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."

Good news

That is good news. Although the 'normal' version works like a dream on the Mac, having it work without X11 is a bit handier. I wish I could run it on one of those new MacBook Pro's that came out just 2 minutes ago...

Re:Good news

The problem is that Apple X11 implementation is crap (...) it disqualifies X11 apps on OSX to rest of the world (apart from geeks).

And this is precisely what Apple wants. X11 on the Mac is for Geeks, not for "regular" users. The existing issues with X11 are intentional.

Let me explain what I meant

> And this is precisely what Apple wants. X11 on the Mac is for Geeks, not for "regular" users.

Yeah so maybe just throw out some source code of X11 that barely compiles and you need to fix it yourself. No binary release - then it would be even geekier. :)

Not sure what you're trying to say here.

> The existing issues with X11 are intentional.

Yeah. :) That is what I love Mac fanatics - if something is broken in OSX it must be intentional. LoL.

Labelling people "mac fanatics" because you don't understand their reasoning is pretty cheap. In your defense, I admit that I was unclear in my original post. Let me explain what I meant.

Apple depends on Mac OS X having applications which do not exist on other operating systems. It's a competitive advantage. Remember NeXT? They had a nice cross-platform development library which allowed NeXT apps to run on Windows. Initially, Apple planned to keep this in OS X. It was called "yellow box" ("blue box" was for old Mac apps).

Interestingly, the idea didn't survive. Eventually, Cocoa became Mac only. Why? Because Apple wants Mac-only applications.

Another example is Java. Making Java apps look good on a Mac is hard. Apple wants to discourage Mac developers from using Java to create cross-platform apps. They would rather keep apps Mac only.

And this brings us to X11. X11 is awesome if you want to run all kinds of apps on the Mac, but these apps don't behave like Mac apps. Why? Because if they did, it would be trivial to write Mac apps using X11 and then port them to other operating systems. Apple would rather keep these apps on the Mac, thus they are discouraging the use of X11 for Mac apps.

Do you now understand the reasoning, or are you still LOLing at me?

REALLY READ THAT WARNING MESSAGE

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 :)

Re:REALLY READ THAT WARNING MESSAGE

You won't be able to print. You won't be able to cut+paste reliably.

Finally! An office suite on OS X that works just like OpenOffice does on Linux! ;-)

Neooffice - differences?

OK, so I will start the obvious thread:

What are the differences to Neooffice?
Are they working together?

Besides the slow startup I feel Neooffice already has taken that niche, hasn't it?

Re:Neooffice - differences?

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.

Re:Neooffice - differences?

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.

Re:Neooffice - differences?

Not trying to troll here, and maybe you don't even ascribe to the mindset you imply with the above line, but how can you "overtake" a project that's "in a continual state of catch-up"?

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?

Re:Neooffice - differences?

You're wrong. "Carbon" is the collective name for all native Mac OS X APIs, see http://developer.apple.com/carbon/ [apple.com]. 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.

Re:Neooffice - differences?

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.

Re:Neooffice - differences?

Why is there no moderation "-1 Flat Out Wrong" ?

From the horse's mouth. [apple.com]

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.

Re:Neooffice - differences?

Adobe uses Carbon for its CS3 suite. Microsoft uses Carbon for Office. Game developers (EA) use Carbon
And apple uses Carbon for Finder [wikipedia.org], 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!

Wow!

Bill Gates was right! Open source software does destroy your data! I'm going back to being sodomized with clippy in my comfort zone now! Goodbye!

Good stuff!

My wife had to switch to **brrrr** Microsoft Office on her powerbook because OO.org on the Mac just didn't work for her, being unstable and what have you.

Neo Office

http://www.neooffice.org/ [neooffice.org]

A port of OpenOffice to Mac OS X that uses Java as a compatibility layer.

It _is_ production ready (I use it every day).
Why the OpenOffice people are hostile to this project is something I've stopped
wondering about... today's announcement of the "first" port of OOO to Mac not
using X11 just shows how badly a project hurts itself when it refuses to work
with others

Re:Neo Office

Licensing. NeoOffice code can not be reused in OpenOffice.org due to their relicensing to GPL from the original LGPL.

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.

