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OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X Alpha Released!
An anonymous reader writes "Nearly 6 years after announcing a Mac port, OpenOffice.org has released the first release of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X that can finally run without X11!! An alpha is available for download today, but a lot of help is still needed to make OpenOffice.org available for Mac OS X. The site is very blunt: 'WARNING: THIS SOFTWARE MAY CRASH AND MAY DESTROY YOUR DATA DO NOT USE THIS SOFTWARE FOR REAL WORK IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT. This is an alpha test version so that developers and users can find out what works and not, and make comments on how to improve it.' Currently missing functionality includes printing, pdf export, copy/pasting, and multiple monitors. That said, if you're interested in participating you can visit the Mac team to figure out how you can help today."
While this is cool, make sure you really read that warning message. This is real alpha. You won't be able to print. You won't be able to cut+paste reliably. As this alpha has been approaching, I had a crash while saving, leaving me with a half-corrupted useless copy of my document.
:)
So have a look, and help submit bug reports, but please don't try using this is your normal editor, or get annoyed it isn't in a full usable state yet, that's why it is called alpha
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
You know, "released" when applied to software commonly means software which is considered (rightly or wrongly) to be 'production' material.
This however is apparently an 'alpha' which is commonly an early development version, not fit for general consumption and the type of thing you might get from CVS or a daily tarball.
Some developers use the term 'alpha release' as they assume others will know it's just a packaged up development snapshot, then some muppet takes it and runs to press with it.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
This is a genuine native port, NeoOffice uses a Java intermediate layer to present the UI to Mac OS X.
As I understand it, they're not working with the NeoOffice people, there's always been a little friction between the groups.
In time, this project is likely to overtake NeoOffice, simply because changes to OpenOffice.org will always be faster than those in NeoOffice, which is in a continual state of catch-up.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Besides the technical differences (Java/Carbon), a big difference is the licenses: OpenOffice.org is LGPL, NeoOffice is GPL. That means that code can flow from OpenOffice to NeoOffice, but not vice versa since the NeoOffice devs don't want anything less than GPL for their code. (I think both the NeoOffice devs used to work for Sun and maybe they got stomped on one too many times - end result, they don't want Sun re-licensing their code and making commercial cash off their work.)
When you start off behind in some areas, but not in others, and in the "others" you can only ever be ahead of the rest. OpenOffice.org's Mac port is at an early stage at the moment, so it implements all of the latest version of OpenOffice.org (by definition) but not all of the Mac native subsystem. NeoOffice includes a complete Mac native subsystem, but not all of the features of the latest version of OpenOffice.org. As time goes by, because making OpenOffice.org native is a discrete, completable, task, OpenOffice.org will catch up with the part of NeoOffice it currently lags behind, but NeoOffice cannot catch up with OpenOffice.org (unless OpenOffice.org ceases to update.)
Does that make sense to you?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You're wrong. "Carbon" is the collective name for all native Mac OS X APIs, see http://developer.apple.com/carbon/. Quartz, Core Data, Code Audio, etc. are all parts of the umbrella technology set called "Carbon". "Cocoa" OTOH is a handy Objective-C object-oriented abstraction layer atop of that, which is supposed to make development of applications easier. In Windows terms, Cocoa is to Carbon as MFC was to Win32 - an OO encapsulation of the API with convenience goodies. But you can program directly for Carbon if you wish, in the end you have the same capabilities available to your code, it just usually takes less time and lines of code to use Cocoa than Carbon directly. Therefore, it is a perfect solution for you app that you build from scratch. If you're however porting an existing app and it's not trivial to sneak in Objective-C into it, you'd probably go the Carbon route. Nothing to frown upon :-)
The misunderstanding comes from Apple's advertized "carbonization" of OS 9 apps ("you need to use Carbon to have your apps run on Mac OS X"). What it really meant was - replace QuickDraw calls with Quartz calls in your source code etc. Carbon is *THE* Mac OS X API, not some transitional support layer for OS 9 migration.
Sig erased via substitution of an identical one.
"Alpha" testing is testing by people who participated in the design and/or implementation. Any testing by people not in those teams is, by definition, "Beta" testing.
Alpha/Beta/Release is not a measure of quality or maturity. It just tells who is testing, and their relationship to the software.
