NeoOffice 2.1 Announcement

Media Release

Contact:
community AT neooffice DOT org

March 27, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Introducing NeoOffice® 2.1

Sunnyvale, 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.

need new pluby intro quote "This release is the culmination of many thousands of volunteer hours," said NeoOffice®/J creator and primary developer Patrick Luby. "As a result of this tremendous effort, we have 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 can also read a large number of proprietary document formats, including the Microsoft Office 2007 "OpenXML" Word format, to help user move their data to open document formats.

NeoOffice® 2.1 also offers localized user interfaces in nn 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.

new peterlin quote "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 core engineer and NeoOffice.org founder Ed Peterlin.

A Simple Idea

keep this, or new "When I started the NeoOffice®/J 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 the ”blue button” widgets characteristic of Mac OS X’s 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, Mac OS X's 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.

i just modified this one a tiny bit "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

Modified from pluby's press release

Unlike all current versions of Microsoft Office for Mac, NeoOffice® 2.1 now allows Mac users to read and write Microsoft Office 2007 Word documents created on PCs. Also, due to Microsoft's announced non-support of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in Microsoft Office 2007 for Mac, NeoOffice® 2.1 is now one of the only available ongoing solutions for Mac users who use VBA macros in their Excel documents.

Support for interoperability with Microsoft Office 2007 Word documents and VBA is drawn from the ooo-build project, a branch of OpenOffice.org that includes several features which Sun has not yet integrated up-stream. Spearheaded by Novell, ooo-build is a collaboration between many individuals and vendors.

Improved Mac OS X Intel and Aqua Support

NeoOffice® 2.1 is the only complete Macintosh office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation applications) that runs natively on Intel-based Macs. Is there an OO.o for Intel macs?

another quote from Ed, along these lines?? I think this is a "blah" quote. DOesn't really say much now that Intel has been around for a while --W "NeoOffice is the perfect choice for an office suite on your Intel Macs," says Peterlin. "It's just another way we're working to integrate with the full Mac OS X experience."

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. 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.

keep this, too? "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."

mention donors? and change "beginning" "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 that have made NeoOffice® what it is today, and this release is only the beginning."

NeoOffice is also cooperating with the ooo-build open source project run by Novell and other major Linux distributors. "By working with ooo-build, we are able to provide users with additional office suite features they need, such as support for Office 2007 OpenXML documents, VBA macros in Excel spreadsheets, and a new solver-like module in NeoOffice's spreadsheet," said a hard-working NeoOffice developer

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.sixthcrusade.com/index.php/NeoOffice_2.1_Press_Kit
Screenshots: http://neowiki.sixthcrusade.com/index.php/NeoOffice_Screenshots

About Planamesa Software

Planamesa Software is a software development consulting company owned and operated by Patrick Luby. Luby has spent nearly 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