Re:Neo Office

That seems distinctly unfair. Don't the BSD and LGPL people always say that they don't care if people "take their code proprietary" as it were, and that "the code is still there even if someone else improves it and doesn't share back?" Why, just yesterday there were hundreds of comments to that effect on the GPL2 vs GPL3 story!

It's funny though, because it seems that for all their rhetoric about how using BSD and similarly "non-viral" free software licenses is somehow "more free", BSD/LGPL people generally aren't happy at all when people relicense their code. BSD people hate it when their code gets relicensed, ironically especially when that license is the GPL (for some reason, having their code co-opted by Microsoft or Sun bothers them less -- how does that work?) The LGPL is just like BSD, except that it is exclusively GPL-compatible by design. If it bothers you that someone is releasing mods to your LGPL-licensed program under the GPL, why on earth are you even using the LGPL?

Host and parasite -- god, I love it. Talk about double-speak! It reminds me of this great exchange between an interviewer and Theo de Raadt (whom I have the utmost respect for, as it happens, but this attitude is typical of BSD types):

NF: Lots of hardware vendors use OpenSSH. Have you got anything back from them?

TdR: If I add up everything we have ever gotten in exchange for our efforts with OpenSSH, it might amount to $1,000. This all came from individuals. For our work on OpenSSH, companies using OpenSSH have never given us a cent. What about companies that incorporate OpenSSH directly into their products, saving themselves millions of dollars? Companies such as Cisco, Sun, SGI, HP, IBM, Siemens, a raft of medium-sized firewall companies -- we have not received a cent. Or from Linux vendors? Not a cent.

Of course we did not set out to create OpenSSH for the money -- we purposely made it completely free so that the "telnet infrastructure" of the 1980s would die. But it sure is sad that none of these companies return even a fraction of value in kind.

If you want to judge any entity particularly harshly, judge Sun. Yearly they hold interoperability events, for NFS and other protocols, and they include SSH implementation tests as well. Twice we asked them to cover the travel and accommodation costs for a developer to come to their event, and they refused. Considering that their SunSSH is directly based on our code, that is just flat out insulting. Shame on you Sun, shame, shame, shame.

I will say it here -- if an OpenSSH hole is found that applies to SunSSH, Sun will not be informed. Or maybe that has happened already.

That's from this interview with Theo at NewsForge [newsforge.com] if you want to read the whole thing. But basically, there's this tremendously hypocritical attitude among the most ardent supporters of licenses that are presumably "freer than the GPL". I see nothing wrong with the classic BSD/PD stance: "We don't care what you do with it, no matter what we still have the original copy". I think that's a noble way to look at things. It just seems that in practice, that's almost never how it is. Someone turns around and creates something useful from your code and relicenses it in a way that prevents you from benefiting, and suddenly they're evil, even though that's supposedly a right that you expressly wanted to guarantee to them in the first place!

Released?

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.

Warning!

'WARNING: This software may crash and may destroy your data Do not use this software for real work in a production environment.

Do not taunt Happy Fun Software.

Re:Warning!

'WARNING: This software may crash and may destroy your data Do not use this software for real work in a production environment.

Windows should have one of those in the box..

Slashdot.org for truthiness released!

Nearly 10 years after announcing spysat pixels for sale, Slashdot.org has released the first release of Slashdot with unbiased truth that can finally run without slant! An alpha is available for viewing [foxnews.com] today, but a lot of help is still needed to make Slashdot more truthy. The site is very blunt: 'WARNING: THIS SITE MAY CONFUSE THE MEANING OF ALPHA AND RELEASE. DO NOT READ THIS SITE IF YOUR BRAIN IS USED FOR REAL WORK IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT. This is an alpha test version so that Linux fanboys and OSX users can get way too excited and blow things entirely out of proportion, and make comments on how to improve profit.' Currently missing functionality includes critical thinking, peer review, spellcheck, and multiple opinions. That said, if you're interested in participating you can sign up for an account [slashdot.org] to figure out how you can start trolling today.

How does it perform?

I wonder whether this Mac version is any better at loading. Versions for Windows and especially Linux get a failing grade on this issue. Sadly, very few folks see this as an important issue.

Least of Their Worries

Currently missing functionality includes printing, pdf export, copy/pasting...

If someone uses the alpha, with these limitations, in a production environment, then crashing will be the least of their worries...

