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Sun Joins Mac Open Office Development
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu May 03, 2007 08:18 AM
from the bye-bye-X11 dept.
from the bye-bye-X11 dept.
widhalmt writes "In a blog post, a developer at Sun Microsystems announces that Sun will help with porting Open Office to Mac OS X. The open source office suite is well known on Linux and Windows, but does not have a native version on Mac OS. For a long time Sun did not want to join the development of that port but now they will actively push it."
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Not true! NeoOffice! (Score:5, Informative)
NeoOffice is an independently developed version of OpenOffice.org 2.1 which runs on Mac OS X natively and without the need for X11. I've been using it for years.
Re:Not true! NeoOffice! (Score:5, Funny)
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To my knowledge there was no 2.0 Ghz G4 Powerbook, except via aftermarket upgrade. You are nitpicking.
My specs: 1.67Ghz G4 Powerbook with 1.5Gb RAM.
NeoOffice:
From cold launch to Splash screen: 35 seconds.
From cold launch to blinking curser in Writer: 70 seconds.
To load a 1 page text document: 8 seconds.
To load a 50 page text document: 19 seconds.
To open a new spreadsheet: 5 seconds.
To open a spreadsheet with 300 rows: 11 seconds.
Office 2004:
From cold launch to Splash screen: 4 seconds.
From col
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I'll admit, I recently d/led the newest version at work, and it does seem to be an improvement. Still not as fast as a normal app, but not head-bangingly slow.
Re:Not true! NeoOffice! (Score:5, Insightful)
I must be doing something wrong, since my NeoOffice (2.1 patch 3) takes about 10 seconds to start.
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I just timed it with a stopwatch, with nothing else running.
On initial launch, it took 42 seconds to get a usable word processor up on the screen.
However, on repeat launches, it takes only 12 seconds.
Photoshop takes 14 seconds. MS Word takes 6 seconds. 42 is embarrassing, (although at least it's the answer to the ultimate question of Life, The Universe, and Everything, so it gets some credit there.) 12 seconds isn't so bad. This machine i
NeoOffice is not 'native' in a sense... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:NeoOffice is not 'native' in a sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope you appreciate the irony of that statement.
Parent
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If you have an account on the Apple Developer Connection [apple.com] web site (free membership), then Java SE 6.0 Release 1 Developer Preview 6 is already available. It will probably be another few months until it is available to the general public.
Re:Not true! NeoOffice! (Score:5, Insightful)
Given its heavy use of Java I think the 'native' qualification is debatable. Some aspects are native (e.g. font management), which is certainly a major plus.
Unfortunately, though, this application gives new meaning to the words 'slow' and 'bloated'. The author has also chosen to make its license (GPL) incompatible with OO.o's (LGPL) so that his porting efforts cannot be contributed back to the main project. That makes NeoOffice a very hostile fork. What's more, he is trying (against the terms of the GPL/LGPL) to limit free distribution [neooffice.org] by using the trademark loophole.
So, I would say that while a port exists, it's both low quality and under bad management, and I welcome this new effort to do it properly.
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Yes and no, I would consier the GPL to be the preferable license to use over the LGPL, regardless of what OOo does. Also, he "limits" free distribution by charging for free binararies o
Re:Not true! NeoOffice! (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, though, this application gives new meaning to the words 'slow' and 'bloated'.
Well, it's not snappy, but it's certainly better than the "nothing" that OpenOffice has been offering in terms of native OSX ports.
The author has also chosen to make its license (GPL) incompatible with OO.o's (LGPL) so that his porting efforts cannot be contributed back to the main project. That makes NeoOffice a very hostile fork.
I'd probably be hostile, too. IIRC, the backstory with NeoOffice was that they were trying to work with OOo on a native OSX port, and not only did Sun refuse to help, but they basically sabotaged their efforts. Rather than give up, these guys split off and started their own project, and because of that, OSX users have had a very functional free office suite for OSX for a couple years now.
What's more, he is trying (against the terms of the GPL/LGPL) to limit free distribution by using the trademark loophole.
Protecting your trademark is not a "loophole". All sorts of projects, whether they're commercial (Redhat) or not (Mozilla), protect their trademarks. Worst case scenario?-- you take the source and strip out trademarked graphics/names, recompile, and then you're free to distribute the results however you want (under the GPL).
