Slashdot Mirror
At Long Last, NeoOffice/J 1.1 Released
VValdo writes "After nearly five years of development, NeoOffice/J has made it to its first stable release. NeoOffice/J 1.1 is a Mac OS X-integrated office suite based on OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 that includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and drawing applications. Key Macintosh features include a standard Mac OS X installer, a native Aqua menu bar, use of the native printing system, full clipboard support, drag-and-drop, Mac "command" key shortcuts, mouse scrolling, integration with major Mac email clients and native support for Mac fonts. The full announcement is here."
does it run on Linux?
What's with the J? Can anyone explain?
I seem to remember reading the a large part of NeoOffice was done in Java. I can't check the wiki since it has been slashdotted, does anyonw know how much Java is in NeoOffice?
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
Apple go and change the architecture they're running on :D
Subscribers have been looking at that storuy for awhile - it lasted a lot longer than 30 seconds.
At least mirrordot was able to save a cache:
f 78 9b6ec7a2075940c/index.html
http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/56f602610d944f
Looks like their news page died at 17,000 hits after 12:17 today. Very sad.
LainTheWired = isgod( int Lain, int denial, float truth)
The NeoOffice/J 1.1 release is now available for download. Warning: all NeoOffice/J development and testing is done by volunteers so there are always some missing features and bugs. So if you expect software to be absolutely perfect before you install it, we recommend that you purchase a commercially supported office suite like Microsoft Office. (emphasis mine)
Hrm - maybe Office on the Mac is much better than the Windows version. I've been hearing that for awhile, but it's still from Microsoft, and will still have some of the same issues that people have on the Windows version, or it'd have compatibility problems (key commands, etc).
Still, I thought that comment about something being 'absolutely perfect' then recommending Office was pretty funny.
creation science book
I'll keep my client running today. Will you? http://play.aelitis.com/torrents/NeoOfficeJ-1.1.dm g.torrent
[
My sister needs a laptop for work and I have been steering her towards a G4 mac. MS office adds $AUD300 to the price, which offends me, mainly because of the huge profit microsoft make out of it.
Having this available could make it a much easier decision for her to buy the macintosh.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Looking at the integration features, it seems better then either Windows or *nix versions of OpenOffice.
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
I have begun to think that most, if not all, free software applications ought to be written in Java or a reasonable facsimile. Ideally, a common language and runtime that all free software could target would be available that would allow immediate porting to take place.
To some extent we have this now with Linux as a standard OS, but even with it there is a lack of common binary compatibility. Java takes care of that such that the same binary application on one platform works on another, only relying on the base runtime to be ported.
How much quicker could we have had NeoOffice on MacOS if it were written in an easily-ported language like Java?
Are there any plans for such a common language runtime to which applications can target themselves in the free software ecosystem?
And it says long about NeoOffice/J too..
NeoJ, the J at the end represents Java. complete GUI layer (and posibly more) is designed with Java. It is a shame poster did not mention that.
Before anyone complains about the lack of Aqua widgets and the continuing Windows 95-like appearance of the program, from experience that's probably the last remaining area to be completed.
Everything else is great, and infinitely superior to the old port of OpenOffice.org to the Mac's X11 - for instance, copy-and-paste works fully (styled text is no problem whatsoever); file associations work correctly; native printing, fonts, anti-aliased line art are just fine. Even more recent, esoteric stuff like Spotlight searches are fine - when I installed Tiger, all my documents got neatly indexed without me lifting a finger.
It's in an application bundle, it stores its settings in ~/Library/ - apart from those grey, rectangular buttons and controls, it's a complete, modern Mac application.
Honestly, don't judge it on first appearances or screenshots (I've found numerous Mac 'ports' of software which seem to concentrate too much on cosmetics rather than functionality) - it's truly wonderful. For anyone looking for a free office suite on their Mac, here it is!
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Perhaps when they somehow get the money to do so. Feel free to donate:
http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/donate.php
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
In terms of competition, there's KOffice for MacOS X I kept my eyes on, see http://kde.opendarwin.org/. Still pre-alpha however.
I use and love iWorks. Keynote is simply *great*. But it is not free (forget open source). And iWorks, for the moment, lacks a spreedsheet, which OOO doesn't. Thanks to OOO and NeoOfficeJ developpers! :-)
Animoog.org
Apparently the homepage is still up http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php /.
Could someone make a mirror before it gets
Here's the Coralized link:
e x.php/NeoOffice/J_1.1_Announcement#Announcement_.5 Ben.5D
http://neowiki.sixthcrusade.com.nyud.net:8090/ind
Though, frankly, there's not much there to read.
Greg
Do current relses of OpenOffice.org and other software have native support for Linux fonts? I ask this because I find that fonts on Linux are a bit "blurry"...that is, they are not as clear/crisp as their those on their windows counterparts. Even when anti-aliasing is turned off, fonts on Linux do not look that good. This is one reason in my opinion, why some slashdotters have written to say that Linux is ugly! Is it because there is lack of the so called native support for Linux fonts?
NeoOffice isn't the one.
and that quite possibly
there is no server.
I know that open office once had a port to OSX, which had the goal of attaining native widgets and what-not.
So my question is, what is this NeoOffice stuff? A fork of the open office port? why are there two projects to bring open office to OSX? What is the difference between the two projects? Why didn't the NeoOffice developers just work on the OOo port?
Hrm - maybe Office on the Mac is much better than the Windows version. I've been hearing that for awhile, but it's still from Microsoft,
It's far from perfect on the Mac, but I'm always astounded at how much it is better on the Mac than on Windows.
