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OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X Goes Final Beta 46

Posted by pudge from the like-school-in-the-fall dept.
WizardOfFoo writes "Time to break out the bug hammers, the Final Beta of OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X is now ready for testing. It still requires X11 though... I want my Quartz OpenOffice.org..." I tested it, and it works great with Apple's new X11 for Mac OS X.
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OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X Goes Final Beta More

OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X Goes Final Beta

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  • Ouch (Score:2, Funny)

    by jeramybsmith ( 608791 )
    Jaguar, 128MB ram required Jaguar + X11, 256MB ram recommended And now Openoffice? Yeesh.
  • Maybe once they cocoa-ize it it'll be fast enough to use, but it's just dog slow for me right now.

    Abiword/office-x win hands down.
    • once? more like if...

      The clueless Sun people seem to want to use Aqua widgets instead of making a proper Mac app. In other words the Aqua appearance without the Aqua behavior.

  • Well.. (Score:2, Informative)

    by bsharitt ( 580506 )
    It's techincally usable, but it's not much to look at. The fonts are especially terrible. I guess until a native Mac version(i.e. Aqua, Quartz), I'll stick with AppleWorks and use this to convert those nasty .doc files.

    • The screenshots on their site are using XDarwin. Maybe it looks better when used with Apple's X11?
      • No, Ive actually tried it, and on Apple's X11 too.
        • This makes me wonder... do ya think Apple's X11 server will use Quartz font rendering when it gets out of beta? Don't know how feasible that would even be to do, but damn, that would rock. Especially if it means all X11 applications can access the OS X native fonts that I can't get at all for X11.

          • Re:Well.. (Score:2, Interesting)

            by bsharitt ( 580506 )
            It would be reasonable to assume that Apple could do something like this. I KDE can make an unmodified XFree86 look better as far as font rendering goes, I don't see why Apple couldn't. The only problem is that even when fonts look nice in KDE and Gnome, they still look bad in OpenOffice. OpenOffice and xterm are the only programs I've used so far in Apple's X11, so I don't know what it would look lik in a "regular" X app. Lets all just keep n mind this is a 0.1 release. They might eventually be able to integrate it in such a way that most X apps are indistinguishable from regular Mac OS X apps.

            • XFree86 (and hence, I assume Apple's X11, since it is a rebadged version of XF86) have supported anti-aliasing since about version 4.1, but support for it needs to be enabled for Qt (KDE) and gtk (Gnome). Since OO uses its own widget set it will not support anti-aliasing until it is compiled in (it does under windows, since windows antialiases all text drawn with GDI functions if it's enabled, and not if it isn't). If the X server supports antialiasing, it should be simple to make OO support it. It would be more useful for Apple to reqwite the widget set to either: a) Look and feel like Aqua or (preferably) b) Call the equivilent (QE accelerated) widgets. It would also be a good idea for them to redesign some (all?) of the dialog windows to bring them into line with Apple UI guidelines Even so, this beta is a huge step forward. I regularly ues Windows, Linux and FreeBSD and use OO on all of them. When I use a Mac, I have to post a copy of OO from a remote Linux box to the local Mac. Now that's slow...

  • My Review of OOo X11 Beta (Score:5, Informative)

    by pbaker ( 458394 ) <<ten.rekabluap> <ta> <rekabp>> on Thursday January 09, 2003 @01:29PM (#5048720) Homepage Journal
    Sent this as a story submission. Guess WizardOfFoo beat me too it, or perhaps it's just because his was shorter. :-) Anyway here goes my review:

    So OpenOffice.org [openoffice.org] released [google.com] the final beta version of OpenOffice.org 1.0.1 X11 for Mac OS X [openoffice.org] yesterday at MWSF. I'm surprised to have not read about it on any sites yet. I managed to download it pretty quickly off of one of the mirrors (probably because the downloading frenzy hasn't begun yet). My first impression is that it does appear to be very stable, but it's not quite polished enough to replace Office X for the everyday Mac user.