I don't want to be misunderstood: I'm happy that Sun is finally porting OpenOffice to OSX. The result may very well be superior to NeoOffice, and if so I'll use Sun's version. However, they've been taking their sweet damn time, and in the mean time, the NeoOffice team has made a very useful bit of software. I don't think we should be belittling the NeoOffice team and their terrific efforts simply because they don't have the resources to perfect their port. They've been doing a lot with very little while OOo has been doing practically nothing with their bounty.
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Since OOo is software libre, I don't see how it's possible to 'sabotage' a fork except by refusing to cooperate with it. And given that the fork's license is incompatible with the main tree, I can see why they would refuse to cooperate.
Again, this is my recollection from the public statements when NeoOffice was starting, but originally they were working with OOo, not on a separate project, so I don't believe the license was different at that time. After they put in a certain amount of work, Sun made it cl
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Its all about semantics.
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And it's buggy as hell. I've been using it to write reports for end-of-term papers due recently. The only reason I was even able to stand it is its remarkable recovery features for when it crashes... and oh, does it ever crash. Version 2.0 wouldn't let me save or quit; I'd simply force-quit it and recover every document I ever wrote every time I res
NeoOffice responds with a quickness (Score:3, Informative)
W
Re:Not true! NeoOffice! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Not true! NeoOffice! (Score:5, Informative)
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We never used CocoaJava (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I am a founder of the NeoOffice [neooffice.org] project.
Quote: and became an even worse idea when Apple deprecated the Java-Cocoa bridge
We never used the CocoaJava bridge at all. I guess you never bothered to read the source code. In fact, we use very little Java at all as is pointed out by the ohloh source code analysis [ohloh.net] of our open CVS. There's little Objective-C as we do most of the logic in C++ and call out to ObjC when required. There are some other stats there you may find intriguing as well like the estimated man-years and cost [ohloh.net] it will take to approximate our code.
Trust me, once any OS X port of OOo starts getting font handling and input methods correct, it'll slow down as well. This is true especially for Asian and other foreign languages. The bottleneck is in Apple's ATSUI and how it mismatches to the underlying OOo code. Has nothing to do with Java at all. Speed in a vaporware demo is one thing; carrying speed into a functional product is something different completely.
ed
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Re:We never used CocoaJava (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's true (and I don't doubt that it is), then putting that "/J" in the name was a spectacularly bad idea.
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http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/faq.php [neooffice.org]
http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/sissl_license.h tml [openoffice.org]
I chatted with Ed a long time ago (email, I think) after several separate groups and individuals were all attempting to port OOo 1.0, including myself, which I believe was eventually abandoned due to data model incompatibility. I forget the exact details, but I think it was OSX's problem with weak binding (this is X.1 and X.2 we'
Re:Not true! NeoOffice! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Here's some oblig. links:
NeoOffice: http://trinity.neooffice.org/ [neooffice.org]
OOo: http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/index.h tml [openoffice.org]
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Re:nagware, opens browser windows to author homepa (Score:4, Informative)
Err, that's rubbish. NeoOffice opens the default browser when there's an update. The update page happens to have a donation message on it, but the main thing is to inform you that an update is available!
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Simple solution: email Steve (Score:3, Funny)
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Amazing (Score:4, Interesting)
Will they unarchive? (Score:5, Interesting)
Improv (Score:4, Interesting)
Having Improv back would be wonderful. The best spreadsheet I've ever used - using Improv made using Excel or other grid based spreadsheets painful.
But then too, there was also this oddball thing called (I think, its been some years) "Advance", I only had a couple weeks to play with a test copy. Very powerful, rather strange. I'd like to have that back to play with too.
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Best intentions, but still... (Score:5, Informative)
From the blog:
The problem has always been that OO.o makes assumptions about GUI development that are well-suited to X11 and Windows, and not well-suited to Aqua. The question is, can someone who's learning Mac development as he goes push changes back to OO.o to make it more suitable for Aqua and other GUI toolkits? Can he do it before Sun changes their mind and de-funds the Mac port? Sun has a habit of funding things for about six months and then getting cold feet.
Which reminds me: I should throw some money at Ed and Patrick for their continued work on NeoOffice [neooffice.org], which uses Java as a GUI adapter (!) to get OO.o tolerable on the Mac
OO has been on OS X since 10.0 (Score:3, Informative)
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Many Mac users shy away from X11 because it feels too different...
