proprietary closed OS dependant APIs like Windows and Mac. The overall result would be a much better quality product on all operating systems. Such is part of the beauty of the standardised, OS indepedant X11 API, it allows the same GUI work to be used across many platforms.

Re:What's the downside to using X11?

[eyeball]

I'm sure a million other osx folks will flame about this, but it's really difficult to use X11 when you're used to the consistency of native OSX (Cocoa or Carbon to a certain extent) applications. i.e.: All OSX apps have similar places to go for preferences, to open/save files, edit, help, etc. Plus keybindings and mouse behavior are all similar. Compared to that, running an X11 application is like being thrown back to 1990. Menu's are attached to the window, keybindings are messed up, and you're lucky if copy/paste works.

I don't see what the problem is with integrating native GUI libs with an OSS project. Firefox does this with extreme success on multiple platforms. This should've been OpenOffice's strategy from day 1.

Re:What's the downside to using X11?

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

I can't convey this easily without sounding like a huge asshole, but I'll try.

Mac people don't want what open-source people think is a good interface. They want consistency and an easy learning curve. This means having all of your programs look and act basically the same. Menus, widgets, the whole shebang. X11 programs on the Mac feel very foreign and difficult by comparison, like they don't belong. Sure, they run just as well as they do on other operating systems, but they are missing a certain je ne sais quoi, which even the best X11 program is not going to have.

An aqua port of OO.o would be very worthwhile. In fact, I think it could be *huge*. Mac users are some of the most anti-Microsoft people around, and don't want to shell out money for Microsoft Office. Having a good open-source office program like OO.o on the Mac would be good for Mac users, OO.o users, and anyone who isn't a fan of Microsoft.

Re:What's the downside to using X11?

[mrchaotica]

Aside: This isn't really a reply to you, matt-whatever, but instead a reply to the community at large who think OS X is just for traditional "Mac people" -- so when I say "you," don't take it personally.

Mac people don't want what open-source people think is a good interface. They want consistency and an easy learning curve.

As an "open-source [person]," I think Mac OS has a very good interface. In fact it's so good that I don't use my Linux computers all that much any more. I admit that it's got consistency and an easy learning curve, but it's powerful too. That learning curve isn't steep, but it doesn't stop climbing!

So, what are these powerful features I'm talking about?

• AppleScript. Do all YOUR [assume you're a Linux user for a minute, please] graphical applications support scripting -- and more importantly, cross-application scripting? Mine do! And I can mix Applescript and Bash script in the same file.
• Services. I can select text in any application and have it spell-checked, read to me, inserted into an email, auto-summarized, etc. I can even apply an Applescript to it.
• The Terminal. I get a pretty GUI, but I get all the UNIXy commmand-line goodness, too.
• Mac apps. I can run *nix and X11 apps just like you can, but I can run Mac apps too, and you can't. There are lots of Mac apps with no real (decent and complete) equivalent on Linux: iTunes, Keynote, commercial games, that bookshelf thingy that there was an article about yesterday, etc. And they've got the je ne sais quoi too. ; )

Oh, and in a few months when Tiger comes out we'll get two biggies:

• Spotlight. Not only does it search, but it enables Smart Folders -- now I can set it up so that all my data gets organizes itself, instead of me having to do it manually!
• Automator. I'll be able to create scripts graphically (no worrying about syntax and no having to look up the API).

If all you Linux or Windows people see when you look at OS X is the eye candy, you're missing the point.

So? Use Neooffice

[mr100percent]

Neooffice is coming along nicely, it's finally in Beta. It's got an Aqua interface, Openoffice core, and doesn't require X11.

AbiWord's new port

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

This is why Open Source projects fail

[sakusha]

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.

there's always Ragtime solo..

[Wire3117]

http://www.ragtime-online.com/ it beats Openoffice hands down. just my ,02

Reasons

[saterdaies]

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.