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Neooffice Aqua Released

lOUDsCREAMEr said:
i hope Neooffice Aqua 3.0 will at least have:

[1] drag-n-drop images from desktop to insert pix in Writer..
[2] better toolbar in standard mac style ala Pages (e.g. inspector)
[3] at least 10 "bundled" Impress/Writer templates/themes quality at LEAST at par with Office 2004, preferably as elegant as those in Keynote 3.0
[4] some beautiful fonts..
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4, NeoOffice is using mac system fonts, isn't that good enough for you?
3, don't know, they probably has many other issues which need more immediate attention to fix.....
2, NeoOffice looks like a port of OOffice now, I agree, they should do something different, such as u suggested
1, have no idea, and not really care tho. :)
 
FredClausen said:
That whole thing looks an awful lot like the KDE version. :rolleyes:
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The KDE version, or even the last minor version of NeoOffice, doesn't have Mac OS X' Open and Save dialogs. That was one big pain in the butt by using NeoOffice(/J) earlier.

I've never considered using OpenOffice, because I hate having to run X11, as long as I don't have to... ;)
 
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
The KDE version, or even the last minor version of NeoOffice, doesn't have Mac OS X' Open and Save dialogs. That was one big pain in the butt by using NeoOffice(/J) earlier.

I've never considered using OpenOffice, because I hate having to run X11, as long as I don't have to... ;)
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I like the Java open and save dialogs since they do more than Mac OS X's.
 
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
The KDE version, or even the last minor version of NeoOffice, doesn't have Mac OS X' Open and Save dialogs. That was one big pain in the butt by using NeoOffice(/J) earlier.
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The iconset is what I was mostly referring to, although the whole app in those pics above has a real big KDE/Qt feel to it.
 
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
No, no, no... I couldn't use cmd-D to get to my Desktop... :( ...and from there: Everywhere... :D

;)
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I hope that when Navigation Services are changed for Leopard that you can adapt. :p
 
sunfast said:
That is impressive. Shame on Microsoft for having no native version of office for intel macs.
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Me being only a year in to the Mac world have a newb question: How come Apple doesn't have any MS Word Competitor... My Life consists of going to school typing up word documents, and then on the weekends messing with video and pictures... I do not have a Mac yet so keep that in mind when answering my question.
 
FredClausen said:
The iconset is what I was mostly referring to, although the whole app in those pics above has a real big KDE/Qt feel to it.
Click to expand...

Since Qt runs practically everywhere including Mac OS X, that might have a lot to do with it.
 
I just downloaded the brand-spanking new Neo Office Aqua Beta and I have to say, I'm impressed.

I have been using Open Office and Text Edit exclusively since I purchased my MacBook back at the beginning of summer. I couldn't bring myself to install the non-universal binary Office 2004 on my brand new laptop. And I paid for it.

That is until I downloaded Neo Office Aqua just about an hour ago. Allow me to elaborate.

I am a fan of open source software. It is a mark of creativity and a demonstartion of technical prowess to design and create a functioning piece of software as elaborate as a desktop publishing suite. Microsoft set the bar very high (admittedly they have had about twenty years to refine the Word interface) as far as office suite programs are concerned and it is unfair to not give them credit where credit is due. But an equal amount of praise goes out to the open source competitors to Office, they have all worked very hard. Neo Office Aqua is far and away the leader of the pack as far as the OS X open source office suite programming race is concerned.

My Gripes About Text Edit
Lack of formatting buttons for easy access
Poor visualization features
Poor document fidelity (when opening documents from other, non-RTF formats)

My Gripes About Open Office
It is linked to X11
X11 causes it to be sllllooooooowww to open
X11 causes problems with quitting the program
X11 causes problems with following the cursor between windows
Because it doesn't quit well, I get a document recovery screen every time I open OO
The traditional Mac keyboard shortcuts do not work
Saving into a .doc format is hit or miss
The user interface is not OS X pretty, nor is it Office pretty (its an eye sore all around)

I had used Neo Office before, when it first started making waves a year or two back. Its Java foundation, freeing it from X11, was all around amazing. Including amazingly slow. Other than that, it was exactly the same as OO.