Worse yet, my experience with MS-Offixe/OS X has been terrible. Maybe it's because my mac is dreadfully under-spec, but MS Office's stability was lamentable, even for a M$ product. Luckily it was a copy I bummed off my parents. I'm quite happy with OOO (which I bought at the apple store), and will give NeoOffice a try. Heck, if the integration is good enough, and it proves to be stable enough, I'll try to convince the 'rents to switch!
I'm done with sigs. Sigs are lame.
Enabling Bonjour Service Discovery by Apple Computer Inc
Bonjour service discovery is always enabled. You can't disable the use of Bonjour to discover network services.
the end
While I salute the NeoOffice team for getting Open Office to work nativly on the Mac, there are still things that need to be done. Primarly clean the interface. The interface is good for Windows user and Linux users who are use to sucky interfaces and which solves the problem by adding more buttons and icons to it. Mac People are more use to the cleaner Interface and most are more willing to access the features threw the menus, and hotkeys. And having buttons for the most commonly used features. Microsoft realized this when they made Office X. While it is still Office the interface was redesigned to look good on the Mac, they still went crazy with the buttons but no where as abusive as Open Office is.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
fonts on Linux are a bit "blurry"...that is, they are not as clear/crisp as their those on their windows counterparts.
According to this it's a patent issue. I think there's something deeply wrong with patents on operations required to render fonts correctly, above and beyond the already troubling issue of software patents in general. Remember that in the US fonts are explicitly not copyrightable to prevent even the potential of copyright being used to prevent free speech. Shouldn't this easement be extended to any communication or presentation technology.
This 800x600 screenshot should survive a slashdot throttling.
And OpenOffice totally blows as well. Takes over two hours to load. Maybe it's because I'm trying to run it on my Coleco Adam, but hey.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
The interface is good for Windows user and Linux users who are use to sucky interfaces
What are you talking about ? Stop it ! Take Eterm and those kewl patterns man, they are just so cool and fresh. Apple doesn't stand a chance.
Linux is the king of GUIs. After all it comes with about twelve different ones installed.
I'm glad you beat me to my post, because I was going to say something about the appearance.
I hope that you're right and the developer team is planning on improving the appearance. This sort of thing is important to Macintosh users. (I say this even though I know I risk the flames of Macintosh critics about "superficiality.")
The responsiveness of the windows is impressive, and overall it does look good. The icon especially is superb. Other than a slight delay when first typing text, the application seems quick enough, and quicker than many Java apps.
By the way, I'm using an iMac G4 at 800MHz with 512MB of RAM running Panther -- not exactly a speed demon machine.
This is a good first release. I look forward to improvements, but it's ready to go now.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Try as I might I can't seem to locate a crack anywhere on the internet.
this is such a boon to Mac. when i bought my ibook (i use it for writing when i'm away from my desk) i couldn't believe how difficult it was to find a word processor that i not only liked to use but felt good about using.
after trying and trying i finally got the X11 port of openoffice installed but it was the most amazingly slow thing. eventually i found neooffice and found it to fit the bill perfectly.
i wish other softwares would follow their lead. sure you can try to install packages with fink but it's not terribly user friendly.
and, after 10 years of using Linux software, i'm not about to start paying for software i can use for free on my desktop!
nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
A Java Office program (with dubious file format compatability) on a mac....
OpenOffice on OSX was almost cancelled several times due to the amount of x86-specific code in it, apparently.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
... And thus easy to make a universal binary from? Or will this be harder to port once the Intel switch begins?
Good app, but I hope it can move with the Mac as Apple transitions to Intel processors. Seems like kind of a waste of effort if it's tied to a specific architecture, in light of Apples recent announcements.
Five years refers to the period of time since the first Mac OOo code was written. OOo on the Mac didn't even launch until 2002 and OOo 1.0.3 on the Mac wasn't released until 2003. Neo/J has really only been in development for two years, mainly by one programmer in his spare time.
_ of_NeoOffice_and_OpenOffice.org:_Introduction (when the wiki comes back again)
http://neowiki.sixthcrusade.com/index.php/History
Microsoft Office for Mac OS X is to Microsoft Office for Windows as Chevy is to Ford. No matter which you use, you should have bought a Toyota.
For OO 2.0 to arrive...
Great work tho.. have to give them a lot of credit..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I was actually using NeoOffice yesterday, and it was painfully slow...
I don't know why people love comparing cars to computers so much. Mac users especailyl like to call Macs the BMW of Computers due to the small market share, high quality, and a heavy dose of style when compared to plane jane Dell (Chevy/Ford?) boxes.
Well I have an analogy for NeoOffice/J - It's the PT Cruiser of Software. Sure it's all new and shinny on the inside, but it's retro styling harkens back to Office98 or something. Lots of Grey and icons I certainly don't want to lick or drink.
Don't get me wrong, I like NeoOffice/J and have had it installed for several Beta release cycles now. But if they are gonna stay retro, I am gonna have to hold out for a Ford Mustang GT version, with retro racing stripes and an aqua GUI, before I leave the Chevy Camero that is MS Office for Mac in long term parking.
Three Cheers for the NeoOffice team!
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Are the desktop wars over as many had previously assumed. "Microsoft has won". There still seem to be some coals on the fire though. You've got a couple of these open source projects (OpenOffice, NeoOffice, etc). Then you've got Apple doing their thing...starting with Safari, then Keynote, then iWork...Then you've got the whole Apple moving to x86 and everything that brings such as developers showing how easy it is to port to x86 by doing a full conversion during the WWDC and nutty statements like Michael Dell saying he'd sell OS X if Apple decided to sell it as a standalone product.
I'm not really sure the desktop wars are over. Each announcement of stable, full-featured M$ replacement seems to solidify that assumption. Thoughts anyone?
