NeoOffice 2.1 Press Kit

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	The NeoOffice office suite is a powerful bundle of '''word processing''', '''spreadsheet''', '''presentation''', and '''drawing''' applications for Mac OS X. Based on the latest stable [http://www.openoffice.org OpenOffice.org] codebase, NeoOffice offers a full feature set that individual and business users alike expect from a complete office solution ('''see feature listing [http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/2.0/ here]''').		The NeoOffice office suite is a powerful bundle of '''word processing''', '''spreadsheet''', '''presentation''', and '''drawing''' applications for Mac OS X. Based on the latest stable [http://www.openoffice.org OpenOffice.org] codebase, NeoOffice offers a full feature set that individual and business users alike expect from a complete office solution ('''see feature listing [http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/2.0/ here]''').
-	NeoOffice 2.0 extensively integrates OpenOffice.org with the Mac OS X experience. Key Macintosh features added to NeoOffice but missing from OpenOffice.org include native open and save dialogs, a native Aqua menu bar, Aqua widgets, use of the Mac OS X printing system, full clipboard support, drag-and-drop, Mac "command" key shortcuts, mouse scrolling, integration with major Mac email clients and native support for Mac fonts. NeoOffice 2.0 is compatible with Mac OS X 10.3.x and 10.4.x.	+	NeoOffice 2.0 extensively integrates OpenOffice.org with the Mac OS X experience. Key Macintosh features added to NeoOffice but missing from OpenOffice.org include native open and save dialogs, a native Aqua menu bar, Aqua widgets, use of the Mac OS X printing system, full clipboard support, drag-and-drop, Mac "command" key shortcuts, mouse scrolling, integration with major Mac email clients, and native support for Mac fonts. NeoOffice 2.0 is compatible with Mac OS X 10.3.x and 10.4.x on both the PowerPC and new Intel architectures.
-	Perhaps most significantly, NeoOffice is '''free''', open source software. By "free", we mean that unlike comparable office suites such as Microsoft Office, '''one may legally make and use as many copies of NeoOffice as one likes'''—without expense or costly licensing fees. But "free" has a second meaning. NeoOffice is open-source, meaning the source-code (the written set of instructions in computer language) has been "freed" for anyone to use, modify, or redistribute in accordance with a license created just for this purpose, the [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License (GPL)].	+	Perhaps most significantly, NeoOffice is '''free''', open source software. By "free", we mean that unlike comparable office suites such as Microsoft Office, '''one may legally make and use as many copies of NeoOffice as one likes'''—without expense or costly licensing fees. But "free" has a second meaning. NeoOffice is open-source, meaning the source-code (the written set of instructions in computer language) has been "freed" (or "liberated") for anyone to use, modify, or redistribute in accordance with a license created just for this purpose, the [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License (GPL)].
	=== NeoOffice vs. Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice.org ===		=== NeoOffice vs. Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice.org ===
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	== Graphics & Images ==		== Graphics & Images ==
-	These NeoOffice logos, icons, and screenshots are in medium- and high-quality. Feel free to use them in print and or web coverage of the NeoOffice 2.0 release.	+	These NeoOffice logos, icons, and screenshots are in medium- and high-quality. Feel free to use them in print and/or Web coverage of the NeoOffice 2.0 release.
	=== Medium- and High-Quality Logos, Headers, & Application Icons ===		=== Medium- and High-Quality Logos, Headers, & Application Icons ===
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	Over the past year, Luby and Peterlin, with help from Williams and the NeoOffice.org community, moved NeoOffice to the current OpenOffice.org 1.1.x codebase and added significant "native" Mac features, including drag-and-drop, use of the Mac OS X menubar and "Aqua menus," enhanced multilingual support, and dozens of smaller features and GUI improvements that make the application more at home in Mac OS X.		Over the past year, Luby and Peterlin, with help from Williams and the NeoOffice.org community, moved NeoOffice to the current OpenOffice.org 1.1.x codebase and added significant "native" Mac features, including drag-and-drop, use of the Mac OS X menubar and "Aqua menus," enhanced multilingual support, and dozens of smaller features and GUI improvements that make the application more at home in Mac OS X.
-	The June 22, 2005, release of NeoOffice 1.1 (based on OpenOffice.org 1.1.4, the latest stable codebase) marks not only the culmination of a year-long version 1.1 development effort, but also several years of early "behind-the-scenes" trial and error by the developers, the testers, and the entire NeoOffice.org community.	+	The June 22, 2005 release of NeoOffice 1.1 (based on OpenOffice.org 1.1.4, the latest stable codebase) marked not only the culmination of a year-long version 1.1 development effort, but also several years of early "behind-the-scenes" trial and error by the developers, the testers, and the entire NeoOffice.org community.
-	As a result of this massive effort, today Mac OS X users finally have access to a stable version of the latest OpenOffice.org release that behaves—not completely, but to a very large extent—like a regular Macintosh application.	+	Following the success of several NeoOffice 1.x releases, the developers began to focus their efforts on NeoOffice 2.0, which would be based on the OpenOffice.org 2.0 series. A major contribution was also made by Daniel Pimley, an extraordinary artist who contributed fantastic new Finder icons, a new splash page, and other images that enhanced NeoOffice's look.
-	Work has already begun on the next release, which seeks to achieve more extensive "Aquafication". Future versions will also be ready for Apple's transition to the new Intel processor architecture.	+	Aside from dozens of new features that came automatically by switching to OpenOffice.org 2.0, the developers added many new Macintosh-specific features including native file-loading and saving, extensive "Aquafication", enhanced graphics, and perhaps most astounding-- full support for Apple's new Intel architecture.
		+
		+	As development continued into 2006, early builds were "pre-released" for member NeoOffice supporters and bug-hunters as part of an innovative "Early Access Program", which helped raise funds to support the project.
		+
		+	Finally, on Tuesday, August 29th, 2006, the beta 3 builds of NeoOffice 2.0 is being released free to the world.
		+
		+	As a result of this massive effort, Mac OS X users finally have access to a stable version of the latest OpenOffice.org release-- one that behaves to a very large extent—like a regular Macintosh application.
	''For a more extensive history of NeoOffice, the NeoOffice.org projects, and OpenOffice.org on Mac OS X, please see the [[History_of_NeoOffice_and_OpenOffice.org:_Introduction|"NeoHistory"]] article in this wiki.''		''For a more extensive history of NeoOffice, the NeoOffice.org projects, and OpenOffice.org on Mac OS X, please see the [[History_of_NeoOffice_and_OpenOffice.org:_Introduction|"NeoHistory"]] article in this wiki.''

