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OpenOffice.org and its Macintosh ports
From NeoWiki
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OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org (OOo) is the "main" office suite, written primarily for Solaris, Linux and Windows, with the most developers and users. The OpenOffice.org project provides the source code from which many other versions are derived. It is currently at version 3.0.
NeoOffice
The best, fastest, most Macintosh-like port to date, NeoOffice (formerly "NeoOffice/J"), uses bits of Java instead of X11 to display to the screen and bits of Cocoa and Carbon for other features like printing, menus, fonts, and Aqua widgets. Because Java is so well integrated into OS X, NeoOffice feels much more "Mac-like" than the X11 version. There are numerous improvements over the X11 version—native menus along the top menu bar, native OS X fonts, the print dialog screen you're used to seeing, scrollwheel support, traditional Mac shortcut keys, drag-and-drop, Aqua scrollbars, and so forth. NeoOffice is also extremely stable. As of August 2007, the latest version is NeoOffice 2.2.1.
OpenOffice.org Mac OS X (X11)
OpenOffice.org/X11 is a very stable port of the OpenOffice.org office suite that runs on Mac OS X and uses the standard Unix X11 display system. That is, to use OpenOffice.org/X11, you must have Apple's X11 system installed on your computer or another X11 package.
Apple's X11 is available for Mac OS X 10.3.x and above; it is normally installed in /Applications/Utilities; for more information on obtaining X11 packages and OpenOffice.org Mac OS X (X11), see Downloading X11 and OpenOffice.org/X11.
OpenOffice.org/X11 is entirely functional and looks like its Unix counterpart, but it does not use native Mac controls or fonts. For many Mac users, OpenOffice.org/X11 looks and feels "out of place" when compared with other Macintosh applications. The official Mac OS X build of OpenOffice.org/X11 varies depending on language and processor, but version 3.0 is available in English and many other languages, for both PowerPC and Intel Macs.
RetroOffice
RetroOffice is a version of OpenOffice.org that uses X11 to run but includes enhanced features and bug-fixes not found in OpenOffice.org Mac OS X (X11). RetroOffice contains certain Mac-specific features and bug-fixes from NeoOffice, as well as new features and bug-fixes from the odf-converter project and Novell's ooo-build version of OpenOffice.org for Linux.
Like OpenOffice.org Mac OS X (X11), RetroOffice looks like its Linux counterpart and does not use native Mac controls or fonts. RetroOffice is available in all the same languages as NeoOffice and runs on both PowerPC and Intel Macs. However, RetroOffice is completely unsupported.
NeoOffice/C (abandoned)
The goal of this highly-experimental port was to prototype methods of making OpenOffice.org a fully Aquafied program and a 'first class citizen' on the Mac OS X desktop. The code is based on the 1.1 version of OpenOffice.org. NeoOffice/C would build on Mac OS X 10.2.x and 10.3.x but was at the pre-Alpha stage and was extremely buggy; it ran only on Mac OS X 10.2.x and then only for a few minutes before crashing. With the release of NeoOffice/J 1.1 Alpha, NeoOffice/C ceased development, as resources are being channeled into NeoOffice/J 1.1 and its successors, NeoOffice 1.2 and 2.1.
Which one should I use?
Most Macintosh users who are looking for a good office experience should give NeoOffice a try.
However, if you are more familiar with Unix and need the few OpenOffice.org 3.0 features that have not yet been implemented in NeoOffice, the OpenOffice.org/X11 version is your bet. If you are an advanced Unix user on Mac OS X, RetroOffice offers additional features and bug-fixes you may find useful.
You can also look at the comparison charts for more detailed comparisons.
Hope this helps!