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
I have used the last release candidate to do "real" work on personal projects. That is, I actually tried to get things done with it rather than just clicking around to see how "Mac" it is. I have both MS Office X and NeoOffice/J installed. Office X is used for school work, where I cannot take a chance of my professors not being able to read a document.
1) In the early releases NeoOffice/J was sluggish. There were rendering delays with first word typed, pull-down menus, and switching tools, among other things. I am pleased to say that the interface speed has increased through the release candidate schedule. That said, you will find there are still delays here and there that may bother you. They bothered me until I used Office X again. That product has UI delays as well, just in different places. At this point I think it is a wash.
2) Stability (e.g. random crashes) was an issue on the earlier releases. These have been largely successfully addressed. In fact, when using the last RC to get work done I did not experience any crashes. Very nice.
3) The UI is somewhat confusing, since it departs from some of the standard metaphors we usually see in office software. The primary example is the tight coupling of the different suite functions. Those that are used to using one application for spreadsheets and another for presentations will need to aclimate to a monolithic application. This is not a big change per se; it just takes some getting used to. There are other minor departures, such as the lack of aqua widgets and different locations of buttons and menu items. Once I got used to these differences, I found the product usable for my project work.
All that being said, I have decided to do all my personal project work in NeoOffice/J. Why? The data I generate in my personal projects is valuable to me personally. I would like to maximize the chances of being able to read it in the distant future. Since the Open Office file format is completely open and documented, I believe that the OO.org file format has the greatest chance of being read 15-20 years from now. If there is not any software in 15-20 years that can read the format, then due to the open licensing on the format I could write/hire someone to write a program to read the documents. Try doing that with some archaic closed format. I will deal with quirks today to enable access to the my data tomorrow.
-LLM
Annoy a Conservative...
For that reason alone (and the price), I recommend NeoOffice. I've been using it as my sole office application for some time now with no problems.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Ok, my understanding is that this is the C++ OpenOffice code with Java used solely for the GUI (or so their site says). I loaded it last night and it works just fine. It's not 100% Aqua, but it's good enough for every day use.
My question is.... Why don't the openoffice developers take this approach? Java is available for Mac, Linux, Solaris (obviously), and Windows. And on the Mac and Windows versions the UI looks pretty good. My understanding with the Linux version is, it can use GTK widgets, so I would think a 1.5 Java on Linux should have a good look and feel also.
Wouldn't keeping the C++ backend with a Java front end for the UI make the app much more portable among platforms, and allow OpenOffice.org to embrace the Mac right off the bat, as well as any new platforms that come along?
So...is NeoOffice/J written in Java?
No.
NeoOffice/J is a Mac OS X native version of OpenOffice.org that uses small amounts of Java code for graphics drawing and configuration.
OpenOffice.org is written primarily in platform-agnostic C++. However, NeoOffice/J takes advantage of Mac OS X's advanced Java integration to tap into the OS X look-and-feel. In other words, the "J" in NeoOffice/J primarily has to do with operations that affect how the application appears to the user. The "guts" of the office suite are written in C++. (The code that makes up NeoOffice/J is 99% OpenOffice.org code shared among all OpenOffice.org platforms and 1% Mac OS X-specific code in Java, C++, C, and Objective-C.)
Thus NeoOffice/J will only run on Macintosh computers running Mac OS X 10.2.x, 10.3.x or 10.4.x--not on Mac OS 9, Windows, Linux, Darwin, or any other form of UNIX.
My advice: give up. Seriously. If this is the best you can do, it's probably time to move on. You obviously don't know what you're talking about and have few, if any, English comprehension skills.
I'd love tgo switch to NeoOffice or Pages or another decednt alternative to Word on the OS X platform, but they all ignore a feature of vital importance to professional writers like myself: A halfway decent word count function. In Pages, you can do a word count on the whole document, but not on a highlighted selection. And in NeoOffice, you have to go through an enormous song-and-dance with the Tools-->Statistics dialog (before manually selecting a tab!) to get the word count (a method that also precludes getting the word count of a highlighted selection). There's tons of room for a word count box in the status bar at the bottom of document panes in NeoOffice, but is it there? Nope. In Word, I can see how much I've written by looking at the status bar or by by executing a quick keyboard commmand, and I can run it on selections as easily as the whole document. Everyone who's trying to make Word-beaters for OS X just don't get it. I don't like using MS bloatware, especially on the Mac, but for now Word is the only real option for anyone who earns his or her living as a writer.
Everything else is great, and infinitely superior to the old port of OpenOffice.org to the Mac's X11.
Disclaimer: I haven't downloaded and tried this most recent version.
While NeoOffice/J is a usable program, I think stating that everything else is great is a bit of an overstatement. In all the versions I have used to date the startup times are very slow, and the GUI lacks the responsiveness of a native application. Scrolling for example is noticeably choppy. More importantly for me is that it has no support for native system services. My personalized spell checking library, grammar checking, translation services, thesaurus, online searching, scripts, font books, etc. are all unavailable. That right there is a lot of the added value of OS X. For me that makes it a non-starter as a production application. (I do a lot of writing, professionally.)
On the other hand, it does a very good job of opening Word files, the spotlight plug-in is worth downloading all by itself, and you can't beat the price.
still no Access-like app, huh? I know several people that would do the Mac switch, except for the lack of a version of MS Access. I explain that Filemaker is much better, but there's no interest in converting between Filemaker for their home machine and Access that must be used for work. :(
To OO.o, at least in my experience. Heck, I'm using OO.o 1.1.2 with 10.3.9, and there's no comparison! The main reason is 10.3 comes with Apple's own X11 app that has the tightest Aqua X-win integration available. Previous versions, while packaged in a nice installer, still used OroborX or XFree86 for X-window rendering, which leaves A LOT to be desired (you know you ain't usin' no commercial product). However, with Apple's modification of XFree86, the Apple X11 env is almost transparent.
