Morning,
Apologies for Long Post.
On 21 Apr 2005, at 12:44 AM, Denise Williams wrote:
Loved the story Rob! Just wondering if you could tell me what
NeoOffice is?
I've never heard of it - is it an alternative to Word? I hate Word but
am
forced to use it.
Historical background
StarDivision, the original author of the StarOffice suite of software,
was founded in Germany in the mid-1980s. It was acquired by Sun
Microsystems during the summer of 1999 and StarOffice 5.2 was released
in June of 2000. Future versions of StarOffice software, beginning with
6.0, have been built using the OpenOffice.org source, APIs, file
formats, and reference implementation. Sun continues to sponsor
development on OpenOffice.org and is the primary contributor of code to
OpenOffice.org. CollabNet hosts the website infrastructure for
development of the product and helps manage the project.
The OpenOffice.org source code includes the technology which Sun
Microsystems has been developing for the future versions of
StarOffice(TM) software. The source is written in C++ and delivers
language-neutral and scriptable functionality, including Java(TM) APIs.
This source technology introduces the next-stage architecture, allowing
use of the suite as separate applications or as embedded components in
other applications. Numerous other features are also present including
XML-based file formats and other resources.
Licenses
OpenOffice.org uses a dual-licensing scheme for source-code
contributions: the LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License) and SISSL
(Sun Industry Standards Source License). For documentation and website
content not intended to be included in the product, we use the Public
Documentation License (PDL). Our License page provides more information
on our licenses and on our policies regarding the application of those
licenses. As well, our we have several FAQs dealing with licensing.
excerpts from http://www.openoffice.org/about.html#mission
So, it was built as a community project as was Linux, it has been
available for sometime on that platform as other OS versions. Until
recently it was not available to the Mac community. OS X .3 changed
this as it could be directly ported from Linux code as OS X is
basically BSD as long as you have X11 installed which is an X window
environment. It opens a window on desktop while you are still running
Aqua desktop manager so it is open with other OS X software. This
version will always be the official Mac OS X release and sometime in
future if politics and legal issues (Apple) ever get sorted a true
Aquafied version may evolve although I doubt it.
http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/ooo-osx_downloads.html
Enter Neolithic Office (NeoOffice/J). It is the mission of this
community to make Openoffice.org totally OS X dependant no X11
required, with all the bells and whistles inclusive of ease of use as
one would expect from OS X.
http://www.neooffice.org/
So, visit this website, have a read, download, be warned it is quite a
large one, it could be available on Wamug FTP not sure, also download
OpenOffice as you can run them side by side and compare. I find
NeoOffice very very stable also the Mac Menu at top of Desktop as per
norm instead of inside a X11 window is more contrastive with the way I
work these days since my conversion to OS X.
Replace M$ Office, but I would suggest run them side by side for a
while to get the feel. It does not boot very fast at moment as it needs
to fire up X11 first but once this is up it is fairly quick to go, not
sure on Office as I have never had it on my PB or anywhere else for
that matter.
One last point to all OS X users their is a vast community of GNU type
projects, which are available for OS X. All you have to do is install
X11 and it works a treat. Be brave and you will be rewarded ten fold.
Support the community by reporting bugs and if possible assist with
those you can.
HTH
<snipd>
Cheers!
Rob Davies
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"It is the world which makes known to us our belonging to a
subject-communtiy, especially the existence in the world of the
manufactured objects." Sartre.