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Revision as of 01:28, 28 August 2006

N.B. This press kit for NeoOffice 2.0 (currently available in the Aqua Beta 3 release) is under development. (The press kit for NeoOffice 1.1, released in June 2005, is still available here.) Until this press kit is finalized, if you need information on changes between NeoOffice 1.1 and NeoOffice 1.2.2 or NeoOffice 2.0 Aqua Beta, please check the NeoOffice Release Notes or post a query on the Trinity forums. We appreciate your interest in NeoOffice!

Contents 1 Writing a story about NeoOffice®? 2 Key Features 2.1 NeoOffice vs. Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice.org 3 Graphics & Images 3.1 Medium- and High-Quality Logos, Headers, & Application Icons 3.2 Screenshots 4 Background Information 4.1 History of NeoOffice 4.2 Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQs) 5 User Testimonials and Migration Stories 5.1 Migration to NeoOffice 5.1.1 Examples of documents migrated from Adobe PageMaker to NeoOffice 6 Community 6.1 Profiles 6.1.1 Patrick Luby 6.1.2 Edward Peterlin 6.1.3 Dan Williams 6.1.4 Jacob Haddon 6.1.5 Fridrich Štrba and the libwpd development team 6.1.6 Max Barel 6.1.7 Dan Bennett 6.1.8 Daniel Pimley 6.1.9 Smokey Ardisson 6.1.10 Aelitis.com 6.1.11 FreeSMUG.org

Writing a story about NeoOffice®?

This Online Press Kit offers press materials and additional background information relating to the release of NeoOffice 2.0. While the Press Kit gathers the most pertinent details and summaries, you will find useful related information elsewhere on this "wiki" web site.

Key Features

The NeoOffice office suite is a powerful bundle of word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing applications for Mac OS X. Based on the latest stable OpenOffice.org codebase, NeoOffice offers a full feature set that individual and business users alike expect from a complete office solution (see feature listing here).

NeoOffice 2.0 extensively integrates OpenOffice.org with the Mac OS X experience. Key Macintosh features added to NeoOffice but missing from OpenOffice.org include native open and save dialogs, a native Aqua menu bar, Aqua widgets, use of the Mac OS X printing system, full clipboard support, drag-and-drop, Mac "command" key shortcuts, mouse scrolling, integration with major Mac email clients, and native support for Mac fonts. NeoOffice 2.0 is compatible with Mac OS X 10.3.x and 10.4.x on both the PowerPC and new Intel architectures.