By all means give Neo a try, I'll even try the new one, but here's my caution: YOU BETTER HAVE A FAST MACHINE. Trying to run a Java office package on a 466mhz just don't cut the mustard.
Just my $.02 worth.
So now that it's stable, will there be any work on it's speed? (Particularly startup time). Forget native widgets, that's just eye candy. How about a useable startup time?
.SXC (StarOffice spreadsheet format) file takes about 22 seconds. (This is with NeoOffice not having been running, the actual file open time is minimal compared to startup).
On my brand new G4 Powerbook, 1.5GHz/768MB of memory, to open a small (very small)
The direct X11 port is actually slightly quicker... startup plus opening a small file is only 20 or 21 seconds. Which is still intolerable. Really, what is it DOING? 1.5GHz * 20 seconds = 30 billion calculations to just start the application?
I would say it's more like this:
MS Office for Mac is to MS Office for Windows
as
Cadillac is to Geo
The Mac and Windows versions are as different as night and day.
However while Cadillac's are nice cars, they're not the best.
*cough*
Still trying to get through to their server, but the Slashdot text certainly doesn't give me any confidence in the developers.
Except that's not a standard Macintosh feature. Real Mac programs don't have installers, they have .app bundles and can be installed by simply dragging them to 'Programs' (or any other location of your choice) and uninstalled by dragging them to the trash.
Up till now it seemed to be mostly Microsoft products that break that model. Is the NeoOffice/J team trying way too hard to follow MS?
When their servers come back up I'll be trying it, nonetheless... with high hopes but low expectations.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Wow, this thread is much Much MUCH farther into the bizarro world than usual, even by the lax non-article-reading standards for Slashdot. NeoOffice/J IS WRITTEN IN JAVA with some Carbon for native Mac goodies. What the heck do you think the "/J" stands for?
It really freaks me out that NINE OTHER PEOPLE already responded to Santa's question and none of them mentioned this minor detail.Actually, while the programmers of Pages may not "get it," because it is a native application and because the programmers of OS X do "get it," you can just install a system service that will perform a word count on a selection. In fact there is a set of services called "Wordservice" that is free and includes that functionality as well as many more (like: Reformat, Remove line attachments/endings/links/multiple spaces/multiple feeds/quotes, Trim line beginnings/line endings/lines, Sort lines ascending/descending, Shift left/right, Initial caps of words/sentences, All caps & lowercase, Mac/Windows/Unix line endings, Rotate 13, Straight/Smart Quotes, Encode/Decode tabs, Insert date/date & time/time/contents of path, Speak native/german text). You can download it from here. System services work on all cocoa applications like Word, Pages, Indesign, TextEdit, Safari, etc. They do not work on NeoOffice/J though, which is for me one of it's biggest failings.
OK, now you've really confused me. You're a professional writer who uses Word? I'm so very sorry. For larger, technical works Latex or Framemaker are both much, much better options. They are actually designed to create and layout books, not memos. For writing non-technical works or if you don't need to do layout there are many text editors that don't have the bugs/limitations of word and provide very useful features.
I've worked at a place that used word for actual writing, but we had to give it up very quickly. Larger files (200+ pages with some embedded images) would regularly become corrupted and either fail to save, or save but fail to open. The layout features were incredibly weak and everyone was reduced to using carriage returns to try to place text and objects. I'll tell you right now, I have written professionally as all or a large part of my job for many years and Word is a non-starter.
NeoOffice/J IS WRITTEN IN JAVA with some Carbon for native Mac goodies. What the heck do you think the "/J" stands for?
It stands for "we're using Java for the user interface". NeoOffice is based on the OpenOffice.org source code, which is written in C++.
If this project wants to be seen as credible, perhaps they should have the money before they make the announcement. Whether or not the original poster wants to donate is immaterial.
I've been using NeoOffice/J on my Macs for a couple of years now. (I have a rather dated review here.) Without a doubt, it's my favourite office suite for OSX.
What's really amazing is that almost all of the coding work is done by Patrick Luby (pluby) with a fairly small group of very dedicated testers and contributors. Despite the complexity of the code and the magnitude of the task, Patrick and the rest of his small team of volutneers has managed to release the only viable alternateive to MS Office for Mac OSX.
I have been installing NeoOffice/J on lab machines at work for over a year now. NO/J 1.1 is a significant improvement over the earlier versions. It now integrates with the menubar, opens and closes like a Mac app, and even uses OSX's keyboard shortcuts. Heck, they even managed to integrate it with SpotLight!
For everyone out there using a Mac, be sure to check it out. Also, if you like the program don't forget to donate. Even $50 is much appreciated. Think of it, an entire office suite on your platform of choice with perfect interoperability with Linux, Windows and Solaris. And it's Open Source. Surely that's worth a donation.
Then why don't you go ask for a refund?
You must be kidding.
Even major corporations can't handle the cost of the bandwidth to be slashdotted.
If you are beating your head against the wall trying to run Mac Office 2004 on an older machine, you might want to try the previous version, Mac Office X. v.X is happy on a 300MHz iBook...it was happy with only 160MB RAM and is positively ecstatic with 544MB.
I intend to try this new version of NeoOffice when the dust settles, though. I try to run as much F/OSS on my machines as possible, even those running unfree OSes. There is a huge amount available for Mac OS X, and almost everything is available to Mac that is available to LinuxPPC if you run the X11 layer.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Commerical software developers aren't stupid. They don't like re-inventing the wheel any more than anyone else does.
