Sun Microsystems joins porting effort for OpenOffice.org for Mac

Great news. I'm excited :-)

Posted by Chris on May 03, 2007 at 11:27 AM CEST #

What about working together with the NeoOffice-guys? They already ported OO to Mac (with Java). I think it's a mayour problem of Open Spource Projects... instead of working together to find the best solution for a broad range of users, everyone starts his own build (and maybe stumbles over the same problems).

Posted by X-Ray on May 03, 2007 at 11:39 AM CEST #

... and my mayor problem is my typing ;)

Posted by X-Ray on May 03, 2007 at 11:40 AM CEST #

nice *ggg*

Posted by 217.7.207.21 on May 03, 2007 at 12:52 PM CEST #

X-Ray: That would involve Sun's engineers working on two different code-bases, since the NeoOffice guys don't contribute changes back to OpenOffice.org and use a different license (GPL instead of LGPL). While this approach will be slower to get started it's smarter in the long term. It would be great to see old rivalries finally resolved and the two projects re-combine, though.

Posted by Simon Phipps on May 03, 2007 at 01:11 PM CEST #

How're you doing the port? Using Cocoa or Carbon? regards, Lars

Posted by Lars on May 03, 2007 at 01:14 PM CEST #

Currently the plan is to use Carbon.

Posted by PhilippL on May 03, 2007 at 01:34 PM CEST #

This is the best news I have heard in a while. :-)

Posted by Shaun McDonald on May 03, 2007 at 01:49 PM CEST #

Really great news!

Posted by Johan on May 03, 2007 at 02:47 PM CEST #

Brilliant news, I use Open office on both Windows and Linux, but on OSX it just 'feels' wrong (that's the designer in me!) cannot wait to get an aqua version other than NeoOffice. I'll be downloading as soon as an alpha is ready!

Posted by Martin on May 03, 2007 at 02:48 PM CEST #

Really great news. Open Office has also become even more interesting as it is run as a server side module in the new open source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system Alfresco. Alfresco is supported on Mac OS X which is great. There it is used to read metadata from office docs and doing transformations like converting from Word/ODF -> PDF and RTF. Will this affect the X11-integration that is now used in Alfresco on Macs or does it open up for a completely new way of using OpenOffice in Mac OS X Server. Now the launch argument from the shell script looks something like this: /Applications/OpenOffice.org\ 2.1.app/Contents/MacOS/program/soffice "-accept=socket,host=localhost,port=8100;urp;StarOffice.ServiceManager" -nologo -headless -nofirststartwizard &

Posted by Alexandra on May 03, 2007 at 02:54 PM CEST #

Thanks! Open Office is nice, but I _hate_ the MacOSX X11 port. NeoOffice is OK, but usually behind where OpenOffice is in features. I would love to have a native MacOSX version.

Posted by William on May 03, 2007 at 03:25 PM CEST #

You definitely must familiarize yourself with the NeoOffice project before you do anything else. http://neooffice.org. Don't be prejudiced. These guys do great work. I've used NeoOffice every day for years.

Posted by Wheat Williams on May 03, 2007 at 03:28 PM CEST #

This is fantastic! I've been waiting and waiting for a MacOSX Open Office. I've been using NeoOffice in the meantime, and quite like it. I firmly stand behind Open Office and ODF. I run a lab of about 16 computers, and I'm looking forward to installing OO on them. Thank you Sun...

Posted by N- on May 03, 2007 at 03:36 PM CEST #

This is good news, but I too would also see Sun and the NeoOffice developers working together. Seems to me you could save a lot of work taking this approach, and possibly come up with with product that's BETTER than Office, as opposed to largely mimicking it's functionality.

Posted by Anthony Mallory on May 03, 2007 at 04:13 PM CEST #

Good news. I have been using Neooffice for a while now. It hogs memory and response is too slow compared to OOo on linux. I hope a native port of OOo without the java layer as in NeoOffice would make it more snappy.

Posted by k1980pc on May 03, 2007 at 04:19 PM CEST #

Awesome news.

Posted by Regnative on May 03, 2007 at 04:21 PM CEST #

Will you be making all the supported apple plugins for leopard? Are any of you members of ACD? Have any of the developers (sun and others) seen the WWDC2006 or will be attendingWWDC2007?

Posted by Nehemiah on May 03, 2007 at 04:25 PM CEST #

I found a link to this page on a Mac-related blog (mac-essentials). After reading this great news there is nothing left to say but: I am totally amazed by these news! Thank you SUN for supporting the OO porters!

Posted by Patrick on May 03, 2007 at 04:26 PM CEST #

Working with the NeoOffice project or merging their codebase into yours would be a great way to go. One of the great benefits of NeoOffice, as it relates to Sun, is that it IS written with a Java layer. How great is that!! A high profile application running with java is great publicity for Sun. All of those "Swing is slow" myths could be tackled directly. Simon (Phipps), surely there could be a way to make this work. Maybe you could start by having the NeoOffice project people on an episode of your SDN podcast.

Posted by powerdroid on May 03, 2007 at 04:29 PM CEST #

Great news for all macintosh fans. NeoOffice is slow as hell, so a native port will free me from MS mac-office. Thank you

Posted by Ricardo Ramalho on May 03, 2007 at 04:37 PM CEST #

What would it take to help out with this project? Is it closed to Sun employees or will this be an open project?

Posted by Craig Callender on May 03, 2007 at 04:43 PM CEST #

As a pure speculation, I wonder if the people with a lot of experience programming Mac OS X and NeXTSTEP before that such as the folks at http://www.stone.com/ or authors like Aaron Hillglass might be willing to help you get orient to programming OS X

Posted by Todd Olson on May 03, 2007 at 04:47 PM CEST #

Philipp, Please take at least a brief stroll through the Apple Human Interface Guidelines
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/OSXHIGuidelines.pdf or http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGIntro/chapter_1_section_1.html
I'm hoping that the new Mac version can remove some of the oddness that I see in the OO Windows/Linux versions. I use open office on Windows and Linux (but not yet Mac because OO is too weird there), and develop software for Macintosh and Windows. So I'm a big fan of software that is cross-platform and yet feels natural to the typical Mac user (on a Mac), yet also encompasses the increasingly large middle ground where Win/Lin/Mac users can use each other's software. It just means removing little oddities (the OO "long click" is odd to most Mac and Win users, the Mac Finder's "really slow double click" to rename is odd to non-Mac users), and adding complete, visible controls so even inexperienced users can eventually find things. Good luck! I'm very happy to see this news.

Posted by Craig D Miller on May 03, 2007 at 04:49 PM CEST #

As a former employee of Sun and a Mac user, I'm glad to see this happening and am looking forward to this version of OOo.

Posted by Clair on May 03, 2007 at 04:54 PM CEST #

Whatever happened to the software company that Sun bought that made a neXtstep based office suite? Weren't they called Lighthouse software? That may be a good thing to opensource or give away for free. IIRC, it was pretty good back in the day.

Posted by matt evans on May 03, 2007 at 05:03 PM CEST #

Is there a release date set, or is it too soon? MS Office I love ya, but I'm not exactly happy with the price tag. ;-) Which kind of brings up another question. Since Apple is getting involved, what are the chances of having to pay for OpenOffice?

Posted by Kevin on May 03, 2007 at 05:03 PM CEST #

I too am excited about this announcement. There are a slew of interface integration and mac platform integration things that would be very nice. I am also excited that two Google Summer of Code interns are working on integration stuff - Aqua integration and address book integration. I'm a relatively recent newcomer to the mac and had used OOo quite a bit on the PC before switching and loved it. However, it is quite evident that OOo is not a native much of anything on the mac, except for the NeoOffice side project, which I just have never gotten into but have just gotten stuff done with MS Office 2004. Great work. I'm very glad to see this development.

As far as integrating the NeoOffice stuff, if you're not doing your work in Java and the Java/Cocoa bridge is deprecated and the licenses are incompatible, I'm not sure it makes sense other than to invite the NeoOffice folks to participate in the development and extend the olive branch. Otherwise, development seems like it would degenerate into mucking about with those issues and not getting stuff done - no offense to the NeoOffice people who did a good job with only a couple of people.

Posted by Jeremy on May 03, 2007 at 05:05 PM CEST #

Craig: This already is an open project, just Sun adds development resources. Please look at the mail archives of the mac porting list ( http://porting.openoffice.org/servlets/SummarizeList?listName=mac ) Todd: Before running we should learn to walk; the application should be able to paint before we reconfigure its whole UI. Besides that is already on the list of the porting community team.

Posted by PhilippL on May 03, 2007 at 05:06 PM CEST #

Kudos, I think it is great that Sun is making a commitment to this effort, its been a long time coming. The only thing that I wish you would do differently is look at Cocoa vs Carbon. I would hate to see you do a bunch of work to make the port happen then midstream you find out that Carbon is being de-supported and then have things drag out because you have to switch to Cocoa which we know is the standard Apple is pushing for all new development work. I know this is probably a stupid question but does Carbon support Universal Binaries?

Posted by Rob on May 03, 2007 at 05:10 PM CEST #

Great news! But please don’t use Carbon. (MS Office is Carbonized, and you know you don’t want to be like them.) VoiceOver users are desperate for something they can use besides TextEdit. Accessibility comes for free with Cocoa! It is a PITA for Carbon (so much so, that Apple only made iTunes accessible with the last 7.1.1 release).

Posted by Access Curmudgeon on May 03, 2007 at 05:27 PM CEST #

To be honest, given how much my wife swears at StarOffice on Windows every time she uses it, I'd rather we fixed the problems there first and let the NeoOffice guys keep the market share they deserve, for the time being at least...

Posted by Calum Benson on May 03, 2007 at 05:35 PM CEST #

Great news - neo office is so slow on my iMac G5, hopefully something better can come from it.

Posted by Pete White on May 03, 2007 at 05:46 PM CEST #

Any idea on a release date - OpenOffice is great for windows/linux but its always lagged behind with integration in OS X.

Posted by TWO on May 03, 2007 at 05:48 PM CEST #

NeoOffice REALLY REALLY SUCKS. I can't wait for a native mac port.

