Just a quick note to let everyone know that Aquamacs, the native mac version of emacs, has released version 1.0.
A full list of features and bug fixes can be found on the website aquamacs.org
Thursday 7 June 2007
Wednesday 6 June 2007
NeoOffice
After trying out the OpenOffice.org development Alpha I decided to sign up to the mailing list. After a few posts I noticed that there was a lot of talk about OpenOffice.org “vs” NeoOffice. I thought it only right that I should check out NeoOffice and report it here.
NeoOffice was started by two developers that were part of the OpenOffice.org mac port. To find out more about why they started the NeoOffice project visit the FAQ page.
Before I'd even installed NeoOffice a couple of things stood out to me that seemed slightly better than the OpenOffice.org project. For one, NeoOffice is released under the full GPL license rather than the Lesser GPL, which OpenOffice.org is under. Secondly, they don't have Sun behind them telling them which way to go and they only have one platform to worry about. Also the developers seemed to have an attitude and humour that I could related to more, see the open letter to Sun Microsystems.
After installing the software, the differences are obvious. The OpenOffice.org port is clearly an alpha preview where as NeoOffice is very much a stable release, for example I wrote this blog post in NeoOffice Writer. Also the look and feel of the app is very much more 'aqua'. The icons are nice and the menus feel like os x menus.
As for features I found everything I was looking for. I'm not really a spreadsheet or presentation user so I can't really comment on those but overall, I think if you're looking for an alternative to Word at this point in time, then NeoOffice is the clear choice.
NeoOffice was started by two developers that were part of the OpenOffice.org mac port. To find out more about why they started the NeoOffice project visit the FAQ page.
Before I'd even installed NeoOffice a couple of things stood out to me that seemed slightly better than the OpenOffice.org project. For one, NeoOffice is released under the full GPL license rather than the Lesser GPL, which OpenOffice.org is under. Secondly, they don't have Sun behind them telling them which way to go and they only have one platform to worry about. Also the developers seemed to have an attitude and humour that I could related to more, see the open letter to Sun Microsystems.
After installing the software, the differences are obvious. The OpenOffice.org port is clearly an alpha preview where as NeoOffice is very much a stable release, for example I wrote this blog post in NeoOffice Writer. Also the look and feel of the app is very much more 'aqua'. The icons are nice and the menus feel like os x menus.
As for features I found everything I was looking for. I'm not really a spreadsheet or presentation user so I can't really comment on those but overall, I think if you're looking for an alternative to Word at this point in time, then NeoOffice is the clear choice.
Tuesday 5 June 2007
Open Office Aqua Development Preview
Today I was very excited to hear that the first alpha of the native version of Open Office for mac became available. The site is very clear that this is just a development version and should not be used for real work:
"WARNING: THIS SOFTWARE MAY CRASH AND MAY DESTROY YOUR DATA DO NOT USE THIS SOFTWARE FOR REAL WORK IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT"
There is also quite a list of issues still to be dealt with:
"You cannot print
PDF export does not properly work as thetext won't show on the page right
Starting OpenOffice.org from a shared folder does not work
Copy and paste does not fully work
OpenOffice.org will crash after quitting
Some text is not drawn in places like Impress
Impress will not recognise multiple monitors"
Even so I've downloaded a copy and had a quick play with it. Obviously it's quite unstable at present but I'm excited to see progress. If you would like to download the alpha version too, I suggest going to this page as I had some problems getting the torrent from the main site. You will also need a bit torrent client.
"WARNING: THIS SOFTWARE MAY CRASH AND MAY DESTROY YOUR DATA DO NOT USE THIS SOFTWARE FOR REAL WORK IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT"
There is also quite a list of issues still to be dealt with:
"You cannot print
PDF export does not properly work as thetext won't show on the page right
Starting OpenOffice.org from a shared folder does not work
Copy and paste does not fully work
OpenOffice.org will crash after quitting
Some text is not drawn in places like Impress
Impress will not recognise multiple monitors"
Even so I've downloaded a copy and had a quick play with it. Obviously it's quite unstable at present but I'm excited to see progress. If you would like to download the alpha version too, I suggest going to this page as I had some problems getting the torrent from the main site. You will also need a bit torrent client.
Monday 4 June 2007
Bean
As you may have read in some previous post, the native version of Open Office for mac is not quite ready. However, if you're looking for an open source word processor then you might want to give Bean a go.
Bean has some really nice features which make it worth using over TextEdit. The main one which most users of TextEdit are annoyed by is word count. What is even nicer is that the word count is live at the bottom of the document, meaning you don't have to go routing through menus like in Word. Another nice feature set is the complete word and define word items. Define word will open up dictionary.app and complete word will try and guess the word you are typing, which can be very helpful if you're not sure how a word is spelled.
Another bonus over TextEdit is that it can open .doc files. This makes it useful even in an office environment where others may be using Word. Also, unlike Open Office at this point, it is in the native cocoa styling with all the features you might expect from a cocoa app.
Find out more and download it from the Bean site here.
Bean has some really nice features which make it worth using over TextEdit. The main one which most users of TextEdit are annoyed by is word count. What is even nicer is that the word count is live at the bottom of the document, meaning you don't have to go routing through menus like in Word. Another nice feature set is the complete word and define word items. Define word will open up dictionary.app and complete word will try and guess the word you are typing, which can be very helpful if you're not sure how a word is spelled.
Another bonus over TextEdit is that it can open .doc files. This makes it useful even in an office environment where others may be using Word. Also, unlike Open Office at this point, it is in the native cocoa styling with all the features you might expect from a cocoa app.
Find out more and download it from the Bean site here.
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