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NeoOffice/J Feature Comparison
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| <tr><td colspan="3">* Available only with certain settings in Apple X11, which is available only to users of Mac OS X 10.3.x and 10.4.x</td></tr> | <tr><td colspan="3">* Available only with certain settings in Apple X11, which is available only to users of Mac OS X 10.3.x and 10.4.x</td></tr> | ||
| <tr><td colspan="3">** Finder integration provided by separate [http://www.geocities.com/terry_teague/openoffice.html Start OpenOffice.org] application; integration with Apple Mail only</td></tr> | <tr><td colspan="3">** Finder integration provided by separate [http://www.geocities.com/terry_teague/openoffice.html Start OpenOffice.org] application; integration with Apple Mail only</td></tr> | ||
| - | <tr><td colspan="3">*** The official Mac OS X version of OpenOffice.org is available only in English, is based on the OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 codebase, and runs on Mac OS X 10.2.x, 10.3.x, and 10.4.x. Unofficial localized French (1.1.3) and German (1.1.4) versions are available, but these versions run only on Mac OS X 10.3.x or 10.4.x, depending on the version. </td></tr> | + | <tr><td colspan="3">*** The official Mac OS X version of OpenOffice.org is available only in English, is based on the OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 codebase, and runs on Mac OS X 10.2.x, 10.3.x, and 10.4.x. Unofficial localized French (1.1.3), Japanese (1.1.2, 1.1.4) and German (1.1.4) versions are available, but these versions run only on Mac OS X 10.3.x or 10.4.x, depending on the version. </td></tr> |
| </table> | </table> | ||
Revision as of 15:33, 29 September 2005
The advantages of NeoOffice/J over other office suites, particularly Microsoft's, are legion. Most importantly, NeoOffice/J is free and open source software relieving you of costly licensing fees.
There is a strong community support forum that is also frequented by the developers at http://www.trinity.org/
Contents |
NeoOffice/J vs. Microsoft Office
Apart from these benefits, NeoOffice/J 1.1 has features that outshine Microsoft Office:
| Feature | NeoOffice/J | MS Office 2004 for Mac |
|---|---|---|
| General: | ||
| Price (standard edition) | $0.00 | $349.95 |
| Type ahead functionality (optional) like many mobile phones have | YES | No |
| A logical, safe and suite-wide system for templates, so these are never accidentally updated | YES | No |
| Clean HTML code export (compliant with international web standards) | YES | No |
| Unified User Interface, reducing learning time and costs | YES | No |
| Localized user interface (number of languages) | 40* | 7* |
| International spelling checkers and localized help | 61** | 12** |
| Support for text entry in non-Roman scripts including South Asian, East Asian, right-to-left and complex text layout scripts | YES | Some [1] |
| Supported scripts or languages: | ||
| Arabic | YES | No |
| Armenian | YES | No |
| Cyrillic | YES | YES |
| Cherokee*** | YES | YES |
| Chinese (Simplified) | YES | YES |
| Chinese (Traditional) | YES | YES |
| Devanagari & Gujarati (Indic languages) | YES | No |
| Greek | YES | YES |
| Hebrew | YES | No |
| Inuktitut*** | YES | YES |
| Japanese | YES | YES |
| Korean | YES | YES |
| Roman (Western and Eastern European languages) | YES | YES |
| Roman (Hawaiian, Northern Sami) | YES | YES |
| Roman (Vietnamese) | YES | No |
| Thai | YES | No |
| Other | Likely**** | Unknown |
| Writer (word processor): | ||
| A logical style system that does not invent styles based on your layout choices | YES | No |
| Functional bullet/list numbering | YES | No |
| The ability to import WordPerfect documents (thanks to the libwpd project) | YES | No |
| Calc (spreadsheet): | ||
| More conditional layout options for cells | YES | No |
| Style-enabled layout system for text and cells | YES | No |
| Impress (presentation): | ||
| The ability to export to Flash animation | YES | No |
| Superior (3D) font art possibilities. | YES | No |
| Notes: | ||
| * NeoOffice/J ships with UIs for 12 languages; the other 28 are freely available in language packs. Office 2004 is available in English (all versions of Office 2004), and in French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish (for some versions of Office 2004; must be ordered separately) [2]. | ||
| ** NeoOffice/J includes help files and a growing number of writing (proofing) tools for many languages from the OpenOffice.org project [3], [4], [5], [6]. Microsoft Office 2004 ships with proofing tools for English, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, German, Danish, Swedish, Portuguese, Finnish, and Dutch [7]. | ||
| *** You must use the Caps Lock key to enable syllabics. | ||
| **** Because OpenOffice.org includes support for languages and scripts which do not have keyboard layouts in Mac OS X, and because Mac OS X includes system-level Unicode support for many of these languages even though Apple does not ship fonts or keyboards, it is very likely that NeoOffice/J will support text entry (and perhaps sorting) in the language/script if one installs third-party Unicode fonts and keyboard layouts. See Tom Gewecke's Your Multilingual Mac for more resources. For instance, there is a report that NeoOffice/J handles Khmer very well, and there has even been a report of using NeoOffice/J with characters in Unicode Planes 1 and 2. | ||
NeoOffice/J vs. OpenOffice.org for Macintosh (X11)
NeoOffice/J is far more integrated with OS X than the X11 version on which it is based. Rather than relying on X11, NeoOffice/J uses Java to bridge the gap between the OpenOffice.org interface code and Apple's OS X.