Posted by Chris on May 03, 2007 at 05:53 PM CEST #

Great and really exciting. One caveat... as others have pointed out, please do development in Cocoa, particularly in light of the Mac OS X accessibility features.

Posted by charles Silverman on May 03, 2007 at 05:57 PM CEST #

> NeoOffice REALLY REALLY SUCKS. I can't wait for a native mac port. Yeah, the brilliant UI engineers at Sun, the people who brought you AWT and Swing, and who have zero experience writing UI code for the Mac, are going to do a better job than the guys who know the Mac inside out and actually have a native port working. Good luck with that. On the bright side, perhaps Sun could make changes to the core cross-platform code going forward to make the Mac port simpler.

Posted by Fuddy Fuddrucker on May 03, 2007 at 06:05 PM CEST #

good news! but i'm dubious too on the carbon choice... why carbon?

Posted by vabhe on May 03, 2007 at 06:16 PM CEST #

About Cocoa vs. Carbon:

Modern Carbon apps do get accessibility for free, it's the old Classic ports like iTunes that need to do extra work.
I might recommend Cocoa anyway because it will simplify your code going forward. The timeframe you're probably looking at is considerably post-Leopard, so I'd target 10.5, which simplifies your code even further.

Posted by Chris on May 03, 2007 at 06:18 PM CEST #

TH I S I S G R E A T ! ! ! ! I was using OpenOffice on Linux, Windows, Mac; but the Mac port didn't act like a "Mac app" :-( I just recently heard about, downloaded, started using NeoOffice. But it would be sweeeeeeeeeeeet if it were a native app! Is it ready yet? No? OK How 'bout now? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

Posted by jeff on May 03, 2007 at 06:52 PM CEST #

This is great news! But I have to really put my 2 pence in with the rest and question the carbon aspect??? really - please - really re-consider the use of cocoa.

Posted by Pilya on May 03, 2007 at 07:08 PM CEST #

Just take a walk up to your attic, dig out the Lighthouse Suite ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_Design ) there and you're done. If you can't find it just ask Jonathan Schwartz where he did put it. http://www.petitiononline.com/laafs/petition.html

Posted by iooi on May 03, 2007 at 07:22 PM CEST #

Thank you Sun! And, seriously, give Cocoa another look. You've got the resources to do it.

Posted by Taylor on May 03, 2007 at 07:23 PM CEST #

Awesome!

Posted by 129.64.9.108 on May 03, 2007 at 07:41 PM CEST #

What Sun should do is to go and buy Trolltech and rewrite this whole Star/OpenOffice GUI thing in Qt4 while getting all cross-platform for "free" and may be making Jambi official Java UI toolkit for Java 7 or 8. Otherwise MacOOO is a great news.

Posted by Sergei on May 03, 2007 at 07:47 PM CEST #

Re: the pro-NeoOffice comments. It's really unfortunate to see how this argument over "NeoOffice with a Java layer" versus a native Mac solution has become so problematic for the OOo community, especially because it carries so little meaning for end users. I accepted NeoOffice as a viable solution when I had no other option, and I thank the NeoOffice team for their efforts. I'm sure their team includes some very smart, committed people who worked very hard on this. But it seems to me that, in the rush by some to advocate NeoOffice for their own purposes, the user has been forgotten. Back up and see the big picture, folks. If OOo is going to be here to stay as a major player on the Office Suite scene -- given the software landscape as it exists in the real world and not in some utopian dream -- then several things must happen, chief among them: OOo absolutely must run natively on every major OS (at the very least, on Windows, Linux, and MacOS). My suggestion: Let the NeoOffice developers realize that users are not software developers; they don't care one whit about Java or the history of your development. They just want an app that is fully supported on their machine without bloat and overhead and missing features. I say, do the user community -- not the NeoOffice or Java-advocate community -- a favor and get behind the native Mac port and make it happen. It's the best thing for OOo long-term, and it will make Mac users everywhere -- including me -- very happy. It's about time this happened.

Posted by Duane on May 03, 2007 at 08:01 PM CEST #

It totally makes sense to use Carbon instead of Cocoa. To get any benefits from Cocoa, you have to use Cocoa for your entire application. If you have a cross-platform UI and just want to draw native Mac controls and include native Mac dialogs for printing, open/save etc., Carbon is a much better choice. Download Abiword to see an example of a cross-platform application ported using Cocoa. It's been really much work, e.g. all dialogs have been reimplemented as native Cocoa dialogs, so if the Abiword developers add a new dialog, this dialog won't automatically be in the Mac version. It must be recreated using Cocoa. For OpenOffice.org, which is so much larger than Abiword, this would be an unbelievably huge effort. And look at the result, even though Abiword has been ported using Cocoa, it doesn't really feel like a true Mac application. You immediately realize that it's ported. Cocoa is really made for new applications that are completely created in Cocoa. If you're porting an application and want to reuse as much code as possible, use Carbon. (And OpenOffice really has to reuse as much code as possible, because there aren't enough OpenOffice Mac developers to simply throw away the entire OpenOffice frontend and replace it with a new Cocoa frontend started from scratch.)

Posted by Helge on May 03, 2007 at 08:05 PM CEST #

Just another case of not invented here. NeoOffice seems plenty fast and capable to me. I think its the core OpenOffice suite that needs work before its usable. I periodically try using it and always have to give up. Recent pet peeves include: - No support for MS Word outline view. - I was trying to edit a big document with lots of comments and changes and custom styles. Open Office could view it surprisingly well, but broke down trying to edit it. Why waste the effort on another port if NeoOffice is good enough. Fix OpenOffice.

Posted by dm on May 03, 2007 at 08:12 PM CEST #

Hopefully NeoOffice and its team will be part of the effort. They have brought us a lot of functionality, and spent a gigantic amount of effort in doing so. Please don't turn this into a silly contest between teams or techniques.

Posted by Justin on May 03, 2007 at 08:15 PM CEST #

Duane - you hit the nail on the head!

Posted by TJ on May 03, 2007 at 08:16 PM CEST #

Yet another in a long line of Sun/OOo vaporware announcements of Mac ports. (And always coincidentally timed whenever NeoOffice has a big day in the sun….) Continually raising false hopes of “salvation” through a perfect Mac port delivered from on high is bad for Sun, bad for OOo, and terrible for Mac users. Show us the real end-user goods, or go home and keep quiet.

Posted by Smells like vaporware again on May 03, 2007 at 08:22 PM CEST #

That's great! Thank you, Sun :-)

Posted by Michal on May 03, 2007 at 08:34 PM CEST #

Im looking forward to this, iv long used open office on my home pc, and i recently switched to neooffice on my new 24in intel imac and it runs great, if OO can run even faster on my imac i might just have to convince my company (which is all apple based) to switch over from MS office.

Posted by Tony on May 03, 2007 at 08:37 PM CEST #

Great news! We've been patiently waiting for OOo for Macs... while NeoOffice has been great alternative, it does have its issues. Can't wait to see a beta of this!

Posted by Chris on May 03, 2007 at 08:49 PM CEST #

I hope that you will be using the Open Document Format (ODF) in the Mac OS X version also. Further, you may want to look at integrating TeX and MathML to provide support for math-intensive documents.

Posted by Viswakarma on May 03, 2007 at 08:58 PM CEST #

I completely agree with Helge - Cocoa makes absolutely no sense for this project, and would require a shift to Objective-C, which makes even less sense given the codebase of OO is in C++. It will be nice when people finally get that for the most part Cocoa sits on top of many Carbon calls (well, on top of Core)... That being said, the criticism of NeoOffice here is also very silly, They have done a great job, they have not "rewritten" the app in Java, and their Java layer is fairly slim and allows bringing the graphics layer over fairly quickly. Java is supported well on the Mac OS X (unfortunately not enough by Sun, which is maybe where they SHOULD be focusing), and showing a commitment to the NeoOffice team instead of a go it alone attitude would also show they eat their own dog food. To be honest, with the half promises by Sun of Mac products, and dropping the ball with Oh so many things (Java, KitchenSink née Watson, and previous open Office efforts, just to begin) I have little faith in this product. Mr. Lohmann, I would love to hear your comments regarding: 1. Cocoa Vs Carbon (as I said, as a programmer I see Carbon as a much more natural fit) 2. The Work Neo Office has done, and the use of Java, and joining them, and 3. Your honest assessment as to where this will go and a comment on previous Mac porting efforts, and especially Sun's commitment to the JVM on the Mac. Thank you for posting your blog.

Posted by Eytan Bernet on May 03, 2007 at 08:58 PM CEST #

Awesome news!! NeoOffice is great, but way too slow. I'm looking forward to a responsive version of OOO that uses the Mac GUI and my installed Mac fonts!!!

Posted by chris P on May 03, 2007 at 09:01 PM CEST #

Lighthouse sounds kind of interesting? Has Mr S never said anything about it publically? Anyone got his email address?

Posted by RJ on May 03, 2007 at 09:02 PM CEST #

The forward mapping of character codes to glyph codes and the backward mapping of glyph codes to character codes controls multilingual full phrase archiving and full phrase accessing of softcopy document solutions. In other words, the character-glyph mapping is the key to the document model, the document model is key to the server model, and the server model is key to everything. What character-glyph mapping model does OpenOffice support? Apple's extension model to TrueType 1.0: 1991 and Microsoft's extension model to TrueType 1.0: 1991 have different pros and different cons, and the issue is whether the developers of OpenOffice decide in favour of one or the other, or the developers of OpenOffice decide in favour of both for the benefit of the enduser. Said someone who wrote the review of QuickDraw GX in Scandinavia, and wrote commercial and non-commercial enduser documentation for the ColorSync 2.0 / ICC colour-colourant mapping model. With best wishes, Henrik Holmegaard technical writer icc abc Project

Posted by Henrik Holmegaard, technical writer on May 03, 2007 at 09:04 PM CEST #

Anyway I can help make this process go faster by contributing to this project? I'm tired of not having an Office Suite to use but there's no way in hell I'm using and most definitely NOT buying Microsoft Office for OS X. I have all 3 mainstream operating systems on the market (Linux, OS X and Windows XP) and I have to say I like my Mac a lot better than Windows and any other Microsoft product.

