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Final Version of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X Released

Posted by pudge on Mon Jun 23, 2003 07:15 PM
from the bye-bye-microsoft dept.
Software Apple
Ant writes "After two years of work, OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X (X11) is golden master and ready for immediate download by all Mac OS X users. This release marks a major milestone. It uses the Unix standard X Window and takes advantage of the immense wealth of open source material. To name but one feature, fonts are anti-aliased, making documents look smooth and clean and wholly professional. If you use Mac OS X there is no reason to wait. This will address your needs. And, as with all in the OpenOffice.org 1.0 family, this free release reads and writes Microsoft Office documents and works freely in heterogeneous environments where one might find Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X machines working side by side. The next step is to finish the Aqua version."
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Final Version of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X Released | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 57 comments | Search Discussion
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  • This will address your needs. (Score:2)

    by zangdesign (462534) on Monday June 23 2003, @07:34PM (#6279553)
    (Last Journal: Thursday April 21 2005, @12:15PM)
    So does Mariner Write (it's not free - but really, really inexpensive). When Open Office is native to OSX, then I'll consider switching. Until then, I'll stick with non-free.

  • woohoo (Score:1)

    by P145M4 (454133) on Monday June 23 2003, @08:05PM (#6279811)
    (http://www.e-trolley.de/)
    Gr8 news.
    I'm using my Mac only for web compatibility tests, but it's good to see that M$ gets more and more under pressure :)

  • Selling points? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Martin Kallisti (652377) on Monday June 23 2003, @08:06PM (#6279824)
    Really, is there nothing more worthy of mention than (gasp!) anti-aliased fonts. I mean, this is supposed to be a productivity suite, not just a Microsoft document reader, right? Apart from that, I would love to hear from people having used recent versions. Is it actually good enough to fully replace Office v.X?

    • Re:Selling points? (Score:4, Informative)

      by mashx (106208) on Tuesday June 24 2003, @05:06AM (#6282576)
      One of the most useful things about OO for me has been this: being the only TiBook user in a company awash with Compaqs and very many different versions of windows, I get many different versions of Word documents, and some of them would force Office 2001 and Office v.X to quit: open the document, application quits! However, when I opened them in OO, it accepted it perfectly. I could then save them (type a space, delete the space) in the same format, but OO would save them in a format that either MS Office would then play nicely. Incredible but true!

      However, I wasn't able to use the last beta for my work, simply because it didn't support the number of features that I required for working e.g. version tracking, embedded tables, full bullet point customisation, spacing between bullets etc. It has some of these, but doesn't pplay the same way as office, and in this company I can get away with using a Mac, but for presentation purposes, I need to play the same unfortunately.

      If there was one thing I didn't like which I couldn't forgive it for was that you had to set all documents the same size - at least - I couldn't find a way to set them differently.

      Still. having said that I have downloaded this latest version, and will again see how well it works. The IT guys want to get rid of Office (purely for the licensing), and are waiting for OO to be possible as a replacement..

      [ Parent ]
    • Re:Selling points? by TheRaven64 (Score:3) Tuesday June 24 2003, @07:13AM

  • What about native aqua? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Yonder Way (603108) on Monday June 23 2003, @08:51PM (#6280234)
    (http://unixbeard.blogspot.com/)
    X11 is nice and all, but I'm going to risk losing some karma here and say that it is not going to be useful to me for day to day use because of simple little things like lack of system clipboard integration (X11 apps have their own clipboard). When/if OOo runs natively as an aqua app I'll be glad to switch.

    • Re:What about native aqua? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by EricHsu (578881) on Monday June 23 2003, @09:38PM (#6280594)
      I'm using a beta of OOO (not the latest). Apple X11 lets you take X11 clipboards and paste to the Mac side. OOO had a bug that limited the clipboard to 255 chars, but I think they are working on that. There is another little issue with creeping windows in Apple X11, but overall I'm quite pleased with it. It's the only program I've ever used that comes close to decoding the (criminally obfuscated) MS Office formats. I think the interface is really clunky, but not more so than the Office that they are cloning.
      [ Parent ]
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • Unfortunately... (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by anarkhos (209172) on Monday June 23 2003, @09:01PM (#6280309)
    Unfortunately the Aqua version will behave just like this version so it'll be even worse.

    • Re:Unfortunately... (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 (641858) on Tuesday June 24 2003, @07:22AM (#6283007)
      (http://theravensnest.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 27, @07:07AM)
      No, the Quartz version will behave exactly like this version. There are three threads to the OOo on OS X development effort.