If they see an OSS project that parallels something they want to do, or are trying to do, they very well might want to contribute to it or work along-side of it, to achieve their own goals more quickly.
I'm not saying Apple would just want to give out free hardware to anyone working on OSS proijects. Obviously, that wouldn't make any good business sense. But striking a deal with the NeoOffice people? Might be a sound plan for Apple, while helping them at the same time. Right now, Apple has the aging "Appleworks" product as their "all in one" suite. It's long overdue for replacement with something, but there's really nothing they've come out with that serves that purpose. I could see adopting and modifying something like NeoOffice and making it the successor to Appleworks, while still keeping Pages, Keynote, and whatever else Apple has up their sleeves as the higher-end set of solutions. (Microsoft still sells "Works", despite having Office. Apple could very well do something similar.)
Wow great, an office suite with a Windows GUI. Now I can harken back to the days before I "switched", back when Windows was relevant to me.
TextEdit it still is.
That's funny that you should make that comment. (I'm not the original poster, by the way.)
I had a one-bedroom apartment some years ago. I turned the living room into more of a studio apartment and the bedroom into a study. Having no washer and dryer I used the laudromat, which I happened to enjoy. You can get all of your wash done in one sitting, and it's a great place to people watch. (Of course, I was living in a college town, where the ratio of attractive to non-attractive people increases.)
As for his priorities, each to his own ;-)
I just prefer to have a room for my books, desk, and computer.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Oh my God... I got a Mac about six months ago and have abstained from the Windows world... and then I open this goliath on my Mac and I actually audibly screamed... Windows look/feel never seemed quite so ugly as when displayed acutally within a Mac... *sigh*
-jag
I'd love tgo switch to NeoOffice or Pages or another decednt alternative to Word on the OS X platform, but they all ignore a feature of vital importance to professional writers like myself: A halfway decent word count function.
Yeh, that's why I'm sticking with "vi". Being able to go ":,'aw !wc" or "!}fmt" or "!/^From/-1sort" instead of having to write a script or cut-and-paste from a whole other document is a killer feature.
OK, OK, I'm a retro old fogey. I won't tease you any more (but I really do prefer to work in "vi" than GUI apps)... but this isn't entirely irrelevant either... because Mac OS X has a really neat capability that many people don't fully "get", that gives you a lot of this kind of easy integration between applications that made UNIX such a revolutionary environment back in the '70s (and, goldarnit, still does today).
In Pages, you can do a word count on the whole document, but not on a highlighted selection.
Does the Services menu not work in Pages? I'm sure it does. In any Cocoa app and many Carbon ones you can select text and perform operations on it through "Application -> Services", and any application can publish a service in the Services menu. There's a freeware application called "WordService" that provides among other things a "statistics" dialog that gives you characters, spaces, words, and lines in the selected text.
I don't know how well NeoOffice/J supports services, but Pages is Apple's own application so I would be positively astounded if it fell short in this area. This kind of deep integration between applications is what really makes Mac OS X a joy for me. You don't need to provide every feature over and over again in every application, you just need to provide a way for programs to work together.
So, basically
If these are the key features, they should rethink their slot in the development world.
Seriously.
Nobody ever made it anywhere by reinventing 'Hello World!' apps or marketing the most basic (ie. functionality is built-in from the get-go) features as 'key features.'
-c
Thanks for the info on WordService, of which I was entirely ignorant. I'll give it a whirl with Pages. I made my post from the POV of a fairly recent Windows-->OS X switcher who hasn't used Macs much since the System 9 days. While I'm obviously fairly computer-savvy (otherwise, I wouldn't be reading /.), I'm not a technical writer, but rather a pop culture journalist, and most of the people in my field are probably only going to use mass-market ultra-user friendly word processors (for compatability's sake, if nothing else), and while the other progams' ability to save as Word files makes them viable alteratives, it really all comes down to the features set. I'll definitely give WordService a try. If I can get the functionality I need from Pages, I'd be happy to make it my primary word processor.
Office for the Mac isn't perfect, but it is far nicer than the Windows version. I don't have any real complaints about Office aside from the bloat, which if reduced, would be nice. But otherwise... it beats the Windows version by far. Waaayyy far.
Does NeoOffice come with a Matrix screen saver? Or maybe NeoOffice isn't the One after all?
I've only got to play with my wife's powerbook a little bit, but wouldn't that be the standard installer?
http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/downloads/patches /NeoOfficeJ-1.1-Patch-0.dmg
I'll give 'em credit for getting patches out fast, but the nearly flawless 1.1 RC Patch 6 was out for quite a while, so it would have been nice if Preferences... [splat-comma] worked out of the box.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
OOo and NeoJ does have a simple way to dynamically display word count in any document.
1/ Place the cursor in your document where you'd like the word count to appear ( I use the header).
2/ Drag down at the NeoJ Insert menu label in the OS X menu bar.
3/ You want
Insert/Fields/Document/Statistics/Words
While this may seem like a lot of work (ha ha) if you can put this field in your professional-writer templates.
Also, there is a OOo macro out there that supposedly gives a more accurate word count. However installing a OOo macro is an enormous task (ha ha again).
The parent post serves to point out there are many free OOo mannuals, tutorials and user forums available.
For what it's worth, I get paid to write and everything I've written for the past 18 months came from NeoJ.
When I write for fun (non-fiction) I use CopyWrite because of its organization tools and full-screen (no distraction) mode. I still use NeoJ for the editing and printing though.
The real issue isn't Java - it's javax.swing, the Java Swing toolkit, and the java.awt, the Abstract Window Toolkit . AWT looks awful, has a clumsy event model, and is low level and clunky. Swing provides higher level widgets, but an over-complex API, and it's still slow as hell.