Posted by Seventeen Reasons on May 03, 2007 at 09:09 PM CEST #

Different Take I thank the guys over at NeoOfficeJ as the port has served many of us well while avoiding X11. That is a big deal when helping someone of marginal computer skills switch from a PC. Many Kudos to the NeoOffice J team and many thanks. To OO.org, thanks for all you have done until now, even NeoOfficeJ wouldn't have been possible without your efforts. To SMS, thanks for coming on board. I won't second guess your decision regarding cocoa/carbon, as I'm not the guy doing the work. I'm sure you have your reasons. Please, one request, make it universal from the start. As good as Rosetta is, I'm ready to put it behind me on major apps.

Posted by NoPCZone on May 03, 2007 at 09:17 PM CEST #

Dear Sun, Thank you. We appreciate your support and long standing commitment to the oo.o community. Justin ( digg gotcha : http://digg.com/apple/Sun_to_assist_in_porting_OpenOffice_to_aqua )

Posted by Justin Mason on May 03, 2007 at 09:57 PM CEST #

I've been using Star Office and Open Office since '99 and loved the Windows versions emmencly. Since I went Mac, I've been flipping between NeoOffice and Pages depending on what I'm doing. NeoOffice has kept me from buying MSOffice for Mac, but like many others here, I've just found it lacking. Now, I'm not a programmer or a developer. I'm just a user. And I don't care how they do it, just so long as it gets done. That said, if they have any sense at all, they should cooperate with the NeoOffice team because at least those guys and gals have been making the effort and I bet they have a thing or two to offer Sun and the rest of the OOo crew. Just sayin'

Posted by Jack on May 03, 2007 at 09:57 PM CEST #

Oh, how I love people developing exciting stuff for my beloved Mac!

Posted by Desh on May 03, 2007 at 10:07 PM CEST #

As Jack wrote: "Please, one request, make it universal from the start. As good as Rosetta is, I'm ready to put it behind me on major apps." And that pretty much sums up my previous comment about the user's experience. It's just time for a native OOo app on the Mac, without meaning any offense to all of you hard-working developers out there.

Posted by Duane on May 03, 2007 at 10:23 PM CEST #

Fantastic news! Well done, Sun.

Posted by Stacker on May 03, 2007 at 10:39 PM CEST #

Great news! It is amazing how great the response to this announcement is. It looks like it was the right choice :-) At the moment, GullFOSS has a page hit of 17795 (rising fast) on blogs.sun.com. That's awesome!

Waiting for a better alternative to either NeoOffice or OOo with X11,
-Bjoern

Posted by Bjoern on May 03, 2007 at 10:54 PM CEST #

This is great news!!! Good luck on the new porting effort. However, I beseech you to use Cocoa and not the creaking carbon. As an incentive any new Mac OS X features will be available for Cocoa for FREE which will make is slightly more future proof...:) Please targer Leopard and future iterations as this should make your code development easier. [quote] Whatever happened to the software company that Sun bought that made a neXtstep based office suite? Weren't they called Lighthouse software? That may be a good thing to opensource or give away for free. IIRC, it was pretty good back in the day. [/quote] I would like to second this. I wish Sun would open source Lighthouse's software coz they were developed on NeXtStep which means their software are all Cocoa by default. Am sure the community (GnuStep??) will pitch in and maintain the Lighthouse "office suite".Once again "GoodLuck!"

Posted by Jes on May 03, 2007 at 11:04 PM CEST #

Please consider integrating an email with the OpenOffice implementation for OS X so that we have a solution to the Outlook/Entourage compatibility problem.

Posted by Headphone Jack on May 03, 2007 at 11:25 PM CEST #

The people at Sun were not born yesterday. It is unreasonable to believe that they would be willing to commit resources to this project if they had not first carefully thought this through. Certainly Sun's bright engineers and managers have looked at NeoOffice and they have looked at the Carbon - Cocoa cost tradeoff. The Lighthouse Design (ironic perhaps that the current CEO of Sun was also one of the co-founders of Lighthouse) situation is a different story and is not relevant here. Lighthouse resurrection would not be worth it because Sun has clearly stated they are interested in applications that are cross platform. With Lighthouse code, they'd have to somehow move the old NeXTSTEP stuff into a code base that Mac OS X and Windows and Linux could all use. Such a scenario is very unlikely and too costly unless I've missed something and perhaps Apple has already come up with a way to do this ala iTunes which runs on both Windows and OS X but it strikes me as a maintenance nightmare. Sun already spent mega millions during the McNealy-Baratz era when they acquired Star in Germany in 1999. They then released parts of Star Office as OpenOffice. Where Sun screwed up years ago was that they had once promised to create an OpenOffice Foundation (akin to the highly successful Apache and Mozilla Foundations) but then their lawyers under McNealy-Baratz Fundamentalist Rule backtracked on that promise (the lawyers were too busy protecting prorpietary this and proprietary that, and expending Sun's energy suing Microsoft over Java licenses rather than focusing the company on innovation -- an unfortunate side effect of fundamentalism). Now there is hope. By making available a native port of OpenOffice on Mac OS X, Sun has the opportunity to leverage its investment of Star. It is now more clear than ever that Apple has been restored to full health and beyond. Apple is not just surviving, it is in fact thriving. Apple is gaining market share and its stock price busted past $100 a share a few days ago for the first time in its history. Today's investment by Sun in a native version of OpenOffice on Mac OS X is a less riskier bet than it was before. Mr. Lohmann has correctly stated that there is an increasing demand for OOo on OS X (market demand is always a great motivator). Oh and by the way, Wall Street values AAPL today with a market cap of about $86 Billion, which overshadows Wall Street's valuation of SUNW at just $18 Billion.

Posted by Tabitha on May 03, 2007 at 11:42 PM CEST #

I wouldn't get caught up in Carbon V. Cocoa, they both have their advantages and disadvantages. What I DO ask is that instead of just taking an X11 UI and jamming into Aqua is that you take a few months and talk to the folks at Delicious Monster, Omni, and Apple about designing a kick - ass *Mac* UI. There's this tendency outside of the Mac universe to think "Well, we can always do the UI last, it's the features that count". Do not fall for that trap, therein lies madness and hate mail. Lots of hate mail. Mac users CARE about UI, and they will refuse to use a product with a crap one, or even one that smells of bad port. Talk to the people winning the awards for UI. Talk to people like John Gruber of Daring Fireball.net. Make sure you include things like OSA/AppleScript support so that the Automator community can tie into your work and do things with it you'd never think of. Support the Apple technologies and design considerations in OO, not because it wins you points in checkbox contests, but because that's how you design a great Mac application. If all you care about is "good enough", then why even bother? Great man. That's always the goal: Great.

Posted by John C. Welch on May 03, 2007 at 11:50 PM CEST #

to the guys who will port OpenOffice to mac: GOD BLESS YOU!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by iwashere on May 03, 2007 at 11:53 PM CEST #

Great news indeed! I've switched to a macbook pro after using products from micrsoft for 14 years now (from win 3.11 on) and after giving the last 2 years B2B & B&C support to customers using these produkts. I must say that I don't really wan't that kind of stress in my free time. The only thing connecting me to microsoft is office for mac and my pda... ;) greeting d3m0n

Posted by d3m0n on May 03, 2007 at 11:53 PM CEST #

Ok, we've heard this before. You've burned through your karma with the previous trial balloon announcements. The technical and business rationale issues that have buried Sun's previous "efforts" on an Aqua port haven't gone away.

What makes this effort any more real than before? What is Sun bringing to the table to prove that they're not full of it?

Posted by cmholm on May 03, 2007 at 11:58 PM CEST #

Thank you! I ended up deleting NeoOffice because it was so damn slow, and ended up buying a copy of iWork instead.

Posted by b. sharp on May 04, 2007 at 12:12 AM CEST #

Please go forward and finish this as soon as you guys can...you will be rewarded with the loyalty admiration and usage of the mac user community which will guarantee your success...provided your port has the same look and feel of mac applications. So do please make sure it is slick and responsive. I would say feature set is secondary - functionality of a basic subset of the Open office code would guarantee a good adoption. Addition of the rest of the features could be done as you guys progress with it. PS: I am no programmer, nor software developer.

Posted by TR on May 04, 2007 at 12:52 AM CEST #

Yeah, pretty much what cmholm said... Show us the money, show us you are serious, show us this time it means it... I have not seen ONE product that Sun has done that real support for the Mac has not evaporated on relatively fast...

Posted by Eytan Bernet on May 04, 2007 at 12:53 AM CEST #

Dear Sun Developers,
Please use this Mac Porting effort to
1. Resolve the increasing number Windows code patches (cludges) that make it much harder to run OOo on the Mac environment ( 2.0 increase in graphics caching, menu and windows re-painting, MS Windows pre-caching and much more).
2. Provide increased efforts to QA the code for Mac. Resolve cross-platform problems and such.
3. Follow through with the (often repeated) promises for OS support for Macintosh OS.
4. Maybe consider reading through Issuezilla for long outstanding problem fixes and updates requested by the USER community.

"Fix the Problems, NOT the blame!"

Posted by LemonAid on May 04, 2007 at 01:43 AM CEST #

Now I can buy a MAC, "PC - I run Open Office" "Mac - So do I"

Posted by Andy Paton on May 04, 2007 at 01:45 AM CEST #

rock on! By far the most awesome software announcement for the mac in a long time!

Posted by sahadeva hammari on May 04, 2007 at 01:46 AM CEST #

Great news! If you don't know where to start, here's my suggestion: Tell the the other Star and OOo developers to include the ability to move through the text also with Alt/Option + arrow. That would be a good start. NeoOffice: The two guys did (and still do!) an amazing job. I always felt a little bad when using NeoOffice because I knew I would drop it as soon as a native OO version was out which is unfair. How about making them an offer to integrate them into the team? They have a huge amount of experience and they deserve to be part of the OO for Mac (again). You should all work together, you're late already: NOW the native Mac version of OO should be out, NOW that MS Office 2008 is still ahead and no docxml converters for MS Office 2004 are around (but NeoOffice has some!).

Posted by Lock Robster on May 04, 2007 at 01:49 AM CEST #

Very very bad news :-( There are other (open) platform to work on rather then Applestuff. Pity.