The current Neo Office Aqua (which I have been using only for a few hours now) has me stunned. It addresses almost all of my gripes listed above. It opens faster than before, faster than Open Office (even without the X11 opening time), but no where near as fast as TextEdit. It has been spiffed up with a softer more OS X looking interface with slightly more colorful icons and all the other OS X standard looks (scroll bars, pull tabs, fonts, etc.). It now accepts Apple keyboard shortcuts WHICH IS HUGE. For some reason, when I sit at a windows computer the control-z, control-a, control-s, alt-f4, etc. all make sense. When I sit at an Apple computer, the open apple analogs make sense. With OO, I kept stumbling over seeing OSX on my computer but having to hit XP commands on my keyboard. It sucked, but Neo Office Aqua has rectified this, and none too soon.

Heck, they've even made a brand new aqua beach ball!

That, combined with being able to use all of OO's features in the intuitive sense (finding them in the toolbar at the top of the screen) makes using Neo Office Aqua a great experience.

I hope that OO can do one better by making their suite naturally Aqua, but while I wait Neo Office Aqua will be sitting in my .doc

;)
 
bousozoku said:
Since Qt runs practically everywhere including Mac OS X, that might have a lot to do with it.
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Except that NeoOffice is written in Java with Cocoa and not C++ with Qt.
 
FredClausen said:
Except that NeoOffice is written in Java with Cocoa and not C++ with Qt.
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NeoOffice is not Java with cocoa, it is C++ with java, AFAIK. the point is that the X11 dependency in OOo is replaced with java dependency. the features which make this version "aqua" are the scrollbars and dialog/save boxes, which use just a bit of carbon (not the whole interface, but just the parts i mentioned are carbon). anyway, that's what i read on another site. correct me if im wrong.
 
seanf said:
I'd recommend you give AbiWord a try then. Screenshot here.
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AbiWord is nice, but it has some bugs that made me change to the pre-Aqua version of NeoOffice.

One of the more annoying things with AbiWord is when it shows some fonts incorrectly on the screen, making them wider or narrower then they actually are, but still puts the cursor in the correct position. Very confusing. This might be ok for the occasional document, but it would drive me completely mad if my life consisted of typing word docs... ;)

BTW: I used to type everything up in TextWrangler in University. ASCII notes rule! ;)
 
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
I don't know, I've never used Pages, but I think TextEdit is... a Word replacement, that is... ;)
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TextEdit is equivalent to WordPad on Windows. It'll work with MS Word 6 documents but unfortunately, Microsoft plays with the format to "enhance" it or maybe, just to keep other people from being able to read it fully.

I really like Pages and in layout, it's much better than MS Word but when importing documents, there is still the problem with the file format. ThinkFree Office and OpenOffice have the same problem.

Blame it on the WordPerfect people. Had they not been so arrogant and slow to move to Windows, MS Word probably wouldn't have taken hold on Windows.
 
so what's the difference between this neo office aqua and openoffice for max os x which will be previewed at apple expo paris?

are they two separate things? if so, isn't that strange? as neo office is based on open office?
 
NeoOffice is built off the OpenOffice codebase, but with things converted to give it a more Mac like look and feel.

The NeoOffice licence is incompatible with the OpenOffice one, and so anything done in NeoOffice can't be put back into OpenOffice (the OpenOffice team did invite the NeoOffice developers to come and join them to help make the native Mac port, but they refused).

NeoOffice = OpenOffice with the X11 bits written in Java
The new native OpenOffice = (from what I can gather) A FULLY native version of OpenOffice for Mac
 
bousozoku said:
TextEdit is equivalent to WordPad on Windows. It'll work with MS Word 6 documents but unfortunately, Microsoft plays with the format to "enhance" it or maybe, just to keep other people from being able to read it fully.

I really like Pages and in layout, it's much better than MS Word but when importing documents, there is still the problem with the file format. ThinkFree Office and OpenOffice have the same problem.

Blame it on the WordPerfect people. Had they not been so arrogant and slow to move to Windows, MS Word probably wouldn't have taken hold on Windows.
Click to expand...

Well perhaps I'll get iWork then. I don't need to import documents. Just print and hand them in to the professors.... Hopefully I'll never have to email them then...
 
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