    Yesterday Apple also quietly released a beta version of X11 for Mac OS X [apple.com] which is an optimized version Xfree86's X server that also includes a speedy quartz based window manager. It works much like Orobourosx but much faster thanks to Apple's optimizations. I bring this up because it looks like the new OpenOffice build was unfortunately built before anyone know about Apple's new X11. After installing OpenOffice.org, a nice "Start OpenOffice.org" icon is created in your Applications folder. Double clicking it the first time asks you what program to use as your X11 server. I choose Apple's X11, but after a minute or tool, Console is nice enough to report that soffice.bin has crashed. So no go with a nice double click to start up OOo. I'm sure this will be fixed by the time it is finally released though. Fortunately, I had no problems starting it from within an xterm or adding it to the X11 Applications menu by entering the command "/Applications/OpenOffice.org1.0.1/program/soffice "

    On from there it looks to be very stable. The few Word and Excel documents I opened loaded perfectly and printed without a hitch. I didn't have to do anything special to make this happen. Just open and print and done. So the basics are definitely there.

    Printing is a little confusing though from a user feedback standpoint though, as it does not go through Print Center. And it prints so fast through CUPS (on a TiBook 667) that I wasn't even sure anything had been printed until I went to the other end of the office to check the printer. Maybe if we are lucky it will use Printer Center in the final release.

    My last gripes are that as far as being a Macintosh program it's just not there yet. I don't fault anyone for this as this release based on the X11 version does not attempt to be a full fledged Mac program anyway. No attempt has been made with this version to follow the Aqua Human Interface Guidelines of course. And since it uses X11 instead of Aqua, menu bars are of course within each window instead of in the standard menu bar (as with any X11 program running on Mac OS X). All the shortcut key combinations use Ctrl instead of Cmd. This means that you hit Ctrl+S to save and Ctrl+P to print instead of Cmd+S and Cmd+P respectively. I was also not able to hit some of the key combinations such as Ctrl+F7 to bring up the Thesaurus. These problems should of course be addressed when OpenOffice.org completes their native Aqua port which is currently under development.

    All and all it looks like OpenOffice.org has built a very solid application that anyone coming from Unix/Linux should feel very comfortable using and save them from having to fork over cash to Microsoft in order to edit Word documents on a Mac. For people that are used to the beauty and consistency of Macs and Mac apps, they are probably still better off spending the money to purchase Microsoft Office X if they need to work with these documents everyday. But for anyone that doesn't spend much of their time in a word processor, perhaps less than once a week, this is definitely a great alternative to spending $500.
    • Did they get it so that it sees the local OSX fonts as well as the standard X11 fonts? That has been the bane with most X11 based office applications.

      The notes with Apple's X11.app says that any application should be able to use Apple's fonts as well. So, for example, you can use Monoco in Xterm (which I have done). However I know AbiWord didn't access them. Before I d/l this huge distro, I'm curious if it will.

      • I'm not really very experienced with fonts, I tend to stick with just Arial or Times. But this version of OOo comes with a program called fondu (sp?) that runs during install to apparently convert all your Apple installed fonts into a format that can be used by OOo. I can't really test this as I probably couldn't tell the difference between the fonts that are part of X11/OOo and fonts that are installed with Mac OS X.
      • Okay looking into this further, it appears that you are in luck. It does not convert your fonts automatically, but the fondu program does indeed work. To get my Apple fonts into OOo all I had to do was open up Terminal and execute these commands:

        cd /Applications/OpenOffice.org1.0.1/share/fonts /usr/local/bin/fondu /Library/Fonts/*

        Starting up OOo now has many new fonts and they are even anti-aliased. Very beautiful!
        • Okay so I don't know why my last post put both commands on one line. I guess that will teach me to not hit preview before submitting.

          Execute these commands in Terminal:
          cd /Applications/OpenOffice.org1.0.1/share/fonts
          /usr/local/bin/fondu /Library/Fonts/*
          If you get an "Can't find an appropriate resource fork in /Library/Fonts/XftCache" warning don't worry about.
      • Dunno if you check up on old postings, but if you do can you tell me how to use Monaco in an xterm? I'd like to try it. Thanks.
    • The good stuff in Open Office (file format i/o) ought to be ripped out to make a Cocoa app. Sun's plans to make a roughly Aqua-looking app will be a disaster.

      Aqua isn't just an appearance and I doubt Sun will ever understand that.
  • ...and it works great with Apple's new X11 for Mac OS X.