Posted by Portingsun on May 04, 2007 at 02:02 AM CEST #

Don't worry portingsun. If it is anything like the last efforts, it is not as if they will actually throw any resources at it or anything will ever come of it...

Posted by Eytan Bernet on May 04, 2007 at 02:07 AM CEST #

Nice to hear -- I'm not a fan of slow Java apps like NeoOffice. I'll weigh in with the rest and ask you to reconsider Cocoa.

Posted by Dan on May 04, 2007 at 03:33 AM CEST #

The Cocoa API is the de-facto standard for good mac osx apps but it would be pretty difficult to translate all that code to objective -c. it would be best if you keept it in its native language in case something new needs to be ported over. anyway, writing gluecode in objective c wouldn't be SO bad, as long as your not using quickdraw or any other ancient tech like that. more and more technologies are becoming cocoa only but there can be bridge code instead of moving the entire app over. mac plugins (Like spotlight and others )can be written separate to make the integration complete AND clean. Also I just read the <a href = "http://www.drunkenblog.com/drunkenblog-archives/000706.html">article referenced earlier about hearing of this before and now I think this is a dirty trick on sun's part.

Posted by nehemiah on May 04, 2007 at 04:55 AM CEST #

so much for html syntax being allowed

Posted by nehemiah on May 04, 2007 at 04:57 AM CEST #

I don't get you posters.... The project has been, in Carbon, for 2 years. You want them to throw away the two years of investment and rewrite it for Cocoa? Do have you posters even know what the difference is between cocoa and carbon? Do you somehow think EITHER will give you a NSTextView in this app (I think not). Do you guys REALLY think that the Java is the reason for the slowness? Have you tried NeoOffice on an Intel Mac? urggg I would laud the day the OOo people release a real version and not TALK about one every time there is a major release from the TWO Neo guys. No more talk, deliver. Don't be like Dell and their environmental policy - be like Apple. Don't Talk - DO. RELEASE something, then tell us about it....

Posted by Eytan Bernet on May 04, 2007 at 05:00 AM CEST #

Why not put all your effort behind the NeoOffice port. It is written in Java for the UI stuff and therefore you could have one version for all platforms. That way you would not be dividing your effort and UI improvements would benifit all platforms. Just to be clear I am advocating that the current Windows port, Linux port, and Mac ports (old and new) be stopped and just one version based round the NeoOffice port be developed so that effort isn't split.

Posted by Howard Lovatt on May 04, 2007 at 05:34 AM CEST #

Maybe Sun should get Patrick Luby and Edward Peterlin of NeoOffice to work for them, Sun should offer them Jobs. That's real Commitment.

Posted by kmf on May 04, 2007 at 06:18 AM CEST #

If using Carbon, please include complex Unicode script rendering capabilities. As I understand it, this only comes with Cocoa apps, so it makes me concerned that your effort to bring OOo to the Mac OS will end up with an app that cannot take advantage of Unicode and the multi-lingual capabilities of the OS. MS Mac Office 2004 does not handle composite unicode script rendering correctly. Pages does. If OOo for Mac did, then their would be a great cross-platform, unicode capable tool for all to use easily!

Posted by CLJ on May 04, 2007 at 06:38 AM CEST #

As a Mac user, this is good news to me, although I find NeoOffice good enough for what I do. As a Sun shareholder, I'm a little puzzled though. Now, I can understand the rationale for developing OO on Windows (there's real money to be made there) and maintaining OO on Linux (for strategic reasons), but OO on the Mac OS? What's the ROI? I think Sun needs to use some hard numbers when doing its CBA. It's not wise to justify resource allocation decisions with statements like "you look around at conferences and airport lounges, you will notice that more and more people are using Apple notebooks these days. Apple has a significant market share in the desktop space." 2-3% is significant? Don't get me wrong, personally, I like the idea of more software options for the Mac platform. But what does Sun get out of this? How is it going to make money off Mac users (directly or indirectly)?

Posted by NotSteve Jobs on May 04, 2007 at 06:39 AM CEST #

Well done, as well as rare (oxymoronic ?). We dumped MS Office at v98, looking forward to a native version of OpenOffice. Java from our Xserve is wonderful. We are also evaluating Solaris 10, for our Office, to run some Java thingys - you know, that technical term, meaning, solid OS base for our multi-platform friends. I'd love to see Sun partner up with Apple on some "things". Oh look - the stars are lining up. :-) hylas

Posted by Hylas Ipsum on May 04, 2007 at 06:56 AM CEST #

Please don't use Java ... NeoOffice is too slow.

Posted by 89.182.0.86 on May 04, 2007 at 07:44 AM CEST #

I don't get the "Java is too slow" comments. I have a recent Intel Mac, NeoOffice is fine. As a general Java comment, not necessarily Mac related, I use Netbeans (a comprehensive Java IDE written in Java) on many platforms and it is responsive. As least as fast as native IDEs of similar complexity (sure not as fast as a basic text editor, but as fast as a full feature IDE). So I don't get were the "Java is too slow" comments are comming from. Can someone explain please?

Posted by Howard Lovatt on May 04, 2007 at 08:09 AM CEST #

Good effort by Sun, thumbs up!

Posted by Irwan on May 04, 2007 at 09:02 AM CEST #

I for one would love to see a native port of OOo. I work in an office which has moved predominantly to Linux and Mac, with only one department still using Windows... All our Linux users are quite happy with OOo, but on the Macs we are still using MS Office (although NeoOffice is installed, most users complain it is sluggish / unstable) Look forward to seeing the first betas and truly hope this is not more vaporware from Sun.

Posted by Ross on May 04, 2007 at 09:15 AM CEST #

This is great news! I've really been looking forward to a native Mac version of OOo. Good Luck.

Posted by Onur Ozer on May 04, 2007 at 10:17 AM CEST #

Strangely, I've hardly seen any mention of the current Aqua OOo port. Please know that:

the current status of the Aqua port of OOo is that it already almost works, and is aimed at looking like a Mac app - menu bar at top of screen, UI elements from Aqua wherever possible, font management is native, native file picker is used.
there are several tough bugs to tackle; Eric Bachard, co-head of the OOo Porting project and leader of the Aqua port, has listed 10 of them; 2 are fixed, all are being tackled; once these 10 bugs are gone, an Alpha version can get out; usable, needing ironing out.
using Cocoa requires rewriting the UI; not doable for a portable app like OOo which runs on Windows (win32), Linux/x86, Linux/x64, Linux/PPC, Solaris (all X11) in 70 languages; using Cocoa would mean rewriting the apps and ALL the language ports. You do it.
the idea here is to allow OOo to run as an Aqua app with OS X 10.3 onwards; older OS X versions can keep using the X11 port.
NeoOffice uses GPL, OOo uses LGPL; while LGPL code can be relicensed as GPL without problem, GPL code cannot be relicensed as LGPL. This is why NeoOffice code can't be used in OOO. Moreover, using Java for the interface has heavy consequences on older OS X versions and does have some big limitations that a native Carbon port won't have.

Sun isn't announcing a Mac port, they're dedicating two developers to the existing, community-based port. Even without Sun said port would have come by the end of the year. With two additional programmers, it may be out of Alpha and be in Beta (or even in RC) much sooner.

Posted by Mitch 74 on May 04, 2007 at 10:47 AM CEST #

Some informations about the current technical choices of OO.org Mac Porting, see more in tonight meeting logs : - Visual layer is using both Carbon and Cocoa to get all benefits from the Mac OSX power - Event management uses Carbon HI* event management coupled with VCL events mangement structure - Native Aqua widgets begin to be inplemented incrementally, based on HI* framework - Apple HIG compliance is in our work plan... With 2 Sun engineer, I ve no doubt our work will progress at "light-speed" (a minima :-) and I m very happy to be involved in such a contribution to Mac users community ! See you Sebastien PLISSON aka plipli

Posted by Sebastien PLISSON on May 04, 2007 at 11:04 AM CEST #

Some sites are switching back to MS Office from OpenOffice. With Office 2008 (for Mac) coming out later this year, it's no longer a true cross platform solution as it lacks support for macros and VBA. This means OOo may offer a true alternative and stem the switchback to MS Office.

Posted by Norton on May 04, 2007 at 11:06 AM CEST #

How long will it take before this reaches the same level of stability NeoOffice has now?

Posted by Catalin Hritcu on May 04, 2007 at 11:22 AM CEST #

Well, the code base is already very stable, it doesn't have to contend with an extra Java layer... It will probably be quite stable even in Alpha, but won't be feature complete before Beta. Mid-fall, I'd say. Sooner if you help in testing it extensively and providing good bug reports.

Posted by 84.97.181.253 on May 04, 2007 at 11:38 AM CEST #

yes please don't use carbon, use cocoa to create a universal 32/64 bit binary for Leopard, there is no point in using old technology because you are only making yourself go behind office everytime. They are becoming universal within months so... Leopard is months away... hey maybe if you go to the WWDC you can talk to Steve and port it to the iPhone Yes I know wishful thinking but still... imagine what the iPhone could do for OpenOffice...

Posted by Jorge Sanchez on May 04, 2007 at 11:50 AM CEST #

I really enjoy people who has serious doubts about using Carbon instead of Cocoa. I guess the major concerns about Adobe Illustrator (till CS2, at least) were dealing with the fact it was developed using Carbon. Your opinion?

Posted by Feliciano on May 04, 2007 at 12:31 PM CEST #

This is really good news. NeoOffice on a G4 Mac Mini was so slow it was barely useable. I've got a Mac Pro now and NeoOffice is far better on there but I'm still desperate to see a native Aqua version of OpenOffice. I've missed the software since switching from Windows 2 years ago. Kudos to Sun for allocating the resources and good luck to the developers with the remaining 8 show-stopping bugs! Can't wait for the Alpha release...

Posted by Andy Clayton on May 04, 2007 at 01:50 PM CEST #

Why not Gnustep!!!

