NeoOffice 2008 Conference Summary

From NeoWiki

In June 2008, Mac@Work sponsored a NeoOffice 2008 User Conference and Social Event in Milan, Italy. Videos from this event are available online (+++ insert link here +++). Many topics were touched upon at this user conference, including history and future developments of NeoOffice. What follows is a summary of the major points from the user conference; for full details see the videos and chat logs.

• Coopeartion between OOo Aqua and Neo (prior to schedule, some not videoed)
  • Question posed to Patrick and Ed was regarding the current state of collaboration between the OOo Mac team and Neo team
  • No formal collaboration currently exists between the two teams, none is planned.
  • The OOo team disagrees with the fundamental Neo engineering approach
    • Patrick & Ed feel choice is good
    • The Neo approach is solid, debugged, and has 5 years of "in the field" deployment
  • Patrick and Ed contribute back Mac-specific patches periodically
    • Address Book bug fix patches
    • Patches also submitted to ooo-build and odf-converter projects
    • While code and patches are donated to other projects, we expect the maintainers of those other projects to perform integration and release engineering; this has been performed by ooo-build and odf-converter, but frequently not by OOo.
  • NeoOffice is in active development and will continue to be so as long as users are interested in NeoOffice

• NeoOffice 3.0
  • NeoOffice 3.0 will be derived from OpenOffice.org 3.0
    • Neo is developed as a derivative and needs a stable base off of which to begin development
    • Although OOo 3.0 is in beta stage, significant code drift and bugs are still evident in the OOo source base. These changes and issues are more than were originally anticipated.
  • NeoOffice 3.0 development and EAP will begin around October
    • OOo 3.0 final release is presently scheduled by September
    • By October, it is expected that the OOo 3.0 code will be changing relatively infrequently
    • When OOo code stabilizes, it is expected our development and adaptation will begin
  • Estimated final delivery around December 2008/Jan 2009 depending on issues discovered during EAP
  • Scope of NeoOffice 3.0
    • Will use the same VCL implementation as Neo 1.x and 2.x that has been bug fixed and deployed for > 5 yrs
    • Will incorporate all NeoOffice unique features (media browser, file path popup menu, spotlight, quicklook, etc.)
    • Will incorporate all features present in OOo 3.0 core
    • Will incorporate OOo extensions determined to be "core features" desirable by all users
    • Will incorporate all targeted features of ooo-build/go-ooo
    • Will continue to include Office Open XML export; will use Office Open XML import filters from either odf-converter or OOo 3.0 depending which provides better compatibility with Office 2007 documents
  • New features will not be dependent on Neo 3.0
    • Patches for 2.2.3 already delivered new features
    • Expected new features will continue to be delivered through patches and intermediate versions
    • New NeoOffice 2.2.4 version expected in mid-June
      • Incorporates printing and font bugfixes
      • Adds in features from patches: gesture support, media browser

• NeoMobile
  • Collaborative secure document sharing and backup system
  • Allows users to securely upload individual files to a server and access them from various devices in multiple formats
    • OpenDocument
    • PDF (for iPhone)
    • HTML (for other mobile devices)
  • Current thoughts use Amazon S3 for reliable and secure storage
    • Feedback to include self-hosted storage, independent S3 account
  • Incorporated directly into NeoOffice
    • View current user/group documents
    • Upload new/revised document
  • Online template/clip art hosting
    • Delivers Neo/OOo templates through NeoMobile hosted document system
    • Listing/comments of individual templates within NeoOffice
    • Download only templates that are used
    • Easy publishing of user-generated templates back into the system
  • Demo version available for free

** Development time estimated at 2-4 months

• • • Completion of initial version estimated prior to start of intensive Neo 3.0 development
  • Still a prototype idea
    • Trying to find ways to provide services for our donors

• Other feature ideas on which to work or examine prior to Neo 3.0
  • Apple Remote integration for Impress
    • Already being investigated
    • May be in 2.2.4, may not
  • Improved patching system
    • Sparkle framework?
    • Automatic download and install?
  • Word count for Writer in status bar
  • Backport Notes functionality from OOo 3.0
  • What do we think about CoreData and other OS X technologies for Leopard?
    • CoreData is very cool but doesn't really fit into OOo; we try not to use technologies for the sake of using them
    • Leopard technologies have already been used in Neo: Grammar checker, QuickLook
    • Others we are looking at for potential look in Neo include CoreImage filters and iChat Theater
  • Extensions...are you using them?
    • We are already using extensions, however we deliver them directly to the user and do not require extra downloads
    • Extensions are used for convenience of development; users never see them. e.g. Grammar checking, ImageCapture
    • Neo extensions use custom code within Neo itself and are not compatible with OOo

• History of NeoOffice
  • +++ fill here +++

• Patrick's Work Day
• +++ fill here +++