NeoOffice

From Free net encyclopedia

Template:Infobox Software NeoOffice is a port of the open source OpenOffice.org office suite for Mac OS X. It implements nearly all of the features of the corresponding OpenOffice version, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, and graphics program. It is developed by Planamesa Software, and uses Java technology to integrate OpenOffice — originally developed for Solaris and Linux — with the Aqua interface of Mac OS X.

1 Characteristics
2 Development
3 See also
4 External links

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Characteristics

NeoOffice is one of two functional OpenOffice-based packages for Mac OS X, both sanctioned by the leadership of OpenOffice.org. The other is the X11 version, which requires either X11.app or XDarwin to be installed, and is maintained by the OpenOffice.org organization.

NeoOffice is the more "Mac-like" of the two, with easier installation, better integration into the OS X interface (with pull down menus at the top of the screen, and familiar keyboard shortcuts, for example), use of Mac OS X's fonts and printing services without additional configuration, and integration with the Mac OS X clipboard and drag-and-drop functions. Although it retains a stylistic similarity to the X11 version, it otherwise has the appearance of a native Mac OS X application.

However, it requires more memory than the X11 version to perform well, some functions are marginally slower, and the additional code it adds to the main OpenOffice.org code base is not as fully tested. Development of NeoOffice also lags behind that of OpenOffice.org for X11, on which it is dependent.

As of February 2006, the current version of NeoOffice is 1.2. This is based on version 1.1.5 of OpenOffice.org (the most recent of the 1.x branch), and has the ability to import OpenDocument-format documents created by OpenOffice.org 2.0. The developers also claim speed and stability advantages over previous versions. However, it will not run on Macintosh computers with Intel processors, due to the limitations of the Rosetta emulation software these systems use to run PowerPC-compatible applications.

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Development

Unlike the "OpenOffice.org"-branded packages, which were originally released under SISSL, a license which facilitated the creation of proprietary versions of the software (notably StarOffice), NeoOffice is released only under the GPL, to ensure that any software based on it would remain free. Versions of OpenOffice.org starting with 2.0 are licensed only under the LGPL, but NeoOffice will continue to be released under the standard GPL.

The project was originally dubbed "NeoOffice/J", reflecting the use of Java as a tool for integrating the application with the Mac OS X environment. A related project was NeoOffice/C, which was a simultaneous effort to develop a version using Apple's Cocoa APIs. But NeoOffice/C proved very difficult to implement and the application was highly unstable, so the project was set aside in favor of the more promising NeoOffice/J. The "/J" suffix was dropped with version 1.2, since there was no longer another variety of NeoOffice to distinguish it from.

The OpenOffice.org organization started a native OSX development effort, means without X11 use. Work is in progress.

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