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."

Comments

Seems the better then regular OpenOffice...

[afd8856]

Looking at the integration features, it seems better then either Windows or *nix versions of OpenOffice.

Re:What if it were written in Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be quicker to develop, yes. Unfortunately, Java still looks like ass on most every platform and I don't care what people say to the contrary, Java still isn't half as 'snappy' as a native app. It's really quite bad in most cases.

Re:Valid reason for BitTorrent

[Ford Prefect]

I'll keep my client running today. Will you?

Mine's chugging away, downloading - there's a fair few seeds already so it hasn't uploaded anything yet!

Here's a nice, friendly Mac BitTorrent client for all you GUI-fiends, and while I'm at it, here's a list of conventional mirrors and translations...

Re:How much Java?

[AKAImBatman]

I can't check the wiki since it has been slashdotted, does anyonw know how much Java is in NeoOffice?

A LOT. NeoOffice/J more or less uses the core of OOo for opening/saving files, and rendering the GUI to a back-buffer. Everything else, such as the screen handling, clipboard, I/O, and anything else machine specific, is done through Java.

Re:Just when they get if finished....

[Shisha]

You don't have to use XCode to be able to do that. In fact, if they wouldn't be bothered about producing fat binaries, they could probably just simply recompile it. Since OpenOffice is multiplatform and Java should be also, they're unlikely to run into problems because of differences in bit ordering (least significant first or most significant first?). I also don't suspect them of having produced too much PPC specific assembly code.

Re:Just when they get if finished....

[squiggleslash]

I would guess actually the latter. The major issues are - does it compile with the Apple supported tools (my understand is, yes, it uses GCC etc, it just doesn't access them via the XTools GUI), and will it require modifications to deal with endianisms etc (my guess is almost certainly no, because it's based upon the already architecture independent OpenOffice.org, with some additional code written in Java.)

So for the most part, even if generating a univeral binary is "hard" (and I doubt it will be, I don't have access to Tiger so can't use the latest XCode but I'd be surprised if it's not just the old NEXTSTEP "one binary per architecture in a certain directory, with all the shared files in Resources as usual" thing, generating a binary that'll work on "the other architecture" will be a simple matter of compiling it there.

Re:Just when they get if finished....

[Ford Prefect]

Will that be a huge setback to the project, or will they just be able to check a box and recompile, as Steve Jobs suggested in his keynote?

Sounds like it'll 'simply' (heh) involve porting to GCC4...

What they really need is (a) more programmers with some highly esoteric combinations of skills, (b) a Mac-Intel box or two, and (c) monetary donations! :-)

Re:Question:

[zborgerd]

I find Linux font rendering to be very nice; better than Windows and even on par with OS X, but a lot of it is largely due to configuration and the videocard/monitor being used. This is a pretty lengthy reply, but I'd like to help people debunk the myth that Linux has "bad" font rendering. It's just that most distributions don't provide fonts and font renderers that function in the way many users might expect.

By default, all distributions (except for Debian, I believe) use the Autohinter instead of the Bytecode Interpreter, due to potential patent issues. They render in very different ways. The Autohinter looks pretty good on LCD displays, with its subpixel hinting (producing fonts that are better in my opinion than Windows Cleartype), but I prefer the Bytecode Interpreter on CRTs.

I'm not sure what you mean by "native" support for Linux fonts. All of the font rendering is handled through Libfreetype. You can compile Freetype to use either rendering method, but it defaults to the Autohinter. Freetype supports more than 11 different font formats. This includes standard scalable formats such as Truetype and Type 1 fonts.

For example...
With the Bytecode Interpreter:
http://www.borgerding.org/dropline/zborgerd/screen shots/2.10_1.png
http://www.borgerding.org/dropline/zborgerd/screen shots/2.10_2.png
http://www.dropline.net/gnome/optical/2.10_4.png
http://dlgwiki.dot42.org/uploads/katana.jpg
http://dlgwiki.dot42.org/uploads/katana2.jpg

With the Autohinter:
http://www.dropline.net/gnome/optical/dropline-11. png
http://www.dropline.net/gnome/optical/dropline-9.p ng
http://www.dropline.net/gnome/optical/dropline-5.p ng

Additionally, configuration can cause fonts to look bad. Some people don't like much antialiasing. They prefer the method that Windows uses to antialias only fonts greater than 12 points in size. A combination of the Bytecode Interpreter and disabling antialiasing for small fonts can produce font rendering that is similar to the rendering that most Windows users are familiar with.

If you disable antialiasing while using the Autohinter, you'll find that fonts look terribly uneven and jagged.... They're pretty ugly. If you want to disable antialiasing, you probably should do it only with the Bytecode Interpreter being used as the renderer. This will produce the results that you may be looking for if you prefer Windows-like font rendering.

Lastly, OpenOffice.org's builds have typically included internal Freetype libraries that don't particularly look pretty. There are some workarounds for this. I mention it in the following FAQ:

http://www.dropline.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=825

It's quite outdated, but may provide you with the information that you need to get the font rendering that you prefer. You may also want to try tracking down a package of the Microsoft Core Webfonts. They are legal to distribute as long as they are provided in the original EXE, which may be extract with cabextract. As an alternative, you may be able to find a custom build of OpenOffice.org for your favorite distribution, that links against your system's own freetype libraries instead of the internal OO.o Freetype libraries.

Re:They recommend MS Office :)

[Arker]

*cough*

Still trying to get through to their server, but the Slashdot text certainly doesn't give me any confidence in the developers.

Key Macintosh features include a standard Mac OS X installer

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.

Re:Just when they get if finished....

[wealthychef]

Oops, somebody's an idiot! Rosetta, Rosetta, Rosetta. Sorry. Wasn't thinking when I hit "submit."

Re:Just when they get if finished....

[geoffspear]

Right. They're so worried that they announced that Office for Mactel was already done about 10 seconds after Jobs made the original announcement.

Re:Eh ... am I missing something?

[Uncle Asad]

Yes, you are missing something. If you've used (or read reviews) of the Mac (X11) version of OpenOffice.org, you'd know none of these features are present in OOo. Maybe that's not a big deal for the Slashdot crowd, but for the average Mac user who's looking for a fully-featured and/or free/Free alternative to Microsoft--especially if the person has tried to use the X11 version or has read reviews--these are important features to tout. It all depends on the audience....

And five years is the total time since the first work on porting OOo to the Mac began. NeoOffice/J has really only been in development for two years, primarily by one developer in his spare time....

That's nice, but...

[they_call_me_quag]

A "native Aqua menu bar" is ridiculous. Look at this Java-based abomination... the rest of the interface is lifted straight out of Windows 98. The open and save dialog boxes are totaly non-standard. This application does not support any native Mac OS X technology such as Applescript, Quartz, native UI controls (except, the menubar).

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:

"I think you can see Open Office running solid on OS X by the end of this calendar year," said Tony Siress, Sun's senior director of desktop marketing solutions. ... The current release of Open Office for Mac OS X requires x11," Siress said. "I've got my Hamburg (Germany) team working on eliminating that requirement right now and using Java. Full text

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.

AppleWorks

[line.at.infinity]

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.