Ever tried SWT from Eclipse? It's the Java widget toolkit that doesn't suck! (as much).
That said, I'm very happy with C++ and Qt. Well, except the C++ bit, but I find Java just as gag-worthy in different ways (Java 1.5 goes some way to rectifying the issues with generics and the collections framework, though. It's still WAY too verbose and static for a truly nice language, though).
It seems to be a choice between dirty swamp water (Java), somewhat cleaner but might be radioactive swamp water (C#), and swamp water with sewerage in it (C++).
... it sucks much less than the others for many tasks.
I can't wait until PyQt4 comes out - GPL for Windows, Mac OS X, and UNIX/Linux. Python has its own faults, and PyQt more, but
Sure, Swing is slow as molasses, but the Java language isn't. Using SWT, or the Java cocoa bindings, it'd be much less crap. You lose your GUI portability, but then you'll have to customise your GUI heavily for each platform anyway.
I'll still stick with C++ and Qt, especially with Qt4 GPL for Windows.
Just 12 hours after I downloaded the RC version, out this comes! That's life.
Andrew Yeomans
OpenOffice.org was ported quickly to Mac OS X. Mac users went "eew, X11" and turned up their noses - and rightly so, the X11 integration on Mac OS X is shit. I should know. Scribus, an app I contribute to, has been working on Mac OS X for ages - it's a C++ app, yet all it took was a recompile and a few endianness fixes. That, however, doesn't cut it - you get nowhere unless it's been ported to all Apple's special platform specific APIs for doing everything, none of which can be neatly integrated into an X11 app - you have to move across to Aqua first. Qt made that fairly easy, but there's still all this f**ing integration work left.
<rant>
Apple could've made this much easier by making their X11 integration NOT SUCK and giving X11 developers some easy to use libraries for simple access to the Mac menu bar, dock, VFS, etc. They evidently felt tying developers to Mac OS X's APIs was more important.
</rant>
Anyway... OpenOffice's platform API abstraction didn't fit well with the "Mac way" of doing things, so they had to do some fairly major work to make it all work right. The best way ended up being the Java cocoa bindings. Note that the Java here is not portable, it relies on the Cocoa bindings for Java that only work on Mac OS X.
Blame Mac OS X. Java deserves only some of the credit here, and I suspect many of the issues would've remained if OO.o was written in Java.
That was a pretty pathetic attempt at humor. Don't quit your day job.
"Word is the only real option for anyone who earns his or her living as a writer."
I've made my living as a (technical) writer for the past 25 years.
Never had to use Word; most of my work for the past 15+ years has been with FrameMaker. Word won't do, or won't easily do, things that I have to do on a daily basis developing collections of books.
LaTeX and other tools would work, too. Good thing, I'd hate to have to be stuck with Word.
Well, you can always go under Tools and choose "Options". It's the same thing. The Preferences menu choice was just a shortcut :)
Ah well, nothing is perfect.
Seems the "NeoOffice/J"->"Preferences..." menu option got disconnected in the final build.
You can use "Tools"->"Options" if you want; it's the same thing. Or get this patch.
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
To be more precise, Objective C is a strict superset of C, while C++ is not. This means that C code can be included anywhere in an Objective C project, but to use pure C in a C++ project you have to do some minor massaging. For example, in C++ you need to modify your C h-files with
See the Wikipedia for more information.
This account verified sig-free since..., uh, never mind.
Yuck. Who wants to see that on their Mac every day?
And, what ever happened to the fully native Aqua interface that Sun promised for Open Office three full years ago:
So, let's recap. In 2002 Sun promises to fully support the Aqua interface using Java. Like so many other Java on the desktop promises from Sun, they never make good on this promise. Has anyone ever held Sun's feet to the fire on this and the hundreds of other Java promises they've made in the past 10 years?Three years after Sun promises Mac OS X support another team of developers finally ship something for Mac OS X that has no Aqua interface at all... except for the MENUBAR.
My analysis of this sad state of affairs is Java has failed on the desktop.
Well I got the page with installation instructions to open. It's not as bad as the slashdot blurb made it sound. It's not a standard .app folder, but it's not an MS style installer either. Sounds like it's a .pkg, that's a file for the Macs built-in package management tool, similar to an .deb or an .rpm. A reasonable way to go about it - is still considered better to do a proper .app but if for some reason it's absolutely essential that the install spread files around the filesystem this is the way to do it - registers them all in the database for a clean uninstall. That's the way *nix programs for the mac are usually packaged... so nice. One of these days I'll actually get the whole package downloaded, and then we'll see how it runs. ;)
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Was it? Was it really? It was so damn convenient I mistook it for a feature. Sorry 'bout dat!
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
The final app is a standard .app package, but because of OpenOffice.org's Unix/Windows roots and build system, Neo/J can't just be dragged from the .dmg. That's why there's an Apple Installer .pkg. (OpenOffice.org for Mac (X11) does not use a standard Mac installer and many people do not like that installer.)
Sounds like it's a .pkg, that's a file for the Macs built-in package management tool, similar to an .deb or an .rpm. A reasonable way to go about it - is still considered better to do a proper .app but if for some reason it's absolutely essential that the install spread files around the filesystem this is the way to do it
.app wrapper. There's no reason for it to be using an installer.
.app wrappers, which is almost always possible. (Apple itself is one of the largest offenders in this area).
;)
Yeah, although the silly thing is that the NeoOffice application *is* a single
registers them all in the database for a clean uninstall.
Actually there's no built-in facility in OS X to do uninstalls. There should be, but it wouldn't be much of an issue if more developers would follow Apple's advice and use
One of these days I'll actually get the whole package downloaded, and then we'll see how it runs.