I'd say many mac users shy away from X11 applications, not because they are different, but because X11 applications tend to be very much inferior. They break numerous UI conventions of Aqua programs and are missing a lot of what is considered "standard" functionality, like key bindings, spellchecking, and integration with other applications and the OS. When I see X11, it tells me the program was a quick and dirty port, not a serious effort at making a mac application.
I use X11 applications, but usually n
Port it all you want... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I am complimenting Microsoft -- I am sure I'll be flamed for it. But frankly, they make the best office suite, and since theirs is the standard look and feel (although the new Office is a departure), the other guys have to play catchup.
I would love to use OpenOffice, I just hate the look and feel and have always been more comfortable in Microsoft Office.
Re:Port it all you want... (Score:4, Insightful)
- Keeping an informal "database" of crap in Excel or Calc - Both will sort the list by whatever column your highlighted cell is in if you hit one of the "A->Z" or "Z->A" buttons. But Calc will treat the column headings as data and sort them into the middle of the list! Excel knows that the first line is not data if it's a different text style from the rest of the list. Polish.
- Printing in Excel or Calc - Having a sheet loaded and trying to print will print the whole entire freaking spreadsheet, all sheets, all ranges in Calc. That's just stupid. Excel will (for obvious reasons) default to printing only the sheet you're on. More polish.
- Mail merging in Word or Writer - Trying to get Writer to realize that "mail merge" doesn't necessarily mean "i'm writing a form letter and want to import addresses" is like pulling teeth. Word has no problem with just binding whatever data to a form. Polish(x1). Also, Word doesn't force you (or confuse you) into creating an Access database when you just want to import an informal list of crap from Excel. Writer DOES try to get you to make a Base
Now, none of these are absolute deal-breakers, nor do they show that OO.o is somehow unworthy of attention. On the contrary, it shows that OO.o needs more attention, and from people who actually use the features they're coding. MS Office will only get better if there's pressure on MS to make it better, and OO.o is probably the best hope for applying that kind of pressure. I just think that MS really deserves some credit for making Office a decent app suite. They've done far more than most
Just to clarify, none of this applies to the Windows vs. Linux debate. I want Windows to just go die in a fire. It really needs to be flushed like all the other turds.
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>But Calc will treat the column headings as data and sort them into the middle of the list!
>Excel knows that the first line is not data if it's a different text style from the rest of the list. Polish.
Um, I use calc all the time. It's default is that the first row is headings and it will not "sort them into the middle of the list" unless you specifically tell it to do that.
>Having a sheet loaded and trying to print will print the whole entire freaking spreadsheet, all sheet
Exciting! Can't Wait! (Score:5, Insightful)
So I say, bring it on! I think that getting a good implementation of OOo running natively under Aqua is key in the cause of reducing reliance on Microsoft. People switching to Linux obviously are going to use OOo or some other open format, but still too many people switching to Mac are relying on Microsoft. It'll be curious to see whether they take Firefox's approach to have the interface be consistent across the board, or if they try and take advantage of OS X's toolkits and design guides to make it a true Mac application.
Won't (and shouldn't) happen (Score:3, Interesting)
OO is very decent office suite on Linux and Windows. So leave it there, where it is working acceptably. I think any effort to take that code base and reconcile it to an acceptable UI and functional level on the Mac will be the definition of a trip down the rabbit hole, taking years to realize and resulting in a UI compromise that annoys users on all platforms.
Time to cut bait on this, accept that it never will be workable on the Mac, and free its development team to focus on improving it in the Lin/Win world. Better to spend development time and effort developing a Mac-specific office suite that uses the various Open*** file formats as its native storage, while providing a real Cocoa-based UI experience that actually integrates into OS X the way Mac users expect an application to. Not that Sun will come within a mile of such an initiative, but it's a great opportunity for frustrated Mac developers looking to solve a real practical problem...
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Safari is a wrapper around Webkit. Webkit is a port of KHTML, written in C++, and is the majority of the code in Safari: any Cocoa code is in the "shell" or in what are effectively Cocoa plug-ins. Camino is a similar wrapper, though somewhat simpler, around the Gecko HTML component from Mozilla/Firefox. T
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Re:But... (Score:4, Funny)
Huh? Read the summary? This guy didn't even read the title!
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How do you see that? (Score:2)
Unless you are smoking some banned substance or another, I can't imagine how this would fuel any speculation about an Apple / Sun merger.