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NeoOffice 2.2.2 Feature Comparison
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(first stab at this page; needs some major checking/updating)
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Revision as of 03:39, 8 November 2007
N.B. This page compares NeoOffice 2.2.2 to OpenOffice.org 2.3 and Microsoft Office 2004. To see the version of this page comparing NeoOffice 2.2.1 with then-current versions of OpenOffice.org (X11) and Microsoft Office 2004, see NeoOffice 2.2.1 Feature Comparison.
The advantages of NeoOffice over other office suites, particularly Microsoft's, are legion. Most importantly, NeoOffice 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://trinity.neooffice.org/
NeoOffice vs. Microsoft Office
Apart from these benefits, NeoOffice 2.2.2 has features that outshine Microsoft Office:
| Feature | NeoOffice | MS Office 2004 for Mac |
|---|---|---|
| General: | ||
| Price (standard edition) | $0.00 | $399.95 |
| Runs on Intel-based Macs | Natively | Using Rosetta |
| Document contents searchable by Spotlight |  | |
| Type ahead word-completion (optional), similar to features found in mobile phones | |  |
| A logical, safe and suite-wide system for templates, so these are never accidentally updated | | |
| Clean HTML code export (compliant with international web standards) | | |
| Support for international standard ISO 26300 OpenDocument file formats | | |
| Support for Microsoft Office 2007 (OpenXML) file formats | * | * |
| Support for voice-dictation and similar software | | (?) |
| Unified User Interface, reducing learning time and costs | | |
| Localized user interface and help files (number of languages) | 58** | 7** |
| International spelling checkers | 88*** | 12*** |
| Support for text entry in non-Roman scripts including South Asian, East Asian, right-to-left and complex text layout scripts | | Some [1] |
| Supported scripts or languages: | ||
| Arabic | | |
| Armenian | | |
| Cyrillic | | |
| Cherokee | | |
| Chinese (Simplified) | | |
| Chinese (Traditional) | | |
| Devanagari & Gujarati (Indic languages) | | |
| Greek | | |
| Hebrew | | |
| Inuktitut | | |
| Japanese | | |
| Korean | | |
| Roman (Western and Eastern European languages) | | |
| Roman (Hawaiian, Northern Sami) | | |
| Roman (Vietnamese) | | |
| Thai | | |
| Other | Likely**** | Unknown |
| Writer (word processor): | ||
| A logical style system that does not invent styles based on your layout choices | | |
| Functional bullet/list numbering | | |
| The ability to import WordPerfect documents (thanks to the libwpd project) | | |
| The ability to import Microsoft Works word processing documents (thanks to the libwps and ooo-build projects) | ***** | |
| Calc (spreadsheet): | ||
| More conditional layout options for cells | | |
| Style-enabled layout system for text and cells | | |
| Support for linear programming extensions for spreadsheets (thanks to the ooo-build project) | | |
| Support for Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros (thanks to the ooo-build project) | ***** | |
| Impress (presentation): | ||
| The ability to export to Flash animation | | |
| Superior (3D) font art possibilities. | | |
| Notes: | ||
| * NeoOffice 2.2.2 includes support for Word 2007 (.docx), Excel 2007 (.xlsx), and PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) files using code from the odf-converter project. Microsoft has announced it will ship converters for Office 2004 sometime in 2007 [2] and that Office 2008 will fully support the new formats. | ||
| ** NeoOffice 2.2.2 only ships with a UI for English; UIs for the other 57 languages 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) [3]. | ||
| *** NeoOffice 2.2.2 uses the native Mac OS X spell-checker by default. If there is no native spell-checker dictionary available for a language, NeoOffice will fall back to Hunspell dictionaries. An ever-growing number of writing (proofing) tools for many languages are available from the OpenOffice.org project [4] using the Dictionary wizard (in the File menu, choose Wizards, then "Install new dictionaries..."). Microsoft Office 2004 ships with proofing tools for English, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, German, Danish, Swedish, Portuguese, Finnish, and Dutch [5]. | ||
| **** 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 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 handles Khmer very well, and there has even been a report of using NeoOffice with characters in Unicode Planes 1 and 2. | ||
| ***** Experimental support; VBA: all macros may not work perfectly; Microsoft Works documents: not all versions of the format are supported, and some formatting may be lost. | ||
NeoOffice vs. OpenOffice.org for Macintosh (X11)
NeoOffice is far more integrated with OS X than the Mac releases of OpenOffice.org. Rather than relying on X11, NeoOffice uses Java and Cocoa to bridge the gap between the OpenOffice.org interface code and Apple's OS X.