Posted by Vasileios Anagnostopoulos on May 04, 2007 at 02:55 PM CEST #

I think Sun's rationale, whilst kind-spirited, is fundamentally flawed. Simply put, Mac users want native applications that integrate the Mac stuff unique to the platform. OpenOffice is a multi-platform, rapidly developing suite which has quite a few problems already which really need to be fixed. Those aweful gray backgrounds? A stale, Windows 95 UI? NeoOffice is focused on the Mac and already works. With the investment of Sun engineering talent to assist the developers who've proved they know the Mac and their users well, a faster, better integrated application could be provided in a fraction of the time required for a full port. There's been endless hyperbole regarding a native OpenOffice for five year. Nearly nothing's happened and Mac users have found their own solutions. Whilst OpenOffice pricing would obviously help adoption, the next Pages, released in the same timeframe Sun are targeting, will support ODF. Pages has been successful because it was designed just for the Mac, and uses all the functionality unique to Macs. OpenOffice has been a success because it is free, nearly identical in all the features normal people use in Microsoft's equivalent product, and has a well-supported counterpart. If OpenOffice is properly ported to the Mac, in order to make it user-friendly to compete with Apple's applications, the interfaces will need to diverge and become confusing to the average user, the group Sun is targeting. It would only make sense to release a native version of OpenOffice if Sun were to prepare a version of StarOffice for Macs that business could use. There's no evidence that this is planned, and currently NeoOffice serves the needs of nearly all users perfectly.

Posted by Seb on May 04, 2007 at 03:15 PM CEST #

Well, for me personally most important is that future OO for Mac should be Universal Binary application. Don't forget about this. Can't wait when OO will be awivable :)

Posted by Michal on May 04, 2007 at 03:44 PM CEST #

Please, use COCOA, QUARTZ and other MAC OS X technologies as much as you can. Enough multi-platform technologies in openoffice (and elseware). A "true" Mac OS X app MUST be Cocoa/Quartz. See for reference: http://www.omnigroup.com/ http://www.panic.com/ http://www.belightsoft.com/main.php and, of course, Apple own apps.

Posted by Alberto on May 04, 2007 at 03:51 PM CEST #

I've been a Mac user (only) since 1988, and a Mac support provider since ca. 1994; I've never used any Micro$oftware myself -- in the classic Mac days AppleWorks did everything I needed very nicely (sure wish it'd been really updated for OS X), since then I've been making do -- and have long wished there were a real alternative to MS Office for my business-world clients who must exchange docs with Windoze users. From what I read, OpenOffice seems to deliver that on other platforms, but not yet for the Mac.

NeoOffice is a heroic and laudable effort, but still not quite good enough for me to recommend without reservation to my (very) non-expert clients: it is sluggish on PowerPC Macs, and though it runs well on my new MacBook Pro, it still takes a long time to open and still suffers from some quirky-jerky behavior. I know next-to-nothing about Java, but have a general impression of bugginess and odd behavior; though it seems to work well for Internet applets and such, even at best it's not the same as a real Mac-native app. And NeoOffice, however good it may be, is just not OpenOffice; at best it is an interim solution until we have a real, complete, seamless cross-platform suite with total feature parity.

Which brings me to the Carbon vs. Cocoa discussion. About this I also know next-to-nothing, but have the general impression that although I keep reading here and there that "Carbon is just as good as Cocoa", maybe it isn't? If it is, why is it necessary to keep saying so? As an amateur scholar of Oriential cultures and languages, I too am concerned about full Unicode capability; if it is true that the Unicode-incompatibility (especially concerning complex scripts) of AppleWorks and MS Word X are because they (i.e. their OS X parts) are written in Carbon, rather than because they are pre-OS X apps that were (minimally) ported to OS X via Carbon, then a Carbon OpenOffice for Mac will not have feature parity with its Linux and Windoze versions. Which kind of defeats the purpose. I know people who use OpenOffice in X11 precisely because it accommodates complex scripts like Tibetan -- as does NeoOffice.

As for whether there's any possbility of combining efforts with NeoOffice, I have no idea -- but gather there's been some bad blood that'd have to be dealt with. Derogatory comments about NeoOffice from OO developers certainly don't help. I wasn't there, but it seems to me only logical that NeoOffice wouldn't exist if there'd been a real effort from the beginning to understand and meet Mac users' needs with OpenOffice.

Though I'm a confirmed Mac user and expect to remain so for the foreseeable future, I'm very interested in the Open Source idea. It's not healthy for civilization for any primary technology to be overwhelmingly monopolized by a private, for-profit entity. (Nor would I want Apple take Micro$oft's place.) My hope is to see the non-proprietary Unix foundation shared by Linux and Mac OS X eventually become the worldwide basis for a complex ecosystem of OSes, both free and commercial, that offers users anything they might need while still enabling everyone to communicate easily -- and offers no incentive for anyone to stifle innovation to maximize profit.

By extension, something like OpenOffice is also part of this picture: for most of the world's work, a non-proprietary office suite that provides the same functionality on all platforms and enables full & easy exchange of documents among them. This has been done (though not always perfectly) by MS Office and the major Adobe apps, among others, so it is certainly possible. I hope to see it done with the Open Source apps as well. Experienced Mac users can tell in a minute if an app has been minimally ported by programmers who don't work on the Mac themselves (and regard Apple as "just another computer manufacturer"), or has really been done right for use in the Mac environment. I hope to see a Mac version of OpenOffice in the latter category, with the same name, icon and full feature parity with its other versions, that also looks and acts like a real, polished, nimble Mac app. That will truly be something to celebrate.

Posted by HandyMac on May 04, 2007 at 04:12 PM CEST #

Mac-addict, Carbon, Cocoa, etc... As a mac addict since I'm 8 years old, I'm proud to be involved in giving the best from OOo together with the best user experience from Apple's HIG to the mac user community. Our work aims to combine best from both worlds : - Muti-platform powerful OO.org base code - Carbon-Cocoa via Quartz rendering top technology - Give OO.org Mac users the UI they deserves and are used to since they choosed Mac OSX (World most advanced OS for the common computer user ? ...( ;-) Aqua public alpha coming soon...?? Stay tuned !

Posted by Sebastien PLISSON on May 04, 2007 at 05:24 PM CEST #

Great news!!!!!

Posted by Olivier Liechti on May 04, 2007 at 05:32 PM CEST #

I have no connection with this guy but check out Graham Cox's work on GCDrawKit and see if it helps with the Draw component of OO: http://apptree.net/code.htm It seems like he's doing good work. I'm not a developer but I like to see cool stuff for Mac.

Posted by Mike on May 04, 2007 at 08:42 PM CEST #

Sounds good — I echo the calls to get the NeoOffice guys involved, though. I *don't* understand the "Neo is too slow" arguments; I used it on a 900MHz G3 iBook and it was a bit pokey but not terrible. It flies right along on my new MacBook. Both OOo and Neo have saved me a lot of grief in the past; both have opened Word docs that Word itself couldn't handle.

Posted by Larry Kollar on May 04, 2007 at 09:02 PM CEST #

Great News!
I can't wait!

email me and I will help test on intel and G4 macs
martin dot a dot jackson at gmail

Posted by Martin Jackson on May 04, 2007 at 09:54 PM CEST #

http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=120&mode=&order=0&thold=0

Posted by orly on May 04, 2007 at 09:57 PM CEST #

Like many Mac users, I'm glad someone's stepping up after Microsoft went AWOL on the Mac Office suite. From a Sun-business perspective, though, I have to question how Sun can translate this into broader success for its own business. It’s also not entirely clear just what kind of resource Sun’s committing, or whether it’s jumping on a bandwagon after years of saying “no” to native OpenOffice/StarOffice on Mac. A more useful application of Sun’s resources might be getting NetBeans 5.5 working properly on Mac, as this has greater payoff for Sun. I’ve written more here: http://sku.typepad.com/omedia/2007/05/openoffice_on_m.html

Posted by Gavin on May 04, 2007 at 11:11 PM CEST #

I all for anything that is no created by Microsoft. When I finally do upgrade to a new Intel mac it won't be running MS Office. I probably use OpenOffice hopefully without X11 installed or some new version of Apple's iWork suite.

Posted by David on May 05, 2007 at 12:56 AM CEST #

Did I miss out something? NeoOffice uses Java, which is another Sun's technology. Why the animosity? Why can't Sun just extend the olive branch to NeoOffice?

Posted by 165.21.154.17 on May 05, 2007 at 07:52 AM CEST #

CoreText will still be Carbon: modern Mac applications don't need necessarily Cocoa.

Posted by Guido on May 05, 2007 at 09:27 AM CEST #

It's a great news! About 'Carbon vs. Cocoa' i think it would be better to use the last one. Carbon would speed the porting but the actual technology is Cocoa.

Posted by Simone on May 05, 2007 at 09:36 AM CEST #

Gooooooooooood, just when M$ want to screw us all with Mac Office 2008.

Posted by Sunnz on May 05, 2007 at 10:17 AM CEST #

Thanks, Sun. That's good news. As several people already mentioned, there are several roads ahead (pure OOo vs NeoOffice, Java layer vs native...). I think the guys from Sun will have some "weight" on these issues, just because they are part of Sun, which is the main sponsor of OOo. So guys, I think you have a serious responsibility here. I think you should play some kind of leadership role. So please don't take the "pure technical" approach. I think the first step now is to do some analysis of what has been done. Then evaluate (by asking people...) the best possible choices. Then decide. The "process" of managing the project will be important. Maybe you should look at the JSR ideas?... It's a mature, well accepted way of organizing the psychological, technical and strategic lines of open projects. I'm not saying you should apply heavy & slow methods but maybe reuse the excellent existing stuff. This project has great potential. Please lead the whole effort (not only the tech stuff). Thanks Vincent

Posted by Vincent Keunen on May 05, 2007 at 10:54 AM CEST #

[Trackback] Great news today. Sun is joining openoddice macosx team to help the native port : Sun Microsystems joins porting effort for OpenOffice.org for Mac According to the native port will be out on next Openoffice conference. Really a great news.

Posted by Benoit Chesneau Web on May 05, 2007 at 11:01 AM CEST #

I think Sun must consider not to do the "make new wheel" thing. Just because NeoOffice is the OpenOffice Comapatible, and already done for OO2.1 Version. Even can use Novell's plugin to open OpenXML files and Excel VBA files. Sun always say Java can make the great software on the big develop project. Why not prove it on the NeoOffice optimization? NeoOffice can do everything OOo can do natively on Mac OS X, and it use Java base Tech. But Sun even want to make "New Nativle Mac OS X" OpenOffice. I must to say it's really wierd and shown one things is--- Java really can't make the people have confidence on big develop project. Maybe IBM have, but Sun doesn't.

