MacUser (UK) sings the praises of NeoOffice 2.1

[rays]

My subscription copy of MacUser Vol 23 No 11 (25 May 2007) has just arrived with a major feature no/low-cost alternatives to mainstream apps from the likes of Adobe and Micro$oft.

Here's a flavour:

"NeoOffice is arguably the most complete desktop altenative to Microsoft Office on the Mac. The aqua port (sic) of the open-source OpenOffice.org suite, NeoOffice comprises...."

"Another important reason to consider NeoOffice is that it is currently the only Mac application that can read documents saved in Microsoft Office 2007 new .docx XML format."

"It doesn't feel quite as responsive as Office, which can be partly attributed to the fact that it runs on Java. The spreadsheet module can be ponderous dealing with larger, chart-heavy documents.

"In general, neoOffice makes a good stab at opening native Excel documents. We could import documents that included charts without a glitch. Success at importing Excel files with embedded Visual Basic for Applications code was more hit and miss. NeoOffice does claim to support it - which ironically puts it ahead of the forthcoming version of Microsoft Office for Mac, which will drop support for it - but it didn't work in every case."

"In terms of feature compatibility with Word, though, it's difficult to fault NeoOffice's word processor. It might look clunky, but its features make up for the lack of beauty. It's the only Mac application that properly supports Word's Track Changes."

"NeoOffice still doesn't feel like a Mac application. There's been an effort to ensure consistency between applications, but dialogs still look odd, and there's no simple way to open a component application directly: you have to navigate the NeoOffice menu."

Overall, a quite balanced review, I feel. Comparison is made with ThinkFreeOnline, ZoHo Suite, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Nisus Writer Express, MarinerPak.

Be prepared for a lot more downloads!

[OPENSTEP]

I bet they haven't been trying Patrick's latest test patch with the new text layout algorithms

Thanks for sharing quotes.

I'm glad we have OpenXML support and am hoping to continue the integration of the odf-converter project for spreadsheets and presos as that project matures. The powers that be seem to be having fun dragging OOo into a document format war; I just think that's childish since the ability to have near-seamless compatibility with Microsoft Office documents is the primary reason OOo has taken off and is still popular in the first place. Information wants to be free and not tied down to any specific format or app, even if it is "open". No one needs a cookie cutter; people outside the Vista/Office07 sphere need Swiss Army knives

ed

[rays]

David Cartwright, IT Consultant and regular contributor to Linux Format magazine, wrote in the Opinion column (LXF 93):