Still, I'm damn glad to see the (real) Mac version is finally moving forward. It'll be nice to switch when it's out of testing.

Thanks to neooffice...

Just wanted to give a thanks to the folks behind neooffice (http://www.neooffice.org/ [neooffice.org]) before all the bashing starts...

Don't worry about that

I'm sure we can count on Slashdot readers to submit reliable bug reports.. Like bugzilla.mozilla doesn't drop requests with slashdot.org as referer.

They shouldn't have announced this yet.

Because I bet that 98% of Mac OO users have already switched to this Alpha version. The fact that it can't print, can't copy & paste and will certainly crash and destroy their work is surely secondary to the fact that it looks better than the standard version.

Stupid Title!

IMO, the title of this article is very misleading.

OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X Released!

To me, this implies that a version of OpenOffice that I could actually use for work has been released for OSX. Hell, the whole reason I read this article is because I thought it was, and that this would have been a breakthrough of sorts. An alpha version that should not be used for "real work in a production environment" isn't what I had in mind. According to the web site, you can't even print or copy and paste! This is merely a small step forward for OpenOffice being ported to OSX since the only significant change is the removal of the need to have an X server installed to run.

Finally!

We dug all the MS office products (and 'test drive' nonsense) out of the Mac mini we got for my grandmother but the X11 requirement for OO is a problem if she accidentally closes it. This was my first major experience with a Mac since middle school and honestly, things are just not as simple as they want you to think they will be, especially if you have the Intel processors.

sensational

As in... sensationalistic, no? "OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X Released! OMG! LOL! WTF?" Except that it barely works yet. "It only displays words in binary or wingdings... no actual text yet. Also, it may give you dysentery." These slashdot headlines sure are knee-jerk excited over the smallest things.

And just to go ahead and respond to the obligatory joke: no, I am not new here. I just have a really, really bad memory. :)

Not Alpha

"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.

Re:Not Alpha

Actually in many schools of thought those levels have everything to do with quality and completeness.

Alpha = feature incomplete software with bugs, Beta = feature complete software with bugs, Release = feature complete software with ideally very few bugs.

Still needs X11

http://porting.openoffice.org/mac [openoffice.org] page says:

In order to run the OpenOffice.org you need to have X11 installed.

Okay, so it allegedly doesn't use X11, but you still need to have it installed? I can see how this is a cheap way of getting around crashes because they forgot to remove some X11 dependency, and it's actually acceptable for alpha software, but it's still really, truly far from elegant...

ahem...

I know the boys have been busy and all, but can someone at least inform them that Apple dropped the word 'Computer' from their name recently?

And no, I'm not going to offer to help - I tried that back in 2000, and they couldn't find their collective asses without directions...

Not exactly 'released'

While a native OS X version of OpenOffice.org is a great thing, the title of TFA is a bit misleading. This software hasn't exactly been 'released' in the normal sense of the word. It would have been more accurate to say 'Alpha build of OpenOffice.org for OS X released!' (Yes, technically the exclamation point is not inaccurate, so I left it in.) Being an alpha build it has a number of odd qualities, including but not limited to the following:

• It can't print
• It can't export to PDF properly
• It can't always do that fancy 'copy and paste' thing
• It will crash when closing

Again: good, but alpha.

Why?

Look, I know I don't even have any karma to burn and this may start some flames, but... Why? What's the point of this? The Microsoft Office Student/Teacher edition can be purchased readily from Apple's online store for $149 for the full version of Office. If you can't afford $149 for your productivity either:

A) Your time isn't worth any money and you should reconsider what you're using it for
B) You can't afford it, so how can you afford the computer that you're using
C) You just have no desire to pay for software and/or hate Microsoft for XYZ reasons.

Obviously all of those items are problems, but for the price and how good Office is for the Mac, I think it's quite a value. Besides, "free" is relative, this is alpha software that's 5 years AT BEST behind Microsoft Office. I think that Google's Apps are much more promising as a Microsoft competitor than a buggy copy-cat of what you can already get for a relatively low cost.

Flame on.

i'd love to test this software.

However, having it only available on the torrent networks is not useful. There are some places of work, mine included, that do not allow any torrents.

