Native KOffice for Mac OS X 335
bsharitt writes "A preliminary version of KOffice has been built natively on Mac OS X. It looks like a lot of the hard part is over, and now a lot of cleaning up and bug fixes stand between Mac OS X and a free full featured office suite." There's also a story on the dot.
looks nice... (Score:2, Interesting)
Opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder how long it will be before Appleworks is nixed in favor of a kOffice - based product. Microsoft Office for the Mac is actually a really good product, and Appleworks doesn't touch it. Get to work Apple!
Koffice for OSX (Score:3, Interesting)
really, excellent work.
A friend of mine has Openoffice running on his powerbook, indeed it "works" but since it doesn't look as slick as the native OSX apps, I am not that eager to try it.
I hope that now a lot of other K-software will be ported!
best regards, Tom
Re:OpenOffice.org (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OpenOffice.org (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:OpenOffice.org (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Opportunity (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:OpenOffice.org (Score:5, Interesting)
Widgets need updating... (Score:5, Interesting)
Trolltech needs desperately to update the OSX port of QT. The widget have a cumbersome appearance and need to be updated to Panther style. Text alignment is in need of some fixing up. This isn't a complaint... the OSX version is still in its infancy and I'm sure time will allow a more integrated look... I'm just anxious.. because QT really is a great toolkit / API.
Good Job!
Re:OpenOffice.org (Score:5, Interesting)
The port of Konquerer and KOffice is using the native QT/Mac port. This is great for two reasons. For one it helps find bugs and missing features in QT/Mac. That'll make porting future projects easier and make using QT/Mac for cross platform development better. Secondly it will enable a lot of fairly good programs to run native.
I agree that KOffice isn't that great, although it holds promise. But having it native is a big deal. Open Office might be more powerful, but because it is an X11 app, it really doesn't have an Aqua look and feel. Further cutting and pasting of graphics or drag and drop don't work. That's a rather large failing with Open Office. (I also think Open Office is weak compared to MS Office and further Apple is expected by some to be releasing its office suite this winter or spring)
I'd kind of like to have a native Konquerer, if only to deal with directories with lots of files. Something the Finder doesn't deal well with. Using it to organize my web directories would be very nice as well...
Re:I'm ignorant... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that porting KDE apps is seemingly straight forward it may be easier for the OS X porters to piggy back on the KDE intergration effort so things will shift along a bit faster.
*twirls finger in the air* (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd say MS needs Apple more than the other way around - I've heard the Mac business unit at MS is among the most profitable, compared to how much they spend on development. Probably a lot less piracy going on in Mac-land.
Re:OpenOffice.org (Score:2, Interesting)
By the way, I think X11 on OS X rules, in fact I use rxvt instead of Terminal.app because Terminal.app makes a slug look fast. (I'm still on Jaguar, is it any better in Panther?)
Re:I'm ignorant... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm running 10.3.2 on a tiny PB12" with X11 from Apple, and it's working just fine. Give it a try, report back and help it develop.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I really expected OpenOffice.org to be first... (Score:4, Interesting)
As for the name (I'm hoping your post was sarcastic on that point, but you never know) X is the roman numeral for 10. Mac OS X came after Mac OS 9.
Re:OpenOffice.org (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I'm ignorant... (Score:3, Interesting)
So your telling me that I can script openoffice documents in a high level language in an event driven and object based way. Sure I could leanr the schemas and write XML manipulating programs, but thats not as easy as a VB script.
Yes for the 95% of us, VBA is unused, but in that 5% you have enterprises that thrive upon it, programmers that do it for a living and authors that have written books about it.
Hasn't anyone heard of APPLE WORKS???? (Score:1, Interesting)
It's great to port *nix apps to OS X. It is. It's great for many reasons, one being to make *nix heads more comfortable on a mac. Really though, is Apple Works that bad? I think it's far superior to MS Office for mac.
Re:Free not important? (Score:2, Interesting)
I have a bit similar issue, as it is currently impossible to get any native word processor for OS X with Finnish language tools (there are classic and X11 alternatives) - MS has them for Windows, but not for Mac. This make me unwilling to buy Office X, even though I like Excel, because I don't want to pay for word processor without support for my native language, and the sole Excel without other office programs would be more expensive for me than the whole suite, as there are no academic editions of the separate programs.
Currently I'm running OOo 1.0.3 on top of X11, but now I'm looking forward for KOffice to replace it soon.
Re:Twirl this (Score:1, Interesting)
However, remember that MS is somewhat in hot water about interoperability already. If Apple loses Word for Mac, I'd expect them to be first in line for file specs and what not when litigation comes about.
Bug reporting system? (Score:2, Interesting)
I intend to give this suite a try regardless, but just curious: is there an automated system a la Mozilla to provide bug info back to the development team when an application crashes? I'd like to help further this development along, but this is about the extent of what I could provide right now.
Re:Fuck Apple in the mouth (Score:5, Interesting)
Because they're more interesting. They've had a hell of a year.
Besides, Microsoft has been sitting on their laurels. Groklaw has an interesting bit [groklaw.net] where PJ notes that Investor's Business Daily made up their "Top Ten Tech Stories of the Year" list without mentioning Microsoft a single time in any context. This isn't because the "regular" PC world is losing relevance, but more just that there isn't much going on in the "regular" PC world.
But... that's what happens when one company is in charge of most of what people do: Nothing. Why should they do anything? They've got 80% of the world using their stuff.
Native, but not standard (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:OpenOffice.org (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends on execution (Score:3, Interesting)
Appropriating existing application software (not exactly standard in the same was as, say, TCP/IP), developing it thoroughly, and contributing the useful changes back to the original development teams is a bit different. It could be done badly, yes, but Apple doesn't seem to have a poor track record lately in this respect.
Where can I donate? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would gladly pay to encourage their efforts.
Re:Where can I donate? (Score:2, Interesting)
> Where can I donate specifically to the team of programmers working to bring KOffice up to finished, final release quality on OS X
Since everything which arrives down at Mac OS X depends on what happens "upstream", use this:
http://www.kde.org/support/donations.php [kde.org]
Re:OpenOffice.org (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OpenOffice.org (Score:3, Interesting)
The hard part is over, really (Score:3, Interesting)
You have here a free and native alternative for Office.
No money. People will use it if it is reliable. Because it's free. That's great!
Maybe, if the programmers want to have more people use it and everybody to stop bitching, yes, it would be a good - no, a great idea to make it more Mac-compliant, but they don't have to, really. They've already made it FREE.
People will be plenty happy already when the bugs and kinks are worked out.
So congratulations!
BTW, now please give us a free and easy (meaning no coding) database program and we're in HEAVEN!
xxx