Perhaps most significantly, NeoOffice is free, open source software. By "free", we mean that unlike comparable office suites such as Microsoft Office, one may legally make and use as many copies of NeoOffice as one likes—without expense or costly licensing fees. But "free" has a second meaning. NeoOffice is open-source, meaning the source-code (the written set of instructions in computer language) has been "freed" (or "liberated") for anyone to use, modify, or redistribute in accordance with a license created just for this purpose, the GNU General Public License (GPL).

NeoOffice vs. Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice.org

See our Feature Comparison page for a detailed comparison of three Mac office suites: NeoOffice, Microsoft Office, and OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X (X11).

Graphics & Images

These NeoOffice logos, icons, and screenshots are in medium- and high-quality. Feel free to use them in print and/or Web coverage of the NeoOffice 2.0 release.

Medium- and High-Quality Logos, Headers, & Application Icons

Screenshots

• The Official Screenshot at Planamesa Software.
• Fifteen screenshots at this Wiki.

Background Information

History of NeoOffice

NeoOffice's story begins in 2000 when Sun Microsystems cancelled its Mac OS X port of StarOffice and donated the partially-completed project to the OpenOffice.org community. The former manager of the port, Patrick Luby, was on hand to help with the transition. Although he moved on to other jobs at Sun and ultimately to Planamesa Software, in his spare time Luby continued working to make OpenOffice.org run on Mac OS X without the X11 software used by other Unix variants to display Graphical User Interface (GUI) applications. Because the Java programming language was well-integrated with Mac OS X's "Aqua" interface, and because Luby had significant Java experience, he used Java to interface the core OpenOffice.org code with Mac OS X.

In 2002, two developers of the Mac OS X OpenOffice.org community porting effort, Edward Peterlin and Dan Williams, started an open source project at NeoOffice.org. They needed a stable, unchanging codebase in order to make sweeping changes to OpenOffice.org for Mac-specific work, which wasn't possible under the development system employed by OpenOffice.org. Peterlin and Williams worked on a new port, known today as NeoOffice/C, using Mac OS X's native Carbon and Cocoa toolkits.

In June of 2003, Luby open-sourced his Java-based port, which was incorporated into Peterlin's NeoOffice.org project as NeoOffice. The first NeoOffice binaries and source code were made available on June 19, 2003. Throughout the summer of 2003, Luby and the NeoOffice.org community worked together to improve the application. By fall of that year, NeoOffice/J 0.7 (based on the OpenOffice.org 1.0.x codebase) appeared with support for printing. The 0.7.x and 0.8.x releases that followed added full support for copy-and-paste, support for many languages, and other features and bug fixes. The final release of the NeoOffice/J 0.x series, NeoOffice 0.8.4, appeared on June 23, 2004, giving users a relatively stable version of the old OpenOffice.org 1.0.x codebase that offered a partially "native" Mac OS X experience.

Over the past year, Luby and Peterlin, with help from Williams and the NeoOffice.org community, moved NeoOffice to the current OpenOffice.org 1.1.x codebase and added significant "native" Mac features, including drag-and-drop, use of the Mac OS X menubar and "Aqua menus," enhanced multilingual support, and dozens of smaller features and GUI improvements that make the application more at home in Mac OS X.

The June 22, 2005 release of NeoOffice 1.1 (based on OpenOffice.org 1.1.4, the latest stable codebase) marked not only the culmination of a year-long version 1.1 development effort, but also several years of early "behind-the-scenes" trial and error by the developers, the testers, and the entire NeoOffice.org community.

Following the success of several NeoOffice 1.x releases, the developers began to focus their efforts on NeoOffice 2.0, which would be based on the OpenOffice.org 2.0 series. A major contribution was also made by Daniel Pimley, an extraordinary artist who contributed fantastic new Finder icons, a new splash page, and other images that enhanced NeoOffice's look.

Aside from dozens of new features that came automatically by switching to OpenOffice.org 2.0, the developers added many new Macintosh-specific features including native file-loading and saving, extensive "Aquafication", enhanced graphics, and perhaps most astounding-- full support for Apple's new Intel architecture.

As development continued into 2006, early builds were "pre-released" for member NeoOffice supporters and bug-hunters as part of an innovative "Early Access Program", which helped raise funds to support the project.