I don't see why

I don't see why OpenOffice has this warning.
Microsoft Office has been crashing and losing data for years but some people still use it in a production environment.

run your own comparison test

Since both OO and NeoOffice are free, it really makes sense to download each of them and perform your own testing.

In particular, do they each:

1) use the standard OS X print and file navigation dialogs?

2) copy & paste using standard OS X facilities, playing nice with other apps?

3) use the standard OS X fonts?

4) provide Spotlight interfaces/plugins so that the documents are indexed by Spotlight?

5) provide access via the Services menu to things like the OS X system-wide Dictionary, or the Mail app?

6) support international languages in the standard OS X manner?

7) support Applescript -- at least via GUI scripting?

You can add other items to this list, but that's a useful starter set of comparison metrics.
Additionally, one should compare footprints (memory and disk) and overall responsiveness, in addition to launch times.

I think that OpenOffice has an incredibly long way to go before they can catch up to NeoOffice. NeoOffice still has room for improvement (as can be seen from the items in the above list that NeoOffice doesn't do -- I'll let you figure out which ones those are yourself), but it's an awesome program.

Why All the Fuss?

NeoOffice does the same thing only better and more reliably.

Now for the GIMP

How about a graphics program that runs on OSX and doesn't require X11 or hundreds of dollars?

Cool, Capcha fortune tellers - mine said foolish

Right Direction, An Esspecially Rough Alpha, Why?

If you look at the list of bugs, some are quite nasty.

        * You cannot print
        * PDF export does not properly work as thetext won't show on the page right
        * Starting OpenOffice.org from a shared folder does not work
        * Copy and paste does not fully work
        * OpenOffice.org will crash after quitting
        * Some text is not drawn in places like Impress
        * Impress will not recognise multiple monitors

I download a lot of "beta" and "Alpha" software. I have never seen piece of software released that the developers knew it constantly crashes.
If is so rough that I found two typos in the known bugs.

http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/aqua.ht ml [openoffice.org]

They spent years twiddling their thumbs why people asked them to port OpenOffice to OSX. They had a X11 version of OpenOffice, but X11 is not the standard for Macs, it's an option. They waited a while longer for the Openoffice API's were changed. NeoOffice showed them up a little, and now more people are buying Macs, and they were wondering what's going on with OpenOffice.org. They questioned the Sun's steering committee's influence. So, succumbing to pressure, they, and a lot of hardworking volunteers, created an alpha.

So, they proved their point. Technically, they are making progress. Software often has a lot of bugs when it's released, but usually not a known repeatable crash. It appears that they met some kind of self-imposed time limit.

I just downloaded and tried on my Mac Pro

It started up faster than NeoOffice, but when I tried to type something.. it wouldn't display what I was typing until after I hit entered a space or hit enter.

The product crashed when I tried to Exit wanting to give me a crash report. They have a -LONG- way to go.

Also, the widgets all feel strangely out of place (Like a Mac OSX theme running on top of Gnome).

Yawn....

Wake me up when there is a version available for my iPod.

I know it's an alpha version...

... but really? No copy/paste? They still have to work that one out?

New Version Warnings

I liked the Evolution Suite's Beta warning (from Fedora 7 test 1)

"Do not use this software if you are prone to violent fits of anger."

A Good Start, Particularly the Text Rendering

This is nice. Very nice. There's a long way to go yet - some seriously rough edges - but I am already impressed: they have got it using Apple's font engine. Try switching your document font to Hoefler Text and you'll see. Automatic ligatures and everything.

Couldn't type properly in Japanese yet - the hovering IME window doesn't show up, but when "entered", the text shows up.

Plenty more to do then, but this bodes well. By using Apple's font engine for text rendering, they have already gone one better than Microsoft in Office 2004!

iqu :)

bean

what about bean? seems like a pretty good word substitute to me. granted openoffice has many more features. iWork is also pretty good, and $79 isn't too hard on the wallet.

This is Bad news

I much prefer to run Openoffice under X11. In fact, I wish I could run firefox under X11 as well. Under X11, I can cut and paste using mouse buttons; otherwise, all I have is that apple-C -V stuff (how slow, how inconvenient). Under X11, I can move focus to a window simply by sliding the mouse on it; otherwise, I have to click on it (and as a consequence, only top-level windows can be in focus; it is quite convenient often to be able to type into an only partially-exposed window!). So the more applications run under X11, the happer I am.

copy/paste is missing in a word processor?