Pretty well so far, based on playing with it for 15 minutes. It's handled several complex Word and Excel files with no problems except for macros.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Highlight section
Command-C to copy
Open terminal
pbpaste|wc -w
> it lasted a lot longer than 30 seconds.
you're right. but no more than three minutes. (say timothy posted at 6:17:00 and udderly posted at 6:19:59.)
> Posted by timothy on Wed 22 Jun 06:17AM
> by udderly (890305) Alter Relationship on Wed 22 Jun 06:19AM (#12879788)
Yes I am not sure about MS office X being "absolutely perfect".
Just got hit by a nasty bug today that made me lose 1 hours worth of work.. Try it:
Open excel
type the formula
=average(
in a cell, then hold down apple key (whatever it's called!) and click on three separate cells (not sure if they have to contain data). When you click the third, the program magically disappears along with your data, only to be replaced by a sarcastic message about reporting th bug to people who don't bother to fix bugs (okay the last bit didn't happen, but you get the idea!)
Anyway, if anyone knows of a patch to fix this, I would be very grateful. In the meantime I think I will stick with openoffice.org
You aren't the only one with problems running msoffice X on the Mac.
I was also beset by nasty crashes until I installed the MS "security"?? patch for msoffice X. Even now it still crashes sometimes (see my other post to this parent). This is on a G4 Powerbook with (now) 512MB RAM, so I don't think it is too underpowered.
Secondly, although it isn't really a bug, I hate the way that I can slide windows under the menubars so that I can no longer click the top of the window to move it. To fix this problem I have had to change my menubars to mac-like floating boxes to the side of my workspace. Well I suppose I am using a Mac ! ;P
True, it doesn't ship with the OS, but OSXPM is an easy add-on and does the job fine.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Well, Chevy makes better cars than Ford, IMHO, but they both suck compared to a Toyota. :-) I don't think Mac Office is Cadillac:Geo level, though; Mac Office is still one of the slowest and clunkiest Macintosh applications you pay money for (Of course, IMHO). I cannot -- will not -- put such filth on my Mac.
On a related topic, AppleWorks 6.5 is an 8 year Yugo that has never had an oil change. Total sh*t. OpenOffice is the best thing going for Mac right now, even if the interface is X-Windows style -- but, I'll try NeoOffice now and see if it is more consistent with the rest of the system. I'd sacrifice a bit of speed for usability. I think some parts of OO are very oddly designed.
I prefer AppleWorks for my office suite, which comes free with new Macs .. yes, it's an outdated office suite, but it works, it's more responsive and loads much faster than NeoOffice/J.
iWork is $79, Mac MS Office is $399. If one was choosing between these two, I would recommend the iWork not just because of pricing but because of the vendor: Apple is more likely to care about their own users while MS has potential to drop their product quality because Mac users aren't as important to MS than they are to Apple. Microsoft has already started to pull away from Microsoft Windows Media Player for OS X (currently lacks AVI, MPEG, MP3 support, playlist, drag-n-drop support, displayal of filename during playback, doesn't stop screensavers from running during video playback, etc.). MS has also announced that they've stopped development for Internet Explorer for Mac. The few people that still use IE for Mac probably do so because they've grown accustomed to it from the times before Mozilla + Safari, or because of the Microsoft brand name. I think people need to stop thinking that the Microsoft brand is the best choice, especially on the Mac platform which competes with Windows for marketshare.
But if you're looking for the kitchen sink, some people have apparently ported various Gnome office apps into an integrated bundle. The company behind the offering appears to have turned the traditional definition of free on its head. The software is free in the GNU sense, but you're charged $30 for a download of the (pre-built) binaries. I still need to check the site if there are patches available for free download, or if the company simply used some exotic compiler that would make it extremely difficult (or expensive) to (legally) roll out your own executables.
I'm a sci-fi vegan: I don't want the aliens to think we have as much right to live as the fried chickens we eat.
Microsoft has stated that these patents will be avilable on a "royalty free and otherwise reasonable and non-discriminatory basis", but short of an irrevocable legally-binding release worded in such a way that it's unambiguously clear these patents can not be used against open-source software, I am unwilling to trust to their good will.
.NET, and thus subject to patent claims by Microsoft?
.NET goes in, if you hitch your wagon to Mono, you go where Mono goes, not where .NET goes.
.NET.
Microsoft has no good will to trust.
If you can point to an actual statement that the patents would be available on a royalty free basis, then there is something called estopel. You can't sue someone for doing something that you publicly promised that they could do.
Did you notice that Mono is primarily an implementation of
Did you notice that just about any software whatsoever, including Free software, is subject to patent claims by Microsoft, IBM, Novell, Lucent, GE, etc., etc. ?
Specifically, did you notice that Linux very well may be subject to patent claims by Microsoft?
Generalizing...
Did you notice that X very well may be subject to patent claims by Y.
Where X could be any of Linux, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, KDE, GNOME, ReiserFS, Ext3, Bash, and a long, looooong list of others.
Where Y could be any of Microsoft, and a long list of others.
If you use any of X without an iron clad legally binding agreement from any of Y, then it would seem that you are hypocritical? (i.e. if you use Linux without an binding no-patent-attack statement from Microsoft)
Who is going to start the patent nuclear war?
Novell has promised to use their patent portfolio to defend against patent claims made against their products.
IBM has not made a similar promise, but they still might act if an important enough high profile open-source project were attacked. Nothing would stop IBM from arbitrarily, suddenly, asserting one of their patents against some random party, that just happened to recently have attacked an open source project.