| Feature | NeoOffice | OpenOffice.org for Mac (X11) |
|---|---|---|
| Uses your normal Mac fonts (no conversion required) | | |
| Smooth font display (Quartz anti-aliasing) | | |
| Allows international keyboards and input methods | | Partial |
| Switches keyboards and input methods along with your Mac | | |
| Optimized PDF generation | | |
| Native Aqua menus | | |
| Native Aqua open & save dialogues | | |
| Aqua buttons, checkboxes, and scrollbars | | |
| Aqua-style icon set | | |
| Native Mac OS X printing | | |
| Native (styled) copy and paste support | | |
| Drag-and-drop between other applications | | |
| Normal Mac keyboard shortcuts (command key) | | * |
| Mouse wheel scrolling | | |
| Integrated with Finder and major mail clients | | Partial** |
| Spotlight support | | *** |
| Quick Look support | | |
| Uses Mac OS X spell-checker and dictionaries for supported languages | | |
| Reads from the Mac OS X Address Book as a datasource | | ****** |
| Reads from the Thunderbird Address Book as a datasource | | |
| Usable with accessibility tools such as iListen, Proloquo, ViaVoice, and others | | |
| Reads and writes files on AFP and SMB volumes and iDisks | | Partial***** |
| Support for Microsoft Office 2007 (OpenXML) file formats | | |
| Support for linear programming extensions for spreadsheets | | |
| Support for Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros | | |
| Support for Microsoft Works word processing documents | | |
| OpenOffice.org codebase (version) | 2.2.1 | 2.3**** |
| Runs on Mac OS X 10.3.9, 10.4.x, and 10.5 | | |
| Runs on Intel-based Macs | Natively | Natively**** |
| Notes: | ||
| * Available only with certain settings in Apple X11, and the control key may not work as expected. | ||
| ** Finder integration provided by a small AppleScript wrapper; more extensive Finder integration is available using the separate Start OpenOffice.org application. | ||
| *** NeoOffice includes the NeoLight Spotlight Importer; users of OpenOffice.org must build and install the importer themselves. | ||
| **** The official Mac OS X version of OpenOffice.org is available as separate binary downloads for several languages; builds of OpenOffice.org 2.3 are available in English for PowerPC and Intel Macs and run on Mac OS X 10.4.x and higher. To see which version is available for your language and hardware (PPC or Intel), check here. Builds for other languages, or older versions that support more languages, may or may not be available. | ||
| ***** OpenOffice.org is missing support for iDisk and webdav volumes and also is missing support for using Base .odb files on any remote volume. | ||
| ****** This feature is expected in OpenOffice.org 2.3. | ||
Still To Do
In all fairness, NeoOffice is not perfect. No software is. Along with relatively large RAM requirements (minimum 512 MB, 1 GB or more recommended), there is always room for improvement. NeoOffice can (and will) get better. Take a look at the following comparison:
| Feature | NeoOffice | MS Office 2004 for Mac | OpenOffice.org for Mac (X11) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Media (plugin) support | |
|
|
| Non-Mac keyboard shortcuts | Some | Some | Some |
| Table drawing options | Good | Very good | Good |
| Aqua look-and-feel | Good | Full | None |
Other Comparisons
Additional feature comparisons between selected office suites and word processors are available at Mellel: Competitive Comparison (redlers.com; compares Mellel 2.0 with Microsoft Office 2004, OpenOffice.org 2.0.x, and Nisus Writer Express 2.7, but not NeoOffice) and Word-Alternativen: Der Test (apfelwiki.de; compares AbiWord 2.4.5, Mellel 2.2, NeoOffice 1.2.2/2.0.3 Aqua Beta, Nisus Writer Express 2.7, and Apple's Pages 2.0.2 [de]).
Supported File Formats
NeoOffice 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 NeoOffice File Formats matrix.