| Feature | NeoOffice/J | OpenOffice.org for Mac (X11) |
|---|---|---|
| Uses your normal Mac fonts (no conversion required) | YES | No |
| Smooth font display (Quartz anti-aliasing) | YES | No |
| Allows international keyboards and input methods | YES | Partial |
| Switches keyboards and input methods along with your Mac | YES | No |
| Optimized PDF generation | YES | No |
| Native Aqua menus | YES | No |
| Native OS X printing | YES | No |
| Native (styled) copy and paste support | YES | No |
| Drag-and-drop between other applications | YES | No |
| Normal Mac keyboard shortcuts (command key) | YES | YES* |
| Mouse wheel scrolling | YES | ??? |
| Integrated with Finder and major mail clients | YES | Partial** |
| OpenOffice.org codebase (version) | 1.1.4 | 1.1.2*** |
| Runs on Mac OS X 10.2.x, 10.3.x, 10.4.x | YES | YES*** |
| Notes: | ||
| * Available only with certain settings in Apple X11, which is available only to users of Mac OS X 10.3.x and 10.4.x | ||
| ** Finder integration provided by separate Start OpenOffice.org application; integration with Apple Mail only | ||
| *** The official Mac OS X version of OpenOffice.org is available only in English, is based on the OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 codebase, and runs on Mac OS X 10.2.x, 10.3.x, and 10.4.x. Unofficial localized French (1.1.3), Japanese (1.1.2, 1.1.4) and German (1.1.4) versions are available, but these versions run only on Mac OS X 10.3.x or 10.4.x, depending on the version. | ||
Still To Do
In all fairness, NeoOffice/J is not perfect. No software is. Along with relatively large RAM requirements (minimum 256MB, 512MB recommended), there is always room for improvement. NeoOffice/J can (and will) get better. Take a look at the following comparison:
| Feature | NeoOffice/J | MS Office 2004 for Mac | OpenOffice.org for Mac (X11) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bitmap printing at >300 dpi | No | Yes | Yes |
| Can print Encapsulated Postscript (EPS) | No | Yes | Yes |
| Standard Mac OS X open & save dialogues | No | Yes | No |
| Media (plugin) support | No | Yes | No |
| Non-Mac keyboard shortcuts | Some | Some | Some |
| Table drawing options | Good | Very good | Good |
| Aqua look-and-feel | Partial | Full | None |
Other Comparisons
Additional feature comparisons between selected office suites and word processors are available at Mellel and other word processors (redlers.com; compares Mellel with Microsoft™ Office, OpenOffice.org, and Nisus Writer Express, but not NeoOffice®/J) and Word-Alternativen: Der Test (apfelwiki.de; compares AbiWord, Mellel, NeoOffice®/J, Nisus Writer Express, and Apple's Pages [de]).
Supported File Formats
NeoOffice/J can read and write a large variety of file formats, both current and legacy. Current and recent Microsoft Office file formats are just some of the import and export possibilities; for a more complete listing, see the matrix.
