NeoOffice/J Feature Comparison

From NeoWiki

Revision as of 02:52, 28 April 2005 by Sardisson (Talk | contribs)
(diff) ←Older revision | Current revision (diff) | Newer revision→ (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search

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/

NeoOffice/J vs. Microsoft Office

Apart from these benefits, NeoOffice/J 1.1 has features that outshine Microsoft Office:

FeatureNeoOffice/JMS Office 2004 for Mac
General:
Price (standard edition)$0.00$349.95
Type ahead functionality (optional) like many mobile phones haveYESNo
A logical, safe and suite-wide system for templates, so these are never accidentally updatedYESNo
Clean HTML code export (compliant with international web standards)YESNo
Unified User Interface, reducing learning time and costsYESNo
Localized user interface (number of languages)40*7*
International spelling checkers and localized help61**12**
Support for text entry in non-Roman scripts including South Asian, East Asian, right-to-left and complex text layout scriptsYESSome [1]
Supported scripts or languages:
ArabicYESNo
ArmenianYESNo
CyrillicYESYES
Cherokee***YESYES
Chinese (Simplified)YESYES
Chinese (Traditional)YESYES
Devanagari & Gujarati (Indic languages)YESNo
GreekYESYES
HebrewYESNo
Inuktitut***YESYES
JapaneseYESYES
KoreanYESYES
Roman (Western and Eastern European languages)YESYES
Roman (Hawaiian, Northern Sami)YESYES
Roman (Vietnamese)YESNo
ThaiYESNo
OtherLikely****Unknown
Writer (word processor):
A logical style system that does not invent styles based on your layout choicesYESNo
Functional bullet/list numberingYESNo
The ability to import WordPerfect documents (thanks to the libwpd project)YESNo
Calc (spreadsheet):
More conditional layout options for cellsYESNo
Style-enabled layout system for text and cellsYESNo
Impress (presentation):
The ability to export to Flash animationYESNo
Superior (3D) font art possibilities.YESNo
 
* NeoOffice/J ships with UIs for languages 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.

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.

FeatureNeoOffice/JOpenOffice.org for Mac (X11)
Uses your normal Mac fonts (no conversion required)YESNo
Smooth font display (Quartz anti-aliasing)YESNo
Allows international keyboards and switches keyboards along with your MacYESPartial
Optimized PDF generationYESNo
Native Aqua menusYESNo
Native OS X printingYESNo
Native (styled) copy and paste supportYESNo
Drag-and-drop between other applicationsYESNo
Normal Mac keyboard shortcuts (command key)YESYes*
Mouse wheel scrollingYES???
Integrated with Finder and major mail clientsYESPartial**
 
* Available only with certain settings in Apple X11
** Finder integration provided by separate Start OpenOffice.org application; integration with Apple Mail only

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
Personal tools