--
make install -not war
Adobe uses Carbon for its CS3 suite. Microsoft uses Carbon for Office. Game developers (EA) use Carbon
And apple uses Carbon for Finder, a fact that annoys the hell out of me on a daily basis.
Two things off the top of my head that are implemented in Cocoa apps but not Carbon apps: emacs-style text navigation (ctrl-F,ctrl-B, etc) and on-the-fly word definitions (ctrl-cmd-D while cursor is over a word). There are other differences, too, but I only notice them when they don't work in Finder or in Camino (or Photoshop!).
That said, it's a hell of a lot more integrated than Java!
You have this almost right...
Many of the sub-systems, especially in things like drawing and sound, often have the more robust API written in Carbon, and then some of the Cocoa API's call those APIs while running. But generalizing like you do that Cocoa is built on Carbon is a mistake, there are many sections of Cocoa that have no Carbon at all underneath them.
A better concept of the major MacOS X API's are that at the root of things you have a layer called CoreFoundation that is written in C. This sits next to the APIs taken from FreeBSD (and the latter dangles down into the Kernel space as well). The primitives from Carbon are often found here, but that is not to say that these belong to Carbon. The primitives found in Cocoa are all built around these, and are often interchangeable with them in some regards.
On top of this you have the "Foundation" layer. This one is mostly written in C or a sub-set of C++ (basically the stuff that does not conflict with Obj-C). Many of the "core" services at the heart of the OS are built here, and at the top of this things start to blur with the bottom of the Carbon layer. Services such as Quartz (but not QuickDraw... which sort-of sits on top of Quartz... but that is messy) sit on this layer.
On top of this layer comes Carbon and Cocoa proper. There is quite a bit of messiness with the two of them calling back and forth, and there are some areas (like Quicktime) that have been very slow to get full implementations in "pure" Cocoa. And a lot more that have had real speed penalties for calling from Cocoa.
Carbon's roots go a little deeper (but less so every new version of MacOS X), but Cocoa and Carbon are philosophically on the same level.
Getting a LITTLE off topic, but thanks to both of the posts clarifying the relationship of Carbon and Cocoa! As I said, I'm the new guy! But a little more quick research finds that a significant enough part of the community has a hard time with the differences as well. A few informative bits here:
c oa_vs_carbon.html / 10/70789.aspx e quired a rt-12-frozen-in.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2001/05/23/co
http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2004/02
http://daringfireball.net/2006/10/some_assembly_r
http://wilshipley.com/blog/2006/10/pimp-my-code-p
I have much to learn!
They originally disagreed over licensing, now they claim it's much more efficient to just write mac code and not have to coordinate with other platforms - basically, they're saying its easier for them to maintain a fork than it is to coordinate with OOo. The bottom line, however, is NeoOffice code is all GPL, so there is no way for them to legally contribute any of their code to OOo without violating the GPL (unless the original writer submitted it). I don't think OOo is going to move to the GPL, so you've got an impasse.
the "6 year wait" is partly because OOo 1.x was incompatible with MacOS X because of the way symbol bindings were handled (I think it was basically a hack, anyway, exploiting a "feature" in most UNIX-based OSes), so the port really couldn't start until 2.0 (which was heavily rewritten). I was involved in another project when 2.0 came out (I believe STLport, which I think I actually got involved with due to OOo, but X.3 had all the STL features I needed, so I moved on), so I really didn't follow the split that started NeoOffice.
This is incorrect. The problem isn't GPL vs LGPL, the problem is that Sun requires the copyright for all significant contributions to OpenOffice.org to be assigned to Sun, so they can sell StarOffice as proprietary code. The NeoOffice developers don't want their code sold as proprietary, and don't want to assign their copyrights to Sun.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Why is there no moderation "-1 Flat Out Wrong" ?
From the horse's mouth.
Carbon is NOT a fundamental API of Mac OS X. It sits side-by-side with Cocoa, and while it DID start out life as a transitional API from classic Mac OS, it is a peer API of Cocoa. In particular, if you can't deal with Objective-C, you'll likely be using Carbon as it's procedural and accessible from C/C++. Both Carbon and Cocoa are built atop the various "Core" API's. Remember that Mac OS X is a very direct descendent of NeXT, and as late as Rhapsody DR2, there was no such thing as Carbon.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
What about Bean? While not a kitchen-sink suite, it seems like one helluva word processor.