Finally, on Tuesday, August 29th, 2006, the beta 3 builds of NeoOffice 2.0 is being released free to the world.

As a result of this massive effort, Mac OS X users finally have access to a stable version of the latest OpenOffice.org release-- one that behaves to a very large extent—like a regular Macintosh application.

For a more extensive history of NeoOffice, the NeoOffice.org projects, and OpenOffice.org on Mac OS X, please see the "NeoHistory" article in this wiki.

Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What is NeoOffice?

   NeoOffice is a Mac OS X-native version of OpenOffice.org that runs on Mac OS X 10.3.x and 10.4.x. It looks (mostly) like a "normal" Aqua Mac OS X application and does not require X11 software to run.

2. Is NeoOffice a Java application?

   No, NeoOffice is 99% C and C++ code, just like OpenOffice.org. NeoOffice uses small amounts of Java code for graphics drawing and configuration.

3. What is OpenOffice.org?

   OpenOffice.org is both an open source project and a suite of office applications available for many operating systems and in many languages. The OpenOffice.org suite is largely feature-compatible with Microsoft Office. Sun Microsystems is the primary corporate sponsor of OpenOffice.org.

4. What is the relationship between NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org?

   NeoOffice is part of the NeoOffice.org project, which is loosely affiliated with the OpenOffice.org project. NeoOffice's primary developers were both main contributors to the port of OpenOffice.org to the X11 environment on Mac OS X, Patrick Luby as the manager of Sun's cancelled port of StarOffice to Mac OS X, and Edward Peterlin as lead developer of the Mac port of OpenOffice.org 1.0.x.

   NeoOffice uses OpenOffice.org code (both core cross-platform code and Mac-specific non-X11 code produced by the Mac X11 porting team) under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), and the NeoOffice.org developers contribute bug-fixes in code shared by both applications back to the OpenOffice.org project. In addition to contributing bug-fixes, the NeoOffice developers provide advice and assistance to the Mac X11 porting team from time to time.

5. Why is NeoOffice separate from OpenOffice.org?

   OpenOffice.org's SISSL license allows companies to create proprietary products using OpenOffice.org. While the creators of NeoOffice have no problem with people making money selling software, they felt that the SISSL license would result in several proprietary Mac OS X versions of OpenOffice.org. So, instead, the developers created a separate open source project that releases code under the GNU General Public License (GPL) to ensure that any improvements to NeoOffice made by commercial organizations can be added back to NeoOffice where it can benefit everyone and not just the commercial organization that made the improvement.

6. Why is NeoOffice released under the GNU General Public License (GPL)?

   NeoOffice development is done entirely by volunteers. The developers of NeoOffice believe that users of Mac OS X benefit from a free (both in cost and in usage rights) office suite, and they want to ensure that any improvements that are made to the NeoOffice codebase are freely available so that everyone may benefit.

For more FAQs about the design and development of NeoOffice, visit the NeoOffice and Aqua page.

User Testimonials and Migration Stories

For other testimonials and user reviews, visit the NeoOffice listing on the popular Mac software download sites VersionTracker and MacUpdate.

Community

Over the years, a vibrant NeoOffice community has emerged at trinity.neooffice.org ("trinity"), where users and developers offer support, bug reporting, beta-testing, artwork, documentation, etc.

The community is a ever-expanding group of active users from all over the world who aid in the development, support and advocacy processes:

• writing NeoWiki articles that answer common requests for user assistance and support.
• answering questions and providing user support on the trinity forums.
• testing patches and filing bugs.
• translating the www.planamesa.com/neojava website and the wiki articles into several languages.
• working on new GUI (toolbar) icons.
• promoting NeoOffice on the web, among friends and anywhere else.
• providing download mirrors and BitTorrent seeding.
• donating financially to help offset the costs of bandwidth and development.

Profiles

While the combined efforts of dozens of people have made possible the development of NeoOffice and the 2.0 release, certain individuals have made sustained or key contributions to the code, infrastructure, and other areas of the NeoOffice project. These individuals and their roles or contributions are briefly profiled below.

Patrick Luby

Patrick Luby (AKA pluby) is the creator and primary developer of NeoOffice. He resides in Sunnyvale, California with his wife. He was the lead engineer for Sun's effort to port StarOffice to Mac OS X as well as the lead engineer for the Tomcat Servlet Container within Sun's Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) development group.

Patrick now owns and runs his own software consultancy firm called Planamesa Software, specializing in short-term software development and debugging services in the San Francisco Bay area.