    The OOo X11 beta installs X11 with the OOo install. Is there any way around that? Would that overwrite Apple's X11?

  • Slightly OT: OS X and X11 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by elliotj ( 519297 ) <slashdot.elliotjohnson@com> on Thursday January 09, 2003 @03:05PM (#5049407) Homepage
    I'm really hoping this new beta X11 environment from Apple is the tip of the iceberg. I'd like to see it become as integrated into OS X as Classic. Having come from a Linux background there are lots of X apps I run on my TiBook and no Classic apps, but that's just me.

    Not being a developer, I was wondering how menus are implemented in X11 apps. I know that it's different depending on whether you use Motif, KDE or Gnome, but my main question is whether or not these menus could be "automagically" relocated to the Apple menu bar so the app would look more like a Mac app. I suspect this will never happen but I know very little about it.

    I like Apple's new X11 very much. Nice and snappy. Quartz-wm is amazing. It's great using a WM that respects my theme (I use Rhapsodized b/c I hate Aqua and quartz-wm takes this since it uses Quartz...how about that!)

    The only thing I don't like is that the menu bar just says X11 and there's no indication of how many X apps you're running, so you can't ALT+tab between them or use the dock to change the app of focus. You actually have to click on it with the mouse or use the 'window' menu on the X11 menu bar.
    • In a way, this is already better integrated than Classic, in that it uses the Aqua look. (Apple could have provided an Aqua theme using the old OS 8 Appearance Manager, but presumably chose not to so as not to reduce the need-to-upgrade factor (as it would inevitably have leaked to Mac OS 9 users)).

      The lack of command-tabbing between applications is listed in the Known Issues of the installer, which could imply that Apple will fix this before the release of a final X11. I quote:

      Known Issues


      X11 window server
      • OpenGL offscreen rendering is not yet supported.
      • XInputExtension is not yet implemented. Maya and some GLUT applications require this extension.
      • Cannot launch OpenGL applications unless the user is root or the current logged in user in Mac OS X.


      quartz-wm window manager

      • X clients do not appear as separate applications, e.g. in the dock and when Command-TAB'ing through applications.
      • When closing an X11 window, if a native window is next in order, it won't be focused, the next X11 window will be.
      • App window placement policy currently piles windows up in the top-left, instead of cascading them.
      • Currently focused window is not checked in the Window menu.

  • Eventual iOffice, anybody? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) <jhummel&johnhummel,net> on Thursday January 09, 2003 @03:45PM (#5049767) Homepage
    Something I've been looking over for the last little bit, and especially since the last Keynote address (as a recent convert from Linux desktops to OS X desktops early last year).

    Apple seems to be straddling the Open Source thing perfectly, using it in a way that should benefit everybody. (Granted, they aren't perfect, but who is?) They're using the power of OS to build their items (such as kHTML in Safari, Darwin for OS X, etc), then putting on a nice wrapper on the front, and contributing their improvements to the core system. Which is just as it should be - they're not trying to break interoperability with an OS item and claim they did it to make it better, but don't submit the changes to the community (like Kerebros and one company we won't mention).

    So I'm watching the X11 and Open Office thing with a lot of interest. Keynote, the new application which is really a Powerpoint replacement, uses XML as its native file format - which again is a Good Thing(TM), as it will allow others to tweak, make improvements that both Apple and the rest of the world could use.

    I'm wondering how long it will be until Apple starts up with something like iOffice. Oh, I know they have Appleworks - and there hasn't been any new announcement yet. I can see Keynote this year, maybe Keynote 2 in about 18 months with a dual announcement of Counter (an Excel like system) - powered by the work in Open Office, or some other OS project core.

    My current calculations show that Linux will overtake Microsoft in about 3-4 years on the server end. With Open Office, just about every business I've talked to recently has been installing the system, and only getting Microsoft Office for 3%-5% of their business (after all - if you don't have to spend the money for 100% of the company, why bother?).

    If Apple/Sun/Open Office/other contributors eventually make the Open Office system as good as Excel (and really, it's all about the Macros, ask any accountant) - then what then? Will a business look at the 3%-5% of their business and say "Well, let's just switch them over too?"

    With that, MS Office itself will eventually face the same compition that Microsoft Server products are really starting to face now, and within 7-10 years, MS Office may become marginalized.