Posted by droger on May 05, 2007 at 01:18 PM CEST #

Why are you not working with the NeoOffice Guys?????

They have done a great job and they should be involved and supported by u guys!

Don't be jerks you have more than enough money ;-)

Posted by Saqib Khan on May 05, 2007 at 04:54 PM CEST #

Petition to open-source the Lighthouse application suite

Posted by reeb on May 05, 2007 at 07:48 PM CEST #

I add my vote for a collaboration between Sun and the NeoOffice guys. Their porting is rather slow (but I can work with it even on a G3), but it has been working for year. Bugs depending on their code are fixed with care, and they did all the possible to make OOo look like a true Mac application. A loto of experience, not to be wasted. Paolo

Posted by Paolo T. on May 05, 2007 at 11:00 PM CEST #

This is great news and I am ready to test when an alpha/beta is made available. Thanks.

Posted by Chris Charlton on May 06, 2007 at 11:44 PM CEST #

Greetings: This is a question from a non-techie _strictly_ as a technical "thought exercise" curiosity vantage, _not_ to prompt any corporate action by! Seeing how much effort has been expended already on MacOOo and NeoOffice by two great teams on programs "still under construction" adapting to the Mac, would there had been far more headway had either "rebuilt" Mac OOo from the ground up (omitting the cost and cross platform compatibility thing). I just want to know whether pruning all that compatibility baggage for a Mac would've resulted in a faster developed "new" program. Granted, it might not technically be OOo at that point being so Mac specific, but I guess what I'm really asking is whether either team was "complete" enough in the talent department to've pulled off such a project themselves, like the far smaller Mariner and Nisus teams are able to do. James Greenidge

Posted by James Greenidge on May 07, 2007 at 03:10 AM CEST #

Folks,

Thank you for this! One of my gripes about OOo-X11 has been that on my Mac it doesn't use all of the fonts that I install, but will only show 4 weights of a family when some of the families I use might have as much as 12 or more weights to the family. On the other hand, NeoOffice will use all of my fonts, but it is inconsistent at kerning them properly. While I realize that not all bugs will ever be squashed in such a large application, when that application relates directly to printing, those bugs/oddities related to fonts definitely must be squashed. The addition of Sun's active participation in this project makes such an achievement much more likely.

Thank you!
Thank you!!
Thank you!!!

Posted by William F. Maddock on May 07, 2007 at 05:00 AM CEST #

You absolutely have to use Cocoa. I don't know why anybody would even consider starting a new effort in the older Carbon technology. The person who said you have to do your whole app in Cocoa to get any benefits is just plain wrong.

Posted by Jeff Zacharias on May 07, 2007 at 05:50 AM CEST #

yOOoHOOo! Well this is very good news! NeoOffice works really good I use it everyday, except it's slow. It would be an excelent improvement in speed if you could implement the Aqua schemes for text editing and image handling. NeoOffice toke a wrong direction on ignoring those possibilities, IMHO. Great news! Good work!

Posted by Zeca on May 07, 2007 at 03:28 PM CEST #

bump

Posted by 88.201.128.68 on May 07, 2007 at 06:01 PM CEST #

Does this mean OpenOffice will support the OfficeBean (embedding OpenOffice in Java) on OS X?

Posted by Adrian on May 07, 2007 at 06:16 PM CEST #

I think that no body else should comment on the cocoa vs carbon argument unless they are a programmer and have used objective c++.

Posted by Nehemiah on May 07, 2007 at 07:39 PM CEST #

i've been using neooffice for months as a complete replacement for microsoft office. it's so much better. however, openoffice (x11) doesn't impress me. any chance you guys can team up with the neooffice team and pool resources? the neooffice team really know and love the mac platform. don montalvo, nyc curmudgeon at large

Posted by don montalvo on May 07, 2007 at 08:43 PM CEST #

screw neooffice...the name alone should get it banned....it sucks OO.aqua rock the boat....waste M$office!

Posted by 38.112.100.65 on May 07, 2007 at 11:46 PM CEST #

The optimistic side of me looks forward to a native port with a real Mac UI. The realist side of me looks forward to a native port with a gunky non-Mac UI. The pragmatic side of me will remain detached until we actually see something solid. Honestly, Sun has a crap track record with regard to OOo and Mac. "Show me the money." The cynical side of me sees a native port coming out, killing off NeoOffice, only to be later dropped by Sun when the moon changes phases again (consistent with their track record), leaving us having to go out and buy M$ Office. Still, my best wishes to the team.

Posted by rithban on May 08, 2007 at 01:14 AM CEST #

Dam you people are lazy. Either that or slow. here are some screenshots from a quick google search http://shaunmcdonald131.blogspot.com/2007/05/openofficeorg-aqua-screenshots.html and from the aqua build wiki http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/AquaBuild#Screenshots

Posted by Nehemiah on May 08, 2007 at 03:48 AM CEST #

I've been very impressed with the latest incarnation of NeoOffice. On my intel iMac it is fast enough to use as my primary text editor. However, it still has a lot of room for improvement. I hope that Sun and NeoOffice folks can work together on this, rather than making the users wait another 5 years for them to come out with a cocoa port.

Posted by Luhmann on May 08, 2007 at 11:38 AM CEST #

This is fantastic news and I am so glad to hear it. The NeoOffice guys should be given an award for all the work they have done and the guys who have been poting the Aqua Office Mac version also should be highlighted in a pod cast and given a big thumbs up. My only 2 cents is: I bought a mac because they are stable, unix based and absolutely beautifully designed. The UI is a MAJOR thing to a mac user. Why? Because it takes all your attention off what the tool you are using is doing and allows you to put it all on the task at hand. Everything "fits" on a Mac, everything slots in and it all works together to form a harmonious whole. Quite often I will delete an app that doesn't fit... why? Because looking at it is a glaring point on an otherwise smooth user interface. Every time I go back to windows with it's poor fonts, bad color coordination and everything else... I breath a sigh of relief when i get to go back to my mac. My 2c. Mikel

Posted by Mikel on May 08, 2007 at 01:12 PM CEST #

Yes, please! I've been watching different versions of OOo/x11, NeoOffice/J and now NeoOffice come and go, but usability and speed issues kept forcing me to return to the dark side of the office... I would be so glad to be able to recommend a viable alternative to all my students!

Posted by Helge on May 08, 2007 at 04:35 PM CEST #

I now use NeoOffice on my MacBook. I used to try it occassionally just to see if I could do without MS Office, but I was never convinced. With the latest version of NeoOffice, though, I have stopped using MS Office completely. NeoOffice works great. It translates files that MS Office can't. It's plenty fast enough. It was slow on my older Macs, but with a good new computer, I have no complaints. Don't ignore the work these guys have done. Don't reinvent the wheel.

Posted by John on May 08, 2007 at 08:48 PM CEST #

I have to admit a certain amount of skepticism. After all this has been promised before. NeoOffice does feel slow. Even on a MacBook Pro but it works well for most office tasks and has a track record that's hard to ignore. But if people can't get over themselves and focus on what's best for the project vs. their personal grievances both projects will probably continue to be also-rans on the Mac side. How much this matters for OO.o is another matter entirely, but I for one would like to see an ODF supporting full-featured Office Suite on the Mac so it's a bummer for me.

Posted by Drew on May 08, 2007 at 11:02 PM CEST #

I use NeoOffice on my laptop all the time, and have never felt the need to invest in (MS) Office for Mac because of it. It makes me want to cry to think that we may have two different development projects making two different versions of OpenOffice for the Mac, rather than collaborating to make one single version that's twice as good.

Posted by Todd Bradley on May 09, 2007 at 06:12 AM CEST #

This is absolutely fantastic!! Thank you Sun!!! I've used NeoOffice time & again to recover xls files that M$ Excel finds too damaged to even open... or even completely crashes Excel if you try. I'm really looking forward to seeing where this project goes, and hopefully getting rid of this awful M$ Office Suite if at all possible (at least minimizing it's use)!! Thanks so much!

Posted by Jon Bachelor on May 09, 2007 at 03:10 PM CEST #

I'm excited by the idea of running Open Office on all my computers, both at work and now home. I do like how easily it has replaced my Microsoft products so far. I've tried NeoOffice at home with my iMac G5, but I'm disappointed by how slowly it starts up - it just doesn't feel right so I stopped using it. Ultimately it comes down to the fact I would rather use one product for both environments. Which I can't today.

Posted by Bill Lessard on May 09, 2007 at 03:41 PM CEST #

The new OS X port is welcome. The X11 port didn't work well, and NeoOffice, while usable, is snail speed, especially on PowerPC Macs. Having this project fall under the umbrella of the OpenOffice developers, will hep create a fast, clean, up to date port, while expanding OO use.

Posted by gary on May 09, 2007 at 03:57 PM CEST #

The most critical thing for me would for Endnote X to function in the Open Office environment with site while you write as it does for word. If either Pages or Open Office can do that, I will not by the next version of word.

Posted by Huck on May 09, 2007 at 04:19 PM CEST #

I just want to throw my vote in to say that this is welcome news. Thanks for helping bring us a step closer to a native port.

Posted by DPeach on May 09, 2007 at 06:14 PM CEST #

How much would it cost to buy-out NeoOffice patents and technology so OOo for Mac can get the lead out on the road ?

Posted by Dee on May 09, 2007 at 11:36 PM CEST #

I have one request to the team that does the OS X port: Please use Apple's standard XML style preferences and file structure! As an K-12 Systems administrator these standard preferences are a god send and sometimes determine which product we use. XML preferences can be forced in Workgroup Manager allowing full control over every users. This reduces our support time. This is one thing that has stopped us from using Firefox Vs. Safari, the lack of dynamic control over the preferences was a real deal breaker.

