NeoOffice 2008 Conference Summary

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(Initial bullet point summary of NeoCon 2008)
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Revision as of 05:19, 14 June 2008

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 +++
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