      1. The first is to get the whole thing to compile and work under X11 on OS X as it would on any other *NIX. This is the one that was released today.
      2. The next stage is to replace the X11 code with native Quartz code. It will still feel the same, probably look the same (although they may introduce some more Aqua-like graphics at this point) but it will be a native OS X / Quartz app, with no need for X11.
      3. The final stage (and I'm really hoping that Apple will get involved at this stage and bundle the resulting office suite with the OS as iOffice, or something) is to redo all of the menus, dialogs etc. so that they look just like a real OS X app. Once this is done (The roadmap [openoffice.org] says Q2 2004) then it should be a competitive office suite on the Mac.
      Hopefully now that the OOo OS X team has a working release build they will be able to keep it synchronised with the main trunk.
      [ Parent ]

  • Someone with the dev release of Panther respond! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by amichalo (132545) on Monday June 23 2003, @09:04PM (#6280329)

    The key here is that with the (development) release of Panther [apple.com], with integrated X11 [apple.com] client released (currently, X11 is Beta 3), will Open Office also enjoy an integrated clipboard, new Font Book [apple.com], and other (as yet to be named by this author) features that limit the adoption of said orphan (huh?) office suite?


    If someone attending WWDC who was given the developer release of panther (and high quality, brushed metal, $129 retail value kaleidoscope [apple.com]) would let us know ASAP, "that would be great".


    Office Space, the poor man's lite beer

  • Well good (Score:2)

    by AvantLegion (595806) on Monday June 23 2003, @09:05PM (#6280334)
    (Last Journal: Sunday January 11 2004, @03:55AM)
    As an OO user on Linux and Windows, and someone about to get an Apple laptop, this is good news.

    • Re:Well good by haikvr (Score:1) Monday June 23 2003, @10:12PM

  • The Day of the Apple? (Score:2, Funny)

    by xyrw (609810) on Monday June 23 2003, @09:31PM (#6280530)
    (http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~jfzc100/)

    Whoa! In the last 24 hours:

    • G5 computers
    • Safari 1.0
    • Panther
    • Will Linux pass Apple?
    • OpenOffice.org 1.0

    Damn cool. This is one of those days when I feel especially proud to be a Mac user.

  • which is better (Score:2)

    by an_mo (175299) on Tuesday June 24 2003, @07:41AM (#6283105)
    (Last Journal: Wednesday April 09 2003, @05:06PM)
    If I have to chose do I download openoffice or staroffice? Do they bear the same relationship as mozilla and netscape navigator?

  • Unfortunately... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24 2003, @08:05AM (#6283230)
    OpenOffice isn't good for much on Mac OS X without X11--still in beta. Wake me when the final version of Apple's X11 is released. =)

  • I need to print (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Funksaw (636954) on Tuesday June 24 2003, @08:34AM (#6283534)
    As a guy who's stuck with AppleWorks (since he's sworn off pirated software) and doesn't want to give money to Microsoft, I'm waiting for a usable port of OpenOffice to MacOSX.

    However, I'm not sure that I can consider the MacOSX port of OpenOffice as "usable" until it has the capacity to -print- the documents I create in it.

    An Aqua/Cocoa port would be great, but right now, I just want full functionality.

  • I use it full time with Windows (Score:1)

    by Getzen (549982) on Tuesday June 24 2003, @12:13PM (#6285885)
    I figured about a year ago that I would be switching back to a Mac (I am so sick of Microsoft) and started thinking about the transition, specifically a seamless office-suite transition for my small commercial real estate business. Using MS Office is out of the question.

    I decided to use OpenOffice and its gotten better and better with each version. It is now up to 1.1 beta 2 on the Windows side, so the Mac version has a little catching up to do. It is excellent, although it has so many features that it is a bit of overkill for my purposes (read: bloat). It is a very powerful, full-featured office suite.

    My only real complaint is the aesthetics, but then that applies to a lot of Windows software. The first thing I do when I do a fresh install of a new version is delete a number of the toolbar buttons and alter the color scheme. I am certain that they will address the appearance on the Mac side. Oh, and OpenOffice doesn't have the most elegant user-interface around. Hopefully they will work on that for the Mac version as well.

    I will be buying one of the new G5 Macs in August (woohoo!) and look forward to loading up OpenOffice and following its Aquafication.

    Getzen

  • after years (Score:3, Funny)

    by minus_273 (174041) <.moc.oohay.MAPS. .ta. .aaaaa.> on Tuesday June 24 2003, @01:22PM (#6286631)
    (Last Journal: Wednesday May 16 2007, @12:43PM)
    and years of training.. i too am golden master!

  • OO 103 (Score:2)

    by djupedal (584558) on Tuesday June 24 2003, @04:18PM (#6288608)
    If the installer would cooperate, I'd talk about it. I used 101, and found it very useful, but this thing simply will not install for me. Oh well...
  • Why break the law when you can get what you need legally for free?
    [ Parent ]
  • woah! that's foul. NOT the screenshots ppl are looking for.
    [ Parent ]
  • 7 replies beneath your current threshold.

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