Posted by Isaac on May 10, 2007 at 12:51 AM CEST #

It's all about aesthetics. What Sun has failed to do besides not deliver on the Mac platform involves accessibility and adherence to guidelines. Carbon is universal for all you people who don't understand the API's, and it won't be depreciated in Leopard. Many of the Core interfaces, such as CoreData, CoreText, CoreAudio, CoreVideo, and CoreAnimation however involve changes which have broken a lot of current applications. It's actually a benefit, as objective-c 2.0 is much improved, and even more robust than before. I like NeoOffice because they got it something, but I still, like others lean toward solutions that can be purchased with support. I do not like paying for the license itself, but I welcome any company who gives products out free and charges a modest but neccessary fee for support. Sun has done this with Solaris and Sun Studio already. I support Sun in this, and for anyone who doesn't understand licensing, NeoOffice can't be back ported upstream due to a license change, which in itself was completely legitimate to do. NeoOffice is Mac-specific, and takes advantage of most the Mac features in the OS, so most Mac users will still prefer it. I personally value nativeness over brand, and will stick with NeoOffice because I already know Sun will play the current Microsoft game and not put enough resources into it. The Mac marketshare is 6-7% now for all of you who claim it's small, why else would Sun announce something like this? The X11 port was just a lame attempt to satisfy, and at the time I just went out and bought iWork. The main problem with that wasn't the cost, but it doesn't have a Spreadsheet, but '07 will. iWork is the most integrated, fastest, and most elegent, and even competitively priced, but for a lot of people, full Microsoft Office and Open Document support is a must, even over look and feel. I personally don't care as long as PDF export is there, rtf/doc support works mostly. Powerpoint is probably the main thing that really needs the compatibility worked out on all of the non-Microsoft suites on the Mac. I'll of course run the software and give feedback for the upcoming port of OOo, but Sun's gonna renig, I'm sure.

Posted by 71.110.168.29 on May 10, 2007 at 08:04 AM CEST #

You're sure "Sun's gonna renig [sic]" but not sure enough to actually attach put your name behind your comments? Anonymous coward!

Posted by Todd Bradley on May 10, 2007 at 02:02 PM CEST #

"Please do this" and "Please don't do that" - sheesh .... while you're at it can you get it to run at a decent speed on my Commodore PET, and I'd like it to do my laundry too. I'm really glad to hear this announcement, but as a user (not a developer), I'm glad to sit in the background, eagerly awaiting the fruits of this, and not continually try to inject my unenlightened two cents on this.

Posted by Steve on May 10, 2007 at 10:51 PM CEST #

Great news. Please at least have a conversation with the NeoOffice guys. I understand the philosophy of making OO like MSOffice to cut down on the learning curve but the latest vesion of MSOffice shows that Microsoft realized what everyone else knew - a decade of feature bloat made MSOffice harder to use. Instead of continuing to copy MSOffice why not see if you can get Apple to throw in some usability help (thats what they do best)

Posted by James on May 11, 2007 at 05:15 AM CEST #

Get involved in Neooffice before start any porting. Neooffice is a great software and it deserved all the support from SUN. Lets work together

Posted by Franco Amormino on May 11, 2007 at 09:31 AM CEST #

You should collaborate with Neooffice. They have been helping "the rest of us" while you where ignoring Mac OS X. OOO has thousands of Mac users thanks to them.

Posted by Quinof on May 12, 2007 at 12:00 AM CEST #

This is getting beyond ridiculous. Quinof writes: "You should collaborate with Neooffice. They have been helping "the rest of us" while you where ignoring Mac OS X." Sheesh! What planet are you people on? Folks, this is freeware. Get a freakin' real-world perspective! We're dealing with human beings here, not software dispensing machines. These are real people. Don't you think they can work out their differences without our carping? And if by chance they can't work things out, then guess what? There just might be A REASON FOR IT! The developers on these projects know ten thousand times more about the nature of the relationships, the licenses, the opportunities for their teams, the personalities, and the knowledge and experience possessed by the various developers than all of you carping users have combined. So, LET IT REST already about NeoOffice. You're NOT DOING ANY GOOD whatsoever! You're just being very annoying.

Posted by Duane on May 12, 2007 at 06:36 AM CEST #

One other thing, Quinof et al.:

How many of you really have any idea what the Neo guys are thinking? All they have said, to my knowledge, is: "Send beer."

Maybe they don't want to help Sun/OO on a native port. Maybe they're Java fundamentalists (the worst!). Maybe it was unwise of them to have gone off and done NeoOffice in the first place, which would mean that this break-up was inevitable and that it would ultimately be their doing, not OO's. Maybe they have bad feelings toward their ex-employer (Sun) and would rather not be tied to them ever again. Maybe they're hard to get along with, because they're always drinking beer. Maybe I'm joking. But the point is: You're not on the team. You have no idea what you're talking about. The two groups will work together if they can; they won't if they can't. And maybe -- just maybe! -- it would be better for everyone, including the two guys at Neo, if they don't.

Posted by Duane on May 12, 2007 at 07:08 AM CEST #

Can't we all get along and concentrate on what's important: Typing words in Times New Roman against a white background.

Posted by Charlie Chase on May 12, 2007 at 11:07 AM CEST #

Thank you SUN; I really hoped this could happen! I use NeoOffice, but it is too much slow! and I was really bored to see font's problem when using OpenOffice under OSX! So, let's go! we are happy to see this porting.

Posted by FABRI on May 12, 2007 at 11:43 AM CEST #

I dont know about technical aspects of this porting effort but I think that you should work close to the NeoOffice team and include them in the project. They are making huge efforts to port Open Office to Mac Os without X11 since few years now. You have to be fair with this guys!

Posted by Ariel Isaac on May 12, 2007 at 01:28 PM CEST #

This port alredy exists. Don't be blind. NeoOffice is working great for Mac OS X users from some years ago. Please, don't reinvent the wheel and colaborate with NeoOffice project. This people deserve it. Don't throw away all their effort working in parallel. Any way the interest from Sun is a good new.

Posted by josep on May 12, 2007 at 04:52 PM CEST #

This port alredy exists. Don't be blind. NeoOffice is working great for Mac OS X users from some years ago. Please, don't reinvent the wheel and colaborate with NeoOffice project. This people deserve it. Don't throw away all their effort working in parallel. Any way the interest from Sun is a good new.

Posted by josep on May 12, 2007 at 04:57 PM CEST #

I'm a happy NeoOffice user, wondering what the "missing" features an alternate port will fix. And as someone pointed out : "It makes me want to cry to think that we may have two different development projects making two different versions of OpenOffice for the Mac, rather than collaborating to make one single version that's twice as good."

Posted by Yves on May 14, 2007 at 12:45 PM CEST #

The 'new features' that a native Aqua OOo port will bring are (compared with Neo): - full resolution printing (no more limitation to 300 dpi) - all languages from OOo available under Mac OS X (Neo doesn't have all of them tested) - much smaller footprint: Java not loaded all the time anymore - even better integration: there are some things using a Java bridge can't bring to the experience - released in sync with latest OOo version - much faster: Java isn't fast; C is. The 'new features' that a native Aqua OOo port will bring are (over X11): - better font use - much better clipboard use - native controls - Mac menu behaviours - native file picker - slightly smaller footprint (no more need for X11) - slightly faster (no more need for X11 to Aqua translation) Please note that even now the X11 version does get improvements: smaller download and install size, improved performance. If you have X11 installed, don't hesitate to give 2.2 a whirl. The first release candidate for 2.2.1 is out, and includes several stability improvements specifically for Mac. Those will be part of the Aqua version when it's out too.

Posted by Mitch 74 on May 14, 2007 at 02:20 PM CEST #

I am excited that Sun has thrown its hat into the Mac OSX porting ring but echo the sentiments of many others on this board in urging you to look at the NeoOffice port which I have been happily using for almost one year. While some elements of the port violate Apple interface guidelines. it has been stable, continually updated, and truly a labor of love. Why re-invent the wheel and have two ports going? Bring NeoOffice into the project and make a truly awesome port!

Posted by John Cavanagh on May 14, 2007 at 07:51 PM CEST #

Neooffice is good, but is quite slow. It really would be great to combine its features with native code.

Posted by johnsome on May 14, 2007 at 08:35 PM CEST #

This is great! The X11 version stinks on Mac OSX intel version, Sorry. It works well on Windows and Linux, and NeoOffice makes it working very well on MacOSX and has no problems with windows formats. I am using openoffice since it was Staroffice, thats more than 10 years!! Work together with the team of NeoOffice, and save yourselves alot of time. Since Version 2.1, NeoOffice is fast, works well and I recommend it to as many as I can, Colleagues, friends and Students. So far no one has been able to tell who used what. We work in larger groups and use email as means of communication and we write a lot with MS Word, OpenOffice and NeoOffice. I really appreciate the efforts put in by all the teams, but now you have to start working together!!! Best regards Onner

Posted by onner on May 14, 2007 at 11:25 PM CEST #

Thank you! :)

Posted by Adam Kruszewski on May 15, 2007 at 03:28 PM CEST #

another pleased mac user. thank you! +1! frustratingly slow neooffice performance on my g4 1ghz is a pain in the ass.

Posted by ryan on May 15, 2007 at 09:56 PM CEST #

The comments about NeoOffice been slow seem to come primarily from G4 users. It would seem unlikely that there will be many G4 users around by the time that the Sun version of OO on a Mac is finished. Therefore, why not use the NeoOffice port as the base (for all versions - Mac, Windows, Linux, etc.)?