    Now, think of what happens then. You don't need Windows to run Office. You don't need MS Office - Open Office/Star Office/iOffice does the same, and since they all tie into the XML file format, who cares if you decide to put your business on Linux/Sun/Mac? People who want to stay cheap can go to Linux, others can go to Apple and get a good GUI/easier administration with the same ability, but with a higher cost in hardware/software. Because applications are now spread across operating systems, the operating systems themselves become nearly worthless.

    I think Steve Jobs/Apple Co know this, and they're putting the chess pieces on the board. Microsoft will always be around - they'll be like Intel. But I honestly believe that 10 years from now, we'll talk about MS just like we did about IBM back in the early 90's. "Oh, yeah - remember when every computer had Windows on it?"

    Microsoft makes money from 4 things: Windows client, Windows server, MS Office, Exchange. (There may be others, like their hardware, but overall, all their other huge investments (Xbox, MSN, handheld, etc) are losing money, boyed by the 85% market we pay for Windows/MS Office). If Windows Server and Microsoft Office become marginalized or have true competition they can't buy out/bully out, how long until the other two become insignificate as well - or until Microsoft truly starts making Office/Exchange for other platforms not as a token "Look, we're not a monopoly", but because they must.

    Competition. I believe about 10 years - a long time it may seem, but it feels about right. And Apple is making the right moves to be right there when it happens.
    • I agree that a major revamp of appleworks is just waiting to be debuted. But i don't think apple needs an excel replacement, well, they don't need to build one from scratch. Appleworks comes with a spreadsheet app. Maybe apple will make that "Counter" app and release the peices of their office killer one by one. Now all they need is a access killer...
      • > Now all they need is a access killer...

        I'm sure you are joking. Apple owns Filemaker Inc.. Filemaker Pro 6 beats the pants off MS Access. Filemaker is the secret weapon of so many companies... MS Access is more the achilles heel of the companies that choose to use it.

        If you need to see the pros and cons of filemaker over Access go here. This document is outdated but there is plenty of material when you search for "filemaker vs access" on google:

        http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:PRK03pY0GFcC: www.filemaker.com/downloads/pdf/fm_access_comparis on.pdf+filemaker+vs+access&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

        Also available as PDF:

        http://www.filemaker.com/downloads/pdf/fm_access_c omparison.pdf

  • "I want my Quartz OpenOffice.org."

    I FIRST asuume you mean you want OpenOffice the app, not the domain name.

    SECOND, I assume you want an OpenOffice that works in Aqua(written in native-Cocoa). Apple's new X11 DOES take advantage of Quartz Extreme, so that request has already been fulfilled.

  • X11 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Thursday January 09, 2003 @09:03PM (#5052017)
    This is slightly off topic. But is this X11 that you download from apple a bunch of libraries when the application is compiled. Or is it like XDarwin. If so where is it loaded so I can run it?

    Please note this is a question. And I am confident enough in my abilities to ask it. I rather be a fool for 5 minutes and loose some karma then be a fool for ever and not get the facts straight. I am sure there are other people that have more time to find the answer. This paragraph is posted because asking question often lead to ridicule. Which dosent really answer the question.
    • Problem fixed. I only downloaded the SDK. When you download the application it gets there. But your post was helpful because I now know I download the correct version.
  • I ran the installer for open office all seemed to be just fine all the way through the installer to finish. Then the fit hit the shan. I started to get error messages all over the place from Palm Background, Entourage etc. I noticed the hard drive was churning away more that I thought it should. When I went to the hard drive to retrieve a utility program I noticed I now had 3GB extra storage on my HD than I had Before the Open Office Install !!!!! WTF! I began a massive hard shutdown, Yanked the Cord pulled the battery (Pismo 500). On restart I discovered that ALL my applications that I have installed were deleted. This situation seems to be only confined to the directory of application that I created for myself "Applications Mine" & its sub-directories (this is where I was installing OO). I keep all my apps in a separate dir. & all the OS installed apps in the true "Applications" folder. Preferences and document seem to be intact. To add insult to injury even Open Office has been deleted. My system has been Rock solid for 3 years, I'm confident that this was the OO installer. Anyone else have this happen, Any suggestions, Help? In a related topic what's the best way to back up your HD

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