15 May 2007

NeoOffice - Native Intel/PPC OpenOffice suite

Freeware | Intel/PPC Versions | OS X 10.3

NeoOffice is a freeware office suite built from the open source OpenOffice project.

NeoOffice is fast. It is compiled natively for either Intel or PPC and is nearly identical to OpenOffice, but offers some native Mac OS X features. It opens documents created in either WordPerfect Office X3 or Microsoft Office 2007. It even has an ODF plug-in filter.

It opens and displays WordPerfect, Word and Excel files very reliably. Macros and scripts in Excel are also translated and functional.

It has the following office functionality:

  • Text
  • Spreadsheet
  • Presentation
  • Drawing
  • Database
NeoOffice is a must have, even for users with Microsoft Office 2004 installed. The added compatibility with Office 2007 is a huge bonus.

Features in NeoOffice 2.1

NeoOffice 2.1 is based on the OpenOffice.org 2.1 code. As a result, if there is a bug in OpenOffice.org 2.1, the bug is almost guaranteed to also be in NeoOffice. So, what features does NeoOffice have that are not in OpenOffice.org 2.1? Here's the list:

Feature Description
Handles Microsoft Office 2007 Word Files NeoOffice includes the ODF Add-in for Microsoft Word. The ODF Add-in is an open source project that makes it possible for NeoOffice to open, edit, and save files in the Office 2007 Word format. This feature is not available in current Mac versions of Microsoft Office and will not be available until Office 2008 for the Mac is released.
Handles Macros in Excel Files NeoOffice includes the Excel macro support developed by Novell's ooo-build project. The ooo-build project is an open source project that continually develops feature enhancements to OpenOffice.org.
Aqua Unlike OpenOffice.org, NeoOffice has native Aqua menus, file open and save dialogs, print dialogs, buttons, scrollbars, and many other native Aqua user interface elements.
No X11 software required NeoOffice uses the Java technology that is built into Mac OS X. By using Java, there is no need to download and install the X11 software that OpenOffice.org requires.
Integrated with Finder and Mail The Mac OS X Finder will automatically launch NeoOffice and open OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office documents that you double-click on. Also the Mac OS X Mail application will open OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office attachments in NeoOffice.
Uses Mac OS X fonts Unlike OpenOffice.org, NeoOffice uses the same fonts that all of your other Mac OS X applications use. This means that NeoOffice will handle reading and writing of Western European characters (e.g. characters with accents, umlauts, circumflexes, cedillas, etc.) and some fonts will even handle Japanese, Chinese, and Korean ideographs. Also, NeoOffice is able to use any fonts that you install using the /Applications/Font Book application.
Handles international keyboards Unlike OpenOffice.org, NeoOffice will use any keyboard layout that you use. Also, if you switch your keyboard layout while NeoOffice is running, NeoOffice will automatically switch as well.
Native printing support NeoOffice supports printing using Mac OS X's native printing functionality. Like other Mac OS X applications, you can use NeoOffice to print, preview, or save a document to a PDF file.
Native copy and paste support NeoOffice supports copying and pasting using Mac OS X's native clipboard so you can copy and paste text and images between NeoOffice and other Mac OS X applications.
Native drag-and-drop support NeoOffice supports native drag-and-drop so you can drag and drop text and images between NeoOffice and other Mac OS X applications.

Bugs in NeoOffice 2.1

Since all NeoOffice development and testing is done by volunteers, there are some missing features and bugs. This is by no means a complete list but it should give you a sense of what still needs to be implemented to make NeoOffice a full-featured office suite. Here's the list of missing features and bugs that we know about:

Missing Feature or Bug Description
Image resolution is limited to 300 dots per inch when printing Due to the way that the underlying OpenOffice.org and Java code handle images, printing of high resolution images is limited to a maximum of 300 dots per inch. This limitation only affects high resolution images and does not affect printing of text, lines, or shapes.
No video, plug-in, or applet support We haven't had time to implement these features.

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