I didn't want to. I wanted a GUI environment with WYSYWIG rendering. I really want to see what I'm working on, that's a matter of personal preference. I don't want to look at my document in markup source code, I want to work on it the way it looks on paper.
And some of the users who will use the inhouse templates I've created will not want or be able to learn LaTeX.
As for the results speaking for themselves, that's exactly why I created this setup. The results are astonishing and they closely adhere to our corporate design guidelines.
I don't like X11 apps on Mac OS X either. And there are things that are indeed not as good as on MS Word, especially keyboard shortcut / productivity tricks.
The biggest drawback is the missing ability to assign keyboard shortcuts to style sheets. This is an absolute must-have for me. The nonstandard keyboard shortcuts really suck and hamper the workflow.
That said, there is just no way to get structured PDFs using real OS X software, and that's why I'm using OpenOffice even though I would prefer a native OS X program that is tightly integrated.
That's why I wrote the article. After working with OpenOffice for a while I have to say that not that much is missing in there to make it into the premier tool for long, structured technical documents. The PDFs that come out in the end are of excellent quality, including fonts and vector graphics and of course the structure information/bookmarks.
It is actually quite impressive that you can get such a program for free. What's really interesting are the XML-based foundations, like the XSLT-based import/export filters. There are some *great* possibilities for shuttling structured content into and out of OpenOffice into other systems in the future.
If there's ever a real Aqua version, it will be a killer.
So I agree, it is hard to "downgrade" to the X11 level, but there is no alternative for what I use it for, and it is an impressive program, especially at this price.
NeoOffice/J is indeed *really* nice, I write that at the beginning of my article.
However, the point is that it is based on an obsolete version of OpenOffice that will not run the ExtendedPDF macro. If you don't need that, then I would indeed suggest to use NeoOffice instead of X11-OpenOffice.
Once, NeoOffice/J comes out based on the current OpenOffice, I will immediately switch to that myself...
Re:GNU-Darwin Background - Pudge is right
on
The GNU-Darwin World
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I absolutely agree with this and the parent post.
The politics and annoying GNU/GPL preaching on various mailing lists (and in the early days the insistence on installing/stomping onto Apple-supplied system parts in/usr/ instead of/usr/local) is what turned me off GNU-Darwin.
A user of my PHP module build sent me a tip on how to get the two to work together: Make sure the DAV module is loaded and added after my PHP module, i.e. adjust the order of the LoadModule and AddModule lines in the httpd config file accordingly...
I just finished watching the QuickTime live broadcast and what Jobs said was that the BSD core, aka "Darwin", is Open Source, like it has been for quite some time now.
Slashdot Mirror
I absolutely agree.
In its current state on Mac OS X, the X11 version is usable for fairly technical people.
"Why not just use LaTeX?"
I didn't want to. I wanted a GUI environment with WYSYWIG rendering. I really want to see what I'm working on, that's a matter of personal preference. I don't want to look at my document in markup source code, I want to work on it the way it looks on paper.
And some of the users who will use the inhouse templates I've created will not want or be able to learn LaTeX.
As for the results speaking for themselves, that's exactly why I created this setup. The results are astonishing and they closely adhere to our corporate design guidelines.
I don't like X11 apps on Mac OS X either. And there are things that are indeed not as good as on MS Word, especially keyboard shortcut / productivity tricks.
The biggest drawback is the missing ability to assign keyboard shortcuts to style sheets. This is an absolute must-have for me. The nonstandard keyboard shortcuts really suck and hamper the workflow.
That said, there is just no way to get structured PDFs using real OS X software, and that's why I'm using OpenOffice even though I would prefer a native OS X program that is tightly integrated.
That's why I wrote the article. After working with OpenOffice for a while I have to say that not that much is missing in there to make it into the premier tool for long, structured technical documents. The PDFs that come out in the end are of excellent quality, including fonts and vector graphics and of course the structure information/bookmarks.
It is actually quite impressive that you can get such a program for free. What's really interesting are the XML-based foundations, like the XSLT-based import/export filters. There are some *great* possibilities for shuttling structured content into and out of OpenOffice into other systems in the future.
If there's ever a real Aqua version, it will be a killer.
So I agree, it is hard to "downgrade" to the X11 level, but there is no alternative for what I use it for, and it is an impressive program, especially at this price.
NeoOffice/J is indeed *really* nice, I write that at the beginning of my article.
However, the point is that it is based on an obsolete version of OpenOffice that will not run the ExtendedPDF macro. If you don't need that, then I would indeed suggest to use NeoOffice instead of X11-OpenOffice.
Once, NeoOffice/J comes out based on the current OpenOffice, I will immediately switch to that myself...
I absolutely agree with this and the parent post.
/usr/ instead of /usr/local) is what turned me off GNU-Darwin.
The politics and annoying GNU/GPL preaching on various mailing lists (and in the early days the insistence on installing/stomping onto Apple-supplied system parts in
A user of my PHP module build sent me a tip on how to get the two to work together: Make sure the DAV module is loaded and added after my PHP module, i.e. adjust the order of the LoadModule and AddModule lines in the httpd config file accordingly...
You're welcome :-)
A new Mac OS X package of version 7.2 is now online.
I just finished watching the QuickTime live broadcast and what Jobs said was that the BSD core, aka "Darwin", is Open Source, like it has been for quite some time now.
See http://publicsource.apple.com/
Now I'm going to try to get me one of these @mac.com email addresses :-)