InTechSpot  

I originally reviewed NeoOffice/J 0.82 back in 2004. At the time, Apple hadn"t officially released it"s X11 server, so running OpenOffice.org of any type on Mac OSX was quite a challenge. Two years later, the now renamed NeoOffice remains by far the best way to run OpenOffice.org (OOo) on OSX.

NeoOffice is a version of OpenOffice.org for Mac OSX. While a port of OOo exists for Mac OSX, it requires Apple"s X11 server. This means that it doesn"t fit in well with the rest of an Apple desktop, it uses different shortcuts, fonts and printing. In short, while better than nothing, OOo"s X11 port is certainly less than optimal for Apple users. Moreover, Apple"s X11 server isn"t even included in the default OS install, so running OOo on a Mac requires a lot of work by the end user.Enter NeoOffice.

NeoOffice basically replaces the dependency on X11 with a dependency on Java. As Java is a native interface to Mac OSX, this means that NeoOffice can look and feel like a native Mac application. Now, the work is far from complete, but NeoOffice 1.2.1 features Mac-friendly keyboard shortcuts, shares the Apple clipboard, has a top toolbar like other Mac applications, and uses fonts and printers native to Mac OSX. It still doesn"t fit perfectly into the environment, but it"s far closer than anything else. Amazingly, NeoOffice is mostly the work of three people, only one of whom does the majority of the coding. Despite this, NeoOffice is a solid, complete office suite that brings modern features such as spell-as-you-type, word completion, writing to PDF and Flash files, and more to the Macintosh platform in a single package that is easy to use and install.