Lion Upgrade Issues

From NeoWiki

Revision as of 10:04, 1 August 2011

This page describes the potential issues that Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.7 Lion release might cause for NeoOffice. Since the NeoOffice developers do not yet have any access to Apple's pre-release Lion builds, more issues may be found once the NeoOffice developers and users have access to a Lion build.

Apple includes significant changes in each new version of Mac OS X. Since such changes will likely cause many new bugs in NeoOffice and might cause NeoOffice to crash. If you choose to use NeoOffice with this version of Mac OS X, we strongly recommend that you save your work frequently so that if you encounter a crashing bug, you will not lose much data.

We will work diligently to fix any critical bugs that are reported by our most generous donors. However, please note that it might require several months for us to release a stable version of NeoOffice for this version of Mac OS X as our very limited donations only provides enough funding for one part-time engineer and we must fit all NeoOffice software development, bug fixing, and support tasks into our available time.

Java Download and Installation Steps

If you are installing NeoOffice for the first time on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, you will likely see a dialog that says you need Java to run NeoOffice.

Starting in Lion, Apple only installs Java when an application like NeoOffice first tries to use Java. So, when you first install NeoOffice, Mac OS X displays the dialog that you see.

To install Java, launch NeoOffice and when the Mac OS X dialog appears, press the Install button. Mac OS X will then download and install Java directly from Apple. After installing Java, Mac OS X will automatically relaunch NeoOffice.

If you do not feel comfortable downloading Java using Apple's dialog, you can download Java directly from Apple from the following URL:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1421

Solved Issues

• Copy, paste, drag, and drop might fail - NeoOffice's copy, paste, drag, and drop code was originally written several years ago and at that time the NeoOffice developers wrote the code using the old Mac OS X "ScrapManager" and "DragManager" functions. While these functions are still available in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Apple has marked them as deprecated so the NeoOffice developers have reimplemented all of NeoOffice's copy, paste, drag, and drop code to use the newer "NSPasteboard" functions in NeoOffice 3.1.2 Patch 3 and NeoOffice 3.2 Beta.

• Text layout might cause NeoOffice to crash - In order to support Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, the NeoOffice developers had to use Mac OS X's older "ATSUI" text layout functions and were not able to use the newer "CoreText" functions that Apple added in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. While these functions are still available in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, Apple has marked them as deprecated so the NeoOffice developers have reimplemented all of the text layout code using the "CoreText" functions in NeoOffice 3.2 Beta.

• Menubar does not update - Starting in Mac OS X 10.7 Developer Preview 2, the Mac OS X menubar would no longer update when opening a new NeoOffice document or switching between different NeoOffice documents. This problem has been fixed in NeoOffice 3.2 Beta Patch 3.

• Native comboboxes and listboxes do not look correct - Starting in Mac OS X 10.7 Developer Preview 2, comboboxes and listboxes are drawn in the wrong position or focus ring. This problem has been fixed in NeoOffice 3.2 Beta Patch 3.

Potential Issues

• Java changes might cause new bugs in NeoOffice - All versions of NeoOffice depend on Apple's Java to display windows and menus and to handle mouse keyboard, and trackpad events. While Apple has marked Java as deprecated, fortunately Apple has confirmed in this press release that it will continue to make Java available for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. Nevertheless, based on past Mac OS X releases, there is a reasonable likelihood that Apple will change how Java is bundled or change how Apple's Java behaves in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and the NeoOffice developers will need to investigate and fix any new bugs that appear as a result of such changes.