NeoOffice 2008 Conference Summary

From NeoWiki

In June 2008, Mac@Work sponsored a NeoOffice 2008 User Conference and Social Event in Milan, Italy. Videos from this event are available online. Many topics were touched upon at this user conference, including history and future developments of NeoOffice. What follows is a summary of the major points from the user conference; for full details see the videos and chat logs.

• Cooperation between OOo Aqua and Neo (prior to schedule, some not videoed)
  • Question posed to Patrick and Ed was regarding the current state of collaboration between the OOo Mac team and Neo team
  • No formal collaboration currently exists between the two teams, none is planned.
  • The OOo team disagrees with the fundamental Neo engineering approach
    • Patrick & Ed feel choice is good
    • The Neo approach is solid, debugged, and has 5 years of "in the field" deployment
  • Patrick and Ed contribute back Mac-specific patches periodically
    • Address Book bug fix patches
    • Patches also submitted to ooo-build and odf-converter projects
    • While code and patches are donated to other projects, we expect the maintainers of those other projects to perform integration and release engineering; this has been performed by ooo-build and odf-converter, but frequently not by OOo.
  • NeoOffice is in active development and will continue to be so as long as users are interested in NeoOffice

• NeoOffice 3.0
  • NeoOffice 3.0 will be derived from OpenOffice.org 3.0
    • Neo is developed as a derivative and needs a stable base off of which to begin development
    • Although OOo 3.0 is in beta stage, significant code drift and bugs are still evident in the OOo source base. These changes and issues are more than were originally anticipated.
  • NeoOffice 3.0 development and EAP will begin around October
    • OOo 3.0 final release is presently scheduled by September
    • By October, it is expected that the OOo 3.0 code will be changing relatively infrequently
    • When OOo code stabilizes, it is expected our development and adaptation will begin
  • Estimated final delivery around December 2008/Jan 2009 depending on issues discovered during EAP
  • Scope of NeoOffice 3.0
    • Will use the same VCL implementation as Neo 1.x and 2.x that has been bug fixed and deployed for > 5 yrs
    • Will incorporate all NeoOffice unique features (media browser, file path popup menu, spotlight, quicklook, etc.)
    • Will incorporate all features present in OOo 3.0 core
    • Will incorporate OOo extensions determined to be "core features" desirable by all users
    • Will incorporate all targeted features of ooo-build/go-ooo
    • Will continue to include Office Open XML export; will use Office Open XML import filters from either odf-converter or OOo 3.0 depending which provides better compatibility with Office 2007 documents
  • New features will not be dependent on Neo 3.0
    • Patches for 2.2.3 already delivered new features
    • Expected new features will continue to be delivered through patches and intermediate versions
    • New NeoOffice 2.2.4 version expected in mid-June
      • Incorporates printing and font bugfixes
      • Adds in features from patches: gesture support, media browser

• NeoMobile
  • Collaborative secure document sharing and backup system
  • Allows users to securely upload individual files to a server and access them from various devices in multiple formats
    • OpenDocument
    • PDF (for iPhone)
    • HTML (for other mobile devices)
  • Current thoughts use Amazon S3 for reliable and secure storage
    • Feedback to include self-hosted storage, independent S3 account
  • Incorporated directly into NeoOffice
    • View current user/group documents
    • Upload new/revised document
  • Online template/clip art hosting
    • Delivers Neo/OOo templates through NeoMobile hosted document system
    • Listing/comments of individual templates within NeoOffice
    • Download only templates that are used
    • Easy publishing of user-generated templates back into the system
  • Demo version available for free
  • Development time estimated at 2-4 months
    • Completion of initial version estimated prior to start of intensive Neo 3.0 development
  • Still a prototype idea
    • Trying to find ways to provide services for our donors

• Other feature ideas on which to work or examine prior to Neo 3.0
  • Apple Remote integration for Impress
    • Already being investigated
    • May be in 2.2.4, may not
  • Improved patching system
    • Sparkle framework?
    • Automatic download and install?
  • Word count for Writer in status bar
  • Backport Notes functionality from OOo 3.0
  • What do we think about CoreData and other OS X technologies for Leopard?
    • CoreData is very cool but doesn't really fit into OOo; we try not to use technologies for the sake of using them
    • Leopard technologies have already been used in Neo: Grammar checker, QuickLook
    • Others we are looking at for potential look in Neo include CoreImage filters and iChat Theater
  • Extensions...are you using them?
    • We are already using extensions, however we deliver them directly to the user and do not require extra downloads
    • Extensions are used for convenience of development; users never see them. e.g. Grammar checking, ImageCapture
    • Neo extensions use custom code within Neo itself and are not compatible with OOo

• History of NeoOffice
  • +++ fill here +++

• Patrick's Work Day
• +++ fill here +++