With risking to be called a troll, I wouldn't call it alpha.

The 1980's Called, Wants It's Software Back

This is a complete fucking waste of time.

A word processor?

You are killing me. A fucking word processor. It is like inviting people to use a back-breaking chair.

Now that we have more than one output medium, it is important to separate content from style. We also have a "universal" text format which is UTF-8 but we do not have a universal style format. If you munge in your styles with your text you are just setting up a situation where a publishing professional is going to have to rip that text back out of there and if you stored it with a funky old encoding good luck on your smart quotes and em dashes.

What would be the point of enabling a computer user in 2007 type type text and apply styles and you don't save their work as HTML+CSS? What is the point? It makes no sense to me.

What is required when you write is to store the actual typing. If you save UTF-8 you can type any character from any language and then later another human can use that UTF-8 text file to instantly "re-type" your work into any publishing system, smart quotes and all. No conversion necessary, no errors introduced. Doesn't matter if they are working in InDesign or Dreamweaver or other, there is simply no defensible argument for not having a single UTF-8 master copy of any kind of writing. You can drop it on a browser to read even 25 years from now, it will be compatible long after you are dead. In the entire history of computing there has not been a word processing format that lasted even 10 years. If you open a Word document from Word 97, that is only 10 years ago, it has to be "converted" (destroyed) when you open it. Good luck with that system here in the 21st century.

If Microsoft tries to sell ice in the Arctic, will open source follow with open source ice for the Arctic?

Movable Type is about 10,000 times more exciting than OpenOffice. I mean, c'mon.

TextWrangler for Mac OS X is free and it has UTF-8, RegEx find/replace that works across any number of files or a whole disk, real-time speller, S/FTP, lots of writing tools, a great find differences, beautiful text rendering, and completely scriptable with AppleScript (macros). Those are the tools that people need to do good writing and create documents that can be used in modern ways, not mail merge and bad fonts.

Re: disclaimer

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.

If only Microsoft software were to come with this warning, then there would be truth in advertising. ;)

lameness filter blocks quoting the story so let's type a bit to try to get rid of the warning

Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Re:Used it on MacOSX - switching to google docs

not to mention having every single thing you write indexed for public consumption and advertising goodness...

google...you seem to apologizing to you girlfriend.
would you like to

1. order flowers
2. seek counseling
3. look up a local escort service

Re:Exclamatory!

Yeah, I saw the exclamation mark in the title and before even reading which editor posted it, I immediately guessed Zonk. He is exactly well-versed in proper journalistic practices, to put it kindly.

Re:A Massive Waste Of Resources

You are John C. Dvorak and I claim my £5

Re:Huh wha?

Latex might provide better rendering results than terminal. Pico away, however! ;)

Re:Used it on MacOSX - switching to google docs

Having used openoffice, I've made the switch to google docs. I get 80% of the functions with 20% of the hassle.

I think you mean 20% of the functionality. I am frankly astounded by how few features Google Docs has.

Having said that, if it works for you, more power to you.

Re:Used it on MacOSX - switching to google docs

I'm with you, I'm quite happy with google docs. But I think I get 100% or more of the functionality of MSOffice rather than 80. Sure, 20% of the potentially useful things aren't there, but there are an additional 20+% to make up for it:

• ability to see and edit my documents on anyone's machine without downloading or installing anything
• ability to see all past revisions with incredible ease
• ability to paste all or part of my document into email (gmail, of course), and have the recipient see the formatting exactly as I intended it (generally minor stuff like bold, italic, lists, and occasionally colors to highlight certain things like additions), and without hassling the recipient with attachments in a proprietary format
• ability to put a document on the web so others can see it in about 3 seconds
• ability to generate html that I can paste into a web page that will retain all formatting, since it is composed in html to begin with
• real time collaboration without hassle

I like to use minor formatting in documents (and yes, some emails) to make them more pleasant to read, but generally they don't have to be perfect (or if they do have to look perfect, it is for web presentation), so google docs is perfect for me.

Re:please help

Do her a favor and just block myspace.com at the firewall.

Myspace sucks.

Re:Huh wha?

I'd be better of using pico and terminal!

Yeah, except Pico is a Text Editor not a Word Processor.