Edward Peterlin

Edward Peterlin (AKA OPENSTEP) is a graduate of Princeton University with an engineering degree in Computer Science and a certificate in Engineering Physics. He is the founding developer of the community OpenOffice.org Mac OS X (X11) porting effort and a co-founder of NeoOffice.org and main developer of NeoOffice. He also provides much of the development and community infrastructure: the CVS server, the trinity forums, and the neooffice.org website. Ed also wrote NeoLight, the plugin for Mac OS X 10.4's Spotlight search engine, that has shipped with all version of NeoOffice since NeoOffice/J 1.1. He resides in Santa Barbara, California. As a lead developer on the Mac OS X port of OpenOffice.org 1.0.x, Ed has been using Writer, Impress, and Calc on his Macs since 2000. He has presented at many conferences including Apple's WWDC, O'Reilly's Mac OS X Conference, and Linspire's Desktop Linux Summit.

Ed is the lead Macintosh developer at BIOPAC Systems, Inc. and has many other interests, as demonstrated on his personal website.

Dan Williams

Dan William (AKA fa) is a co-founder of NeoOffice.org and a developer of NeoOffice. He also provides and maintains the NeoOffice Bugzilla bug-tracking system. While Dan is not actively coding on NeoOffice at the moment, he still helps out with bug triage, supplies an occasional patch, and keeps us appraised of many developments within OpenOffice.org. Dan was a main developer on the OpenOffice.org 1.0.x Mac port.

Dan works on OpenOffice.org with Red Hat.

Jacob Haddon

Jacob Haddon (AKA jakeOSX) is a long-time member of the NeoOffice.org community. He hosts and administers the NeoWiki and is working on setting up infrastructure to allow multilingual interlinked versions for our global audience. Back before the demand for NeoOffice required 50 GB/day of bandwidth, Jacob also mirrored the NeoOffice binaries; now he just moonlights as the NeoOffice.org webmaster. Jacob also put together the launch shortcuts for quick launching into the NeoOffice application of your choice. In real life, he's a rocket scientist and author.

Fridrich Å trba and the libwpd development team

Fridrich Å trba is one of the main authors of the libwpd and writerperfect libraries used by NeoOffice for import of WordPerfect documents; he integrated code written by the entire libwpd development team into NeoOffice. Fridrich is a founder of the project to port Ximian/Novell Evolution to Windows and is a contributor to several other open source projects.

Outside of his open source endeavours, Fridrich works as a system engineer/network administrator of a research organization, admininstering a mix of Windows clients and Linux servers.

Max Barel

Max Barel (AKA Max_Barel) wrote the original AppleScript help installer for NeoOffice/J 1.1, greatly simplifying the process of installing the localized help files available for several languages. He also takes the lead in answering French-language user support questions. Max spent over a decade as a developer and professor in programming and systems administration, and he currently works as a freelance system engineer and programmer [fr] for Mac OS X, Linux and PHP/MySQL.

Dan Bennett

Dan Bennett (AKA foxcorner) designed the new splash screen for NeoOffice/J 1.1 just to see if he could, and he did the Aqua application icon simply because he wanted to know how it's done. Looked cool, and got adopted (the artwork, that is, not Dan). But he should probably keep his day-job in Hewlett-Packard's workstation division, working with high-end graphics solutions for automotive styling.

Daniel Pimley

Daniel Pimley (AKA djpimley) designed the new splash screen for NeoOffice 2.0 Aqua Beta and the new Finder icons, as well as some of the new icons displayed inside NeoOffice.

Smokey Ardisson

Smokey Ardisson (AKA sardisson) is the NeoOffice champion of end-user support. He is responsible for bringing a large part of this information into the NeoWiki and also leads the NeoOffice advocacy effort. The NeoOffice document icons displayed by the Finder in releases from NeoOffice/J 0.8 to NeoOffice 2.0 Alpha were also his work. By day he is a doctoral candidate in Middle Eastern and African history in Washington, D.C.

Aelitis.com

are they still doing seeding? Aelitis of France has graciously offered to provide BitTorrent tracking and seeding for NeoOffice, helping to alleviate the crushing bandwidth demands on the download mirrors.

FreeSMUG.org

FreeSMUG.org has provided BitTorrent tracking and seeding for NeoOffice 1.2.2 and 2.0 releases, helping to alleviate the crushing bandwidth demands on the download mirrors.

NeoOffice® is a registered trademark of Edward H. Peterlin. Other product and company names may be trademarks of their respective owners.