November is NeoOffice month

Wed Nov 1 0:01:56 2006 EST (-0500 GMT)

NeoOfficeRecently NeoOffice released NeoOffice 2.0 in a final beta format. NeoOffice is a rebuild of OpenOffice.org for Mac OSX.

OpenOffice.org is an office suite that is being developed by the open source community, lead by Sun, that originally provided an office productivity suite to the free software based systems like Linux, Solaris and BSD. The initial offerings were not that great, and stability and compatibility were an issue. Today’s releases of open office for Linux are perfectly viable replacements for MS Office’s basics, and the actual “Writer” tool is about as good as MS Word.

 Use OpenOffice.orgThe latest versions or OpenOffice.org (also known as OOo or OO.o) are available for Linux, BSD and Windows, but the Mac version has previously required extra steps to run on OSX, NeoOffice offered an alternative, but it was very unstable and slow until this 2.0 release.

The OpenOffice suite has always had the option to open and save files in the MS Office Format, as well as it’s own format and the Open Document/Open Text standard.

NeoOffice’s PDF support is better than any other OSX options. The print export option that comes with OSX and the Adobe creator that plugs directly into MS Word are notoriously bad when it comes to identify and preserving hyper links. The standard “Save as PDF” option in the print menu simply doesn’t preserve hyper links. Adobe should be able to preserve hyper links but often does not. OpenOffice/NeoOffice’s export to PDF option does preserve hyper links and I’ve already mentioned that it opens MS Office (Word) files!

exportaspdf.png

This November is NeoOffice month for me because I plan on using nothing but OpenOffice/NeoOffice for the entire month. There is a small exception, if I have to demonstrate MS Office software at work I will, but I think it can be avoided.

OpenOffice/NeoOffice allows users to set the default file save type to the MS Office formats, which is what I do, but otherwise I’m swearing off MS’s software. The main reason for me is OpenOffice/NeoOffice can be installed at any time for free and if the computer/installation/software is at all ephemeral (temporary setup, an old machine, someone else’s computer) its not an issue. The ability to install it at any time and not have to remove it when I’m done (for licecning issues) OppenOffice/NeoOffice provides consistency.

Here’s hoping November will be a success.

Comments are closed.