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

What if it were written in Java?

[Dancin_Santa]

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?

Great for files from those 'other' computers

[NardofDoom]

My wife was working on a presentation for her masters class and was getting files from her Windows-using classmates to produce the final Powerpoint. For some reason Office v.X couldn't open the files, but NeoOffice/J could.

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.