Filed under: Software, Productivity, Blogging, Open Source
OpenOffice.org scrapping X11 port for native OS X version
On his "Ongoing" blog, author and Sun Microsystems' Director of Web Technologies has posted that the OpenOffice Mac porting team are dropping their X11 work and switching back to developing a truly native Aqua version. This is great news, especially since in January of this year Barb Dybwad blogged their announcement of the exact opposite; that they were dropping Aqua work for X11.Tim reminds us it's going to be a tough job, but I completely agree with him: it's very much worth doing, and for bonus points it'd be great to see Apple lending a hand, at least to some degree.
[via Daring Fireball's Linked List]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Andrew Kaufmann said 2:30PM on 10-04-2005
I think it's a good move -- there's probably a legion of Mac fans just looking for an excuse to leave MS Office behind. I'd guess that X11 is used by a lot of network admins and engineers that have less use for an Office application than Mac users.
That is, of course, entirely conjecture.
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LD said 3:30PM on 10-04-2005
This makes me very happy as I've been a NeoOffice user for quite some time. I'd like to see a concerted effort rather than a spinoff project.
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Michael May said 3:36PM on 10-04-2005
Thank god! I can't cope with the slowness of X11. It also took me 3 days to set up my printer to work with it, although I felt I had really achieved something when it worked the first time. ahh memories...
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The Jeremy said 4:53PM on 10-04-2005
Apple wouldn't openly work on OpenOffice for the Mac. It would be stealthy because they wouldn't want to hurt the chances of Microsoft continuing to work on Office v. Mac. And they certainly need that assurance as Macs transition to x86.
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The Jeremy said 4:54PM on 10-04-2005
And keeping OpenOffice fixed on X11 for Macs has to be one of the stupidest design decisions of the past 3 years. They might as well had ported OpenOffice to running on GEOS for OS X.
Hey OpenOffice crew, how about an Atari ST port, but make it only support NeoDesk while you are at it?
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Thomas said 5:31PM on 10-04-2005
Sounds GREAT! Maybe that's a Google push since they are working together now. Either way. Rock on!
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Nathan Sweeney said 1:41AM on 10-05-2005
Finally!
I have been wishing for a native version of OOo ever since I left Windows for Mac. Now if Mozilla would make a "more Mac-like" version of Firefox, such as aqua buttons, radio buttons, check boxes, etc, I would be just ecstatic.
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Thomas said 10:25AM on 10-05-2005
Nathan, that's coming. Just not sure when. They can do it and just need to get it implemented. I'd say 2.0 or so.
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David Chartier said 3:15PM on 11-02-2005
Nathan there's always Camino, which is a much more OS X-friendly browser from Mozilla. You don't get any of the bells and whistles like extensions, but it still uses Firefox's core, (more or less) and looks and acts much more OS X-like, using the Keychain to store passwords, etc.
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