With Mono you can hitch your wagon to Microsoft's oxen, never knowing just where they're going to go.
I disagree.
Mono runs on Windows as well as other platforms. No matter what directions
With Mono, I could, for example, use GTK#, but not with
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
You trust MS wrt NET far more than I do.
.NET...I may not know where the catch is, but this is coming from MS.
FWIW, there was a lower level (I think) MS manager who commented WRT NET: "It's our intellectual property, and we intend to defend it." If this statement was ever clarified, I never heard it. I also never heard it denied. I don't remember who it was, and Google doesn't remember it either, but let's say I tend to be a bit skeptical about the openness of
"O oysters come and walk with us!"
The walrus did beseach,
"A plesant walk, a pleasant talk
Along the briney beach.
We cannot do with more than four
to give a hand to each"
Perhaps I'm feeling a bit oysterish, but I think I'll remember what happened at the end, and so:
The eldest oyster looked at them,
but never a word he said
The eldest oyster winked his eye
and shook his heavy head
Meaning to say he did not choose
to leave the oyster bed.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This is just plain nonsense. There is no reason a program properly coded in ANSI C would be any more difficult to "port" than a Java app.
Microsoft has no good will to trust.
.NET.
.NET goes, Mono will follow, unless the Mono group are willing to abandon compatibility with Windows... something I find about as likely as Samba abandoning compatibility with Windows.
No kidding.
If you can point to an actual statement that the patents would be available on a royalty free basis, then there is something called estopel.
Read the pages I linked to.
Microsoft can say "these patents are available on a royalty free basis for any vendor that uses our libraries, we will license these libraries to anyone, at no cost (which is all 'royalty-free' means), to everyone under identical (thus non-discriminatory) terms, using the 'Happy Freeware' license", and then ship the libraries with a license that's incompatible with open source.
They haven't lied. They've done what they said. But they've still got you by the short and curlies if you don't want to spend time in court or unless you don't want to ship source. AND they've tried to play basically this game with the EU. Several of us predicted this... and we got the same kind of reaction to that THEN as you're having to me NOW. THIS time we seem to have a European regulator who doesn't buy in to the idea that these are "reasonable terms", but you can't depend on that... they've gotten away with worse elsewhere.
Did you notice that just about any software whatsoever, including Free software, is subject to patent claims
Yes, but there's a big difference here. Here, we know ahead of time EXACTLY what the claims are, because those claims are on patents that are explicitly an essential part of what's being implemented. There's no "innocent infringement" here.
Who is going to start the patent nuclear war?
There doesn't need to be a "nuclear war". A patent "cold war" will serve Microsoft just as well: they have effectively fought a clandestine war on many fronts for decades, from "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run" through the very effective file format battles that lead to Office's dominance on the desktop, and facing down the Department of Justice over IE. Patents are just another tool for them.
Microsoft is already demanding royalties and receiving payments for embedded use of the FAT file system. They're establishing a strong presence in a relatively inconspicuous corner of the market for their patent portfolio. They have strongarmed free software they didn't approve of, like ntcrashme, out of the limelight... and hardly made a ripple. Thinking they won't continue to expand this precedent is trusting to their good will.
With Mono, I could, for example, use GTK#, but not with
Whatever direction
Nitpick: All architectures I know of have the same bit order (please correct me if necessary). What you mean, I think, is little-endian versus big-endian (see http://www.cs.umass.edu/~verts/cs32/endian.html ), which is actually *byte* order.
...
Sorry, sorry, I'm leaving now
Karma: Positive (mostly due to rash moderations)
I've been running the Betas and Release Candidates of NeoOffice on my G3 iBook, and they run as well as any other substantial apps do. That is, I'm not about to start gushing about how Neo screams on a G3 (because it doesn't), but its not as if Photoshop does, either.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Nissus Writer handles word count well. I don't use it however -- I use OO.o and LaTeX.
Downloaded this and installed it on the wife's Mac-mini already and finally she can open those old Openoffice and MS Word docs she's got. She's been on me for weeks to get that working for her.
It seems to be a bit slow to load but once it's up it seems to work OK, as long as she can open her old docs and read them all is good!
--- www.f-theocean.com
Okay, Neo/J's functionality is restricted to OpenOffice.org's functionality, and one thing that is missing built-in is a good word counter. But as another poster pointed out, there is a great 3rd-party macro available http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group _id=87718&package_id=98079here - which you only have to click on a button in the doc to install - just assign the Wordcount macro to cmd-K and it'll display word/letter/para count for the whole doc, plus word/letter count for selected text (plus the former less the latter for good measure).
Yeah, although the silly thing is that the NeoOffice application *is* a single .app wrapper. There's no reason for it to be using an installer.
.debs the files are all installed read-only, or at least read-only by anybody other than root.
.pkg install process in order to get control over the ownership and permissions of installed files.
Actually, there is. Apparently OO (by design) will alter some of the installed files (example document templates, etc.) in its app wrapper if given write access to them, which interferes with patches and is considered bad practice by the authors of NeoOffice/J. Normally this behavior doesn't cause problems, because in cases such as Linux RPMs or
However, Finder copy installs will leave the files writeable by whichever user initiated the install. Since it is very common for users to have only one account, which is an admin account, this means that drag-installing NeoOffice/J would expose this problem for a large number of users. So they chose to use a
After install Word Services, you can count the words in highlighted text in any program with services (e.g., Safari). Just click on the name of the application, slide down to Services and select Statistics.
you all praise open source, which is a good thing, but you b!tch about the icons. the source code is there. if you DONT like the icons, make news ones and publish them, heck they might even add it to the next release if you submit it to them what im trying to say is, why complain about an open source product when you can get in there and change it yourself.