NeoOffice 2.1 Announcement

Media Release

Contact:
community AT neooffice DOT org

March 27, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Introducing NeoOffice 2.1

Santa Clara, California, USA - Planamesa Software and the NeoOffice.org community are proud to introduce NeoOffice 2.1, a significantly-enhanced version of the Mac OS X-native version of the OpenOffice.org office suite that includes Microsoft Office-compatible word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database applications.

"This release is the culmination of many thousands of volunteer hours," said Patrick Luby, CEO and Chief Engineer of NeoOffice.org. "As a result of this tremendous effort, we are introducing a major new version of a very stable, full-featured office suite for Mac OS X that supports dozens of languages."

NeoOffice 2.1 is available today as a free download from the NeoOffice website at http://download.neooffice.org/neojava/.

A Feature-Complete, World-Class Office Solution

NeoOffice 2.1 provides compatibility with Microsoft Office and offers a robust feature set common to all major office suites, including the ability to track changes as a document is forwarded from one user to another. NeoOffice can export to many formats such as PDF, HTML, Flash, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Its native file format is the open, XML-based, ISO standard OpenDocument, freeing users’ documents from vendor lock-in, a frequent complaint against proprietary office suites.

NeoOffice 2.1 also offers localized user interfaces in nearly sixty languages and supports text entry in Roman and non-Roman scripts, including South Asian, East Asian, right-to-left and complex text layout scripts. This has allowed individuals and organizations across the globe—from schools to non-profits to corporations—to adopt NeoOffice as their primary office suite.

"We've leveraged OpenOffice.org's amazing internationalization efforts, which makes NeoOffice a great solution for Mac OS X users all around the world," said Ed Peterlin, CTO and Chief Visionary of NeoOffice.org.

A Simple Idea

"When I started the NeoOffice project, there really was no viable alternative to Microsoft's Mac version of Office," noted Luby. "There were other Mac word processors, but few that included spreadsheet and presentation support. The cross-platform OpenOffice.org suite incorporated all three and featured strong compatibility with Microsoft Office documents. So creating a native Mac OS X version of OpenOffice.org seemed like a good idea."

Seamless Integration of OpenOffice.org with Mac OS X

Based on the latest stable OpenOffice.org codebase, NeoOffice 2.1 offers extensive integration with Mac OS X. Key Macintosh features include a native menu bar, the "blue button" widgets characteristic of the Mac OS X "Aqua" look, 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 also ships with a plugin for Spotlight, the Mac OS X search function, that allows contents of NeoOffice documents to be indexed and found by Spotlight. NeoOffice 2.1 is compatible with Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later and runs natively on Intel-based Macintoshes.

"NeoOffice 2.1 is a standalone, double-clickable Mac application and does not require additional X11 software," said Peterlin. "Our goal is to make NeoOffice 100% indistinguishable from any other Macintosh application in look-and-feel. Version 2.1 is another major milestone on that road."

Supports Office 2007 Word Documents and Excel Macros

Unlike all current versions of Microsoft Office for Mac, NeoOffice 2.1 allows Mac users to read and write Microsoft Office 2007 (OpenXML) Word documents. Also, due to Microsoft's announcement that the next version of Microsoft Office for Mac will no longer include support for Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros, NeoOffice 2.1 is now one of the only ongoing solutions for Mac users who use VBA macros in their Excel documents. Support for OpenXML Excel and PowerPoint documents is planned in the future.

Support for interoperability with Microsoft Office 2007 Word documents and VBA, as well as the Solver-like module in NeoOffice's spreadsheet, is drawn from the ooo-build project, a branch of OpenOffice.org that includes several features which Sun has not yet integrated into the main OpenOffice.org code. Spearheaded by Novell, ooo-build is a collaboration between many individuals and vendors, including major Linux distributors. NeoOffice.org is proud to be cooperating with the ooo-build project to help make important features like OpenXML and VBA macro support available for all Mac owners. "It's great to have NeoOffice making their work available under the JCA to OpenOffice.org via ooo-build, and building on our substantial investment here, I'm excited about working with them going forward," said Michael Meeks, Distinguished Engineer, Novell.

Improved Mac OS X Intel and Aqua Support

NeoOffice 2.1 is the only complete Macintosh office suite (with word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications) that runs natively on Intel-based Macs. Other office suites either lack a key application, run under the Rosetta emulator on Intel Macs, or require the separate X11 environment.

During the year-long effort to ensure NeoOffice would run just as well on Intel Macs as on PowerPC-based Macs, the NeoOffice team was also hard at work improving the application's look and feel. "After three years of development and fixing bugs, the foundations of NeoOffice were finally in place," Peterlin said. "NeoOffice had proved itself stable and useful and was deserving of the fit and finish of a true Mac application." As a result of those efforts, NeoOffice 2.1 now includes near-complete Aqua widget support and a brand-new community-produced icon set called Akua.

Open Source Development

NeoOffice uses the open source development model to leverage the resources of a global community of volunteer programmers, users and testers.

"My goal was to create a self-supporting, volunteer-based project to build an office suite for Mac OS X," said Luby. "I felt that if people really wanted an application like NeoOffice, they would help by reporting bugs, answering support questions, and maybe even making donations."

"As the user base has grown and become more involved, NeoOffice has benefited and improved accordingly," Luby added. "It is the combined contributions of our users and donors that have made NeoOffice what it is today, and together we can continue to make great Mac software."

Availability

Released as free, open source software under the GNU General Public License, NeoOffice 2.1 is available now at http://download.neooffice.org/neojava/. Users are encouraged to download and freely distribute the software. Development of the application is ongoing by volunteer programmers, beta-testers, artists and writers. Interested parties are invited to visit http://trinity.neooffice.org/ for more information about helping with the project.

More Information

Homepage: http://www.neooffice.org/
Community: http://trinity.neooffice.org/
Download: http://download.neooffice.org/neojava/download.php
Press Kit: http://neowiki.neooffice.org/index.php/NeoOffice_2.1_Press_Kit
Screenshots: http://neowiki.neooffice.org/index.php/NeoOffice_Screenshots

About Planamesa Software

Planamesa Software is a small software development company located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Its founder, Patrick Luby, has spent more than a decade working as a software developer in a variety of commercial and open source projects including OpenOffice.org and Apache Tomcat using the C, C++ and Java programming languages on a variety of operating systems such as Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows.

About NeoOffice.org

NeoOffice.org is home for the NeoOffice open-source community and features news, downloads, FAQs, discussion forums, a bug reporting system and more for NeoOffice developers and end users. NeoOffice's "Aquafication" and other development is ongoing, and interested parties are invited to help with all aspects of the project.

About OpenOffice.org

To learn more about OpenOffice.org, visit http://www.openoffice.org/.

NeoOffice® is a registered trademark of Planamesa Inc. Other product and company names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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Category: NeoOffice