Sun Denies StarOffice on Mac OS X

mattworld1 writes, "MacCentral is reporting that while development of OpenOffice for Mac OS X will continue, Sun is denying that a version of StarOffice is in the works. This is unfortunate, as it would be nice for Mac OS X users to have a good alternative to the expensive Microsoft Office." Apparently it's not all bad news, as VValdo writes, "The recent announcement of a collaboration from Apple/Sun on a Java-based version of StarOffice for Mac OS X shocked and angered many of the OpenOffice developers who had been left totally in the dark. After two days of intense programming on a proof of concept, they announced a first look at Open Office in Aqua." Neat!

For more info...

[jaaron]

For more information, check out the NewFactor article at : http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/18805.html [newsfactor.com]

Also check out this GeekNews story: http://geek.com/news/geeknews/2002Jul/gee200207310 15675.htm [geek.com]

(Don't need the Karma, I just want people to get the facts straight. I hate misinformation being spread around...)

Re:Jeez

[ProofOfConcept]

Can they just make up their minds?!?

They had their minds made up from the beginning. C|net, on the other hand, didn't. [newsfactor.com]

Re:Java based Office...

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran the unix version of jbuilder on a Mac before the Mac release. It is 100% pure java.

Read the parent comment again...

[Simon Carr]

I believe the original poster stated that the Sun and Apple programmers that worked on it were volunteering time (not getting paid).

I don't know who works for who on the dayjob side but it wouldn't particularly surprise me if employees from Apple and Sun were contributing.

If you look at The about page [openoffice.org] It's clear there is participation from at least Sun employees.

I think it's cool. I like OpenOffice. If people are looking for an alternative to MS Office, that's one of your better bets.

Re:Java office suites

[JohnA]

Absolutely. Java has come a LONG way since Corel tried to port Office to Java. Corel was trying to port to JDK 1.1, which was totally pre-swing and pre-Java 2D. This meant that there was no font support outside of "monospaced", "serif" and "sans-serif", and it also meant no access to acceleration tools provided by Java 2D.

Any effort to create an office suite today would have a tremendous chance of success, although it would still be a challenge.

Re:Slashdotted soon for sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.iceni.org/~peterlin/first_aqua.html

Re:Java based Office...

[betis70]

Well this post would be accurate for JBuilder 3.5. I believe earlier versions were in C++.

However, since JBuilder 4, it is 100% Java (they are now on JB7). Perhaps you haven't used JBuilder since 2000, which of course gets you a +1 Informative on slashdot.

Re:What would be great

[dhovis]

Somebody mod this (-1, Dumbass) please.

From Filemaker's [filemaker.com] website.

FileMaker, Inc. is a subsidiary of Apple Computer, Inc

It's a little hard to get pissed off at your parent company.

the problem is Apple

[g4dget]

OpenOffice basically runs on OSX. But it isn't usable by the masses because it requires an X11 server, and installing that is beyond the abilities of most users because it doesn't ship with the Mac.

There is no technical reason why OSX couldn't support, in addition to Carbon and Cococa, access to the graphics system through the X11 protocol. The amount of code required on Apple's side would be small (a few hundred kbytes of binary), and users would not be able to tell whether an application talks to Quartz through Carbon or the X11 protocol.

Of course, efforts like OpenOffice would still have to work on implementing Apple GUI guidelines, but they would have to do that even if they use native widgets.

Many of Apple's new users picked the Mac because it is UNIX; Apple should support graphical UNIX applications fully and out of the box rather than insisting that other people spend large amounts of time unnecessarily on ports.

Re:Aqua

[openstep]

Yes, we will be working on retooling it to conform to Aqua. That's a major undertaking for us, though, and we'll need lots of help to design how we'll do it as well as execute it. It's easy to draw buttons in two days...to get it to be sheets, tabbed dialogs, drawers, etc. isn't :)