Posted by Howard Lovatt on May 16, 2007 at 03:18 AM CEST #

Well I did an update of the NeoOffice on my old trusty iBook from 2000, G3 500 Mhz and 512 mb of RAM, And love and behold, The NeoOffice is very fast even on this old Champ. So what is the problems with G4's? But this comes with the version 2.1 of NeoOffice. Anyway I think Sun Has woken up and I am pleased with their efforts. Good Luck guys and listen to all the wisdom in this blog, and to the NeoOffice team. Best regards Onner

Posted by onner on May 16, 2007 at 08:29 AM CEST #

Gracias, sería una estupenda idea poder trabajar de forma nativa con OO+OsX ... y hacerlo en TODOS los lenguajes para los que tiene OpenOffice paquetes de idiomas

Posted by Miguel Pineda Ortega on May 16, 2007 at 05:20 PM CEST #

"It is unreasonable to believe that they would be willing to commit resources to this project if they had not first carefully thought this through." <-- Tabitha, you've obviously never worked at Sun! ;-) (Sorry Sun). As far as NeoOffice goes. It's what I use, but it IS sloooow. I've tried getting a couple of my MS Office/Mac friends to switch over to NeoOffice and it hasn't worked. They just complain that it's slow, clunky, and just not mac-like enough. In that sense, if an OO port for Mac runs a lot faster and is TRUELY Mac-like, I'm definitely excited about the port getting more help. However, somehow working with the NeoOffice people does make sense. Maybe they switch their efforts over to the OO on Mac port, bringing some of their code with them? I don't know...I'm a usability guy, not a programmer. So as far as the interface goes...if any Sun people work on the GUI, please please please immerse yourself in the Mac experience & read up on usability first. Sun is famous for designing terrible, almost unusable, GUIs. I know, I've worked there, and seen what a lot of their internal apps look like. Just awful! Most apps Sun does seems to start from a programmers perspective and then a GUI gets slapped on top (by a programmer) which follows the underlying code logic and NOT the end-user logic/user experience. It should go the other way around - figure out what will work best for the user, and (from a programming perspective) just make it work (I know, I'm biased ;-). But, please, go get some UI books and immerse yourself in the Mac before taking this on. Otherwise, I'm VERY happy that Sun is lending some support to the Mac Porting effort. As other people have commented though...we just hope you can stick to your word.

Posted by Greg on May 16, 2007 at 08:40 PM CEST #

Hi, I am using NeoOffice on a MacBook (Dual Core 2 Intel) and it works fine. What do you mean with slow? Slow to start up? It starts just as slow as MS Word on my Mac at least. Anyway - the more the merrier.

Posted by Edwin on May 17, 2007 at 08:40 PM CEST #

alright, i already asked to close discussion on things by people don't know what they're talking about (coca vs carbon) but now on to supercilious comments. I've used OO.o on an iMac G5 2.0ghz 512mb ram and I must say that OO.o Runs faster that NeoOffice. I still use it because I don't notice that im using X11 like other people do. It prints fine, thats all i care about but i have the tendency to switch back and forth between Linux and mac so I'm bias. That said, I say no more comments about weather are not NeoOffice is slow. Java is slow, Eclips is slow, Java has been known to be slower on PPC but I need citations. I still can't seem to get an ide to only compile the code im working on intelegentlywhen working in c++ (instead of the whole project) so clearly that's what they need to be working on so I'm not forced to use Vim/g++ to get my homework done. everybody has priorities. NeoOffice gave up on Objective-C NeoOffice so now you're stuck with Java and a depreciated bridge. Unless you want to do all the c++/Objective-C++ bridgework SHUT UP cause what they have so far looks pritty!!

Posted by Nehemiah on May 17, 2007 at 08:55 PM CEST #

Hey everyone. I've heard of the Mac port for a while and I just can't wait! I'd like to clear things up a bit:

<u>SUN CANNOT WORK WITH NEOOFFICE</u>. If you want to know why, read the Wikipedia article on NeoOffice.
CARBON ≠ COCOA ≠ X11.app. Carbon is a toolkit that allows Mac OS 8/9 code to be compiled into an OS X application. Cocoa is the native Mac OS X toolkit. X11.app is just a wrapper around XFree86 so you can compile X11 applications on Mac OS X.
FOR PERSONAL REASONS: Why not do something smart and just rename the whole project? :-) No, really! The name is OpenOffice.org, and yet I've seen professional textbooks that call it OpenOffice
MY OWN COMMENTS: I think that OOo is a great tool and that we can really do something! NeoOffice is heading in the compatibility direction, adding MS Office Open XML support. Why not do the same? I admit that X11 OOo is slow! I don't know about NeoOffice, though (I don't use it anymore.).

That's it.

Posted by Pietro Gagliardi on May 20, 2007 at 03:05 PM CEST #

Pietro, and others, as had been said before, please leave the technical analysis of Carbon and Cocoa to the programmers. Your statement 2 is so off mark I don't know where to begin....

Again, Carbon is a set of procedural APIs which can be targeted from C (or just about any language,) while Cocoa is a set of object oriented Frameworks (to be targeted mostly by Objective C). Both of them talk, among others to Core Foundation, which are object oriented APIs. Cocoa is no more "native OS X" than Carbon is anymore... The idea that "Carbon is a toolkit that allows Mac OS 8/9 code to be compiled into an OS X application" is year 2000 thinking - Since 10.2 Carbon and Cocoa have been brought together so much, that the point is: NEW software development, for the Mac only, is often (but not only) done in Cocoa. UPDATES, PORTS, and CROSS PLATFORM CODE should be done in Carbon. BOTH can achieve the same results and look. For the purposes of this project, it only makes sense to use Carbon. Performance and look and feel of Carbon applications can be, and often is, the same or BETTER than Cocoa.

ENOUGH ALREADY! If you don't know what you are talking about, Stop talking about it! Whether I like the idea of them bypassing NeoOffice or not, the point of using Carbn Vs. Cocoa is moot! They are using the most appropriate API for the job at hand, can we PLEASE drop it?

Posted by Eytan Bernet on May 20, 2007 at 09:29 PM CEST #

Mr. Bernet: Just to ask someone who seems to know; so it doesn't matter whether Carbon or Cocoa is used in order to say, faithfully render all Apple font styles? On both NeoOffice and MacOOo, for example, shadow and outline font styles really suck, and the OOo reserved navigational and F-keys really hamper moving over a Mariner Write RTF doc into OOo for instance. I assume one OOo goal is to at least render a OOo doc screen's font rendering indistinguishable to a Word screen. Thanks, James Greenidge

Posted by James Greenidge on May 21, 2007 at 08:44 PM CEST #

hehe, Mr. Greenidge, your funny, Funny you should mention Mariner Write. I've never heard of it before but from the look at the screenshots it's clearly using "ToolBox" from carbon. I'm not sure how function keys (F-Keys?) or navigational keys hender opening rendering RTFs. As for your question about if they can make an "OOo doc screen's font rendering indistinguishable to a Word screen". I don't know but some links, found after looking through the wiki posted in an above comment at this link or here Mac_OS_X_Porting_-_Native_Fonts

Posted by Nehemiah on May 21, 2007 at 11:43 PM CEST #

>> faithfully render all Apple font styles?... >> Mariner Write RTF doc into OOo for instance. A truer example of font/styles fidelity would be TextEdit. Mark

Posted by Mark on May 23, 2007 at 03:32 PM CEST #

I currently use the Mac/X11 port of OpenOffice.org primarily because it supports scripts that no other application on my Mac does. (See this post on my blog for details.) There are paid-for carbon/cacao (I'll just call them Mac, I'm not a technician and clever like most of you) applications but I don't like paying when there are fantastic freeware solutions available.

The problem as I understand it is that either X11 or OpenOffice.org for Mac/X11 implements the full (or a fuller) specification of the OpenType standard than Apple Mac OS X does. The Apple implementation(s) thus can't help you if some scripts require advanced OpenType features for correct rendering of fonts and where AAT fonts aren't available.

If it is X11 that implements this (i.e. OpenType support) then it follows that OpenOffice.org won't allow me to process documents in these scripts as soon as X11 is dropped in favour of other, native Mac OS X, technologies.

I would like to ask you to consider this upon porting OpenOffice.org, don't drop functionality that is available in OpenOffice.org for Mac/X11, possibly as a result of the X11 layer, as it is available now.

(Either this or maybe I'm all wrong in the conclusions I draw based on my experience and background reading. If the latter is the case can anybody then please explain to me why OpenOffice.org for Mac/X11 is capable of rendering certain scripts while other native Mac applications aren't?)

Posted by Marcel Oomens on May 25, 2007 at 09:02 AM CEST #

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenType#Features_supported_by_Mac_OS_X

Posted by Nehemiah on May 25, 2007 at 06:47 PM CEST #

Jees , doo you people research before you post? or even read previous posts for that matter?

Posted by 165.134.12.4 on May 25, 2007 at 08:35 PM CEST #

I have spent many days researching using Cocoa/Objective-C instead of Carbon/C++, as I was working on the Cocoa build of wxWidgets (i.e. wxCocoa). Apple are deprecating methods in Carbon, they are also reducing support for the Java-Cocoa bridge, so the only way to build a real Aqua application is to make it using Objective-C++, and it can be done, my development team on the wxCocoa project were mixing the C++ based wxWidgets and the Objective-C based Cocoa fantastically, with no problems whatsoever.

There may be something that you would like to know, you can actually use Carbon and Cocoa together... if you want a quick release then primarily make it in Cocoa and you can fill in gaps that you will come back to using Carbon. I know of projects that used to be Carbon based, but are slowly moving over to Cocoa (and will be entirely Cocoa in the end). Apple are pushing for everyone making a Mac app to make it using Cocoa, and Carbon was only meant to be a quick bridge between Mac OS 9- and Mac OS X 10+.

I have used NeoOffice before, and I also suffered from its slowness... I understand some of you don't get this slowness, but this OpenOffice Aqua release should be available for anyone with fast or not-so-fast machines, and I really believe that Objective-C++/Cocoa can provide this.

Finally, We must not forgot though, that the NeoOffice team did try Cocoa (the outcome was called NeoOffice/C). My starting point if doing a project like this would be:
1) look at what we currently have on the X11 port
2) look at the alternatives: NeoOffice/J, AbiWord
3) look at the Cocoa/Obj-C past: NeoOffice/C and Lighthouse Suite
4) look at wxCocoa (which uses calls between C++ and Objective-C/Cocoa)
3) Build a set of bridges between the OpenOffice common code and Cocoa

Right, thats how I would do it. But there is now details of the build on the wiki:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/AquaBuild
and it looks like it is Java based (?), if anyone has good details about it then let us know.

Just my opinions - obviously. Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

Posted by Daniel Lewis on May 30, 2007 at 04:14 PM CEST #

That would be a little sun exibiting NIH

Posted by Nehemiah on May 30, 2007 at 06:36 PM CEST #