Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 10:25 pm Post subject: Mac on Intel Compatibility (early 2006)
As of January 2006, Apple has finally begun shipping production machines that contain Intel Core processors. Despite the marketing claims from Apple, not all of your existing applications can run on Mac on Intel machines. NeoOffice is one of these applications.
At the present time, Mac on Intel support is hoped to be available with NeoOffice 2.0 sometime in 2006. This work is ongoing. Lots of non-trivial engineering effort has already been undertaken to achieve our goal of running on Mac on Intel, specifically the NeoOffice 1.2 effort made possible by all of your contributions!
Specifics appear below.
Why can't NeoOffice 1.2 run on Mac on Intel?
NeoOffice 1.2 is still a PowerPC based application. All PowerPC based applications are forced to run within the Rosetta environment. Unfortunately, contrary to Apple's marketing claims, Rosetta cannot run all PowerPC applications on Mac on Intel computers seamlessly...and customers need to read the fine print. Classic PowerPC applications will not run, and neither can Rosetta applications that embed Java directly
NeoOffice 1.2 is an application that requires Java to be embedded within it in order to run critical portions of the application. Without Java, NeoOffice 1.2 cannot run. Since Java is not embeddable by Rosetta (even though Java 1.4 is available for native Mac on Intel applications), NeoOffice 1.2 cannot run within the Rosetta environment.
Why can't NeoOffice/J 1.1 Final or 0.8.x run on Mac on Intel?
NeoOffice/J 1.1 and 0.8.x require the Apple Java VM version 1.3 specifically. They cannot run on any Java version other than 1.3. While Mac on Intel computers support Java versions 1.4 and 1.5, there is no version of Java 1.3 that can run on Mac on Intel computers, either natively or within Rosetta. As a result, NeoOffice/J 1.1 and 0.8.x will never be able to run on Mac on Intel computers.
To allow NeoOffice to run on Mac on Intel, Java 1.4 or higher is required; this is why the NeoOffice 1.2 effort was undertaken.
When will NeoOffice support Mac on Intel?
Technical problems have made it impossible to target Mac on Intel with anything earlier than NeoOffice 2.0/OpenOffice.org 2.0. It will take a significant effort to get NeoOffice 2.0 functioning on PowerPC Macintosh computers, an effort which is undergoing and currently funded by community donations. This work direclty aids the majority of Mac on Intel porting and is a prerequisite for achieving full Mac on Intel support.
Keep visiting trinity and the development forums periodically to get up to date on the latest word on NeoOffice 2.0 development.
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Last edited by OPENSTEP on Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:36 am; edited 3 times in total
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 9:33 pm Post subject:
As recommended by folk I know, it's always possible to elaborate more...
The problem just isn't Apple+Java, but also Apple+gcc. There's problems with code that's in "C" and "C++". Prior to 2.0, OpenOffice.org is only compatible with gcc version 3.3, a version which Apple is not supporting for Mac on Intel. Although NeoOffice 1.2 is compatible on the Java front, it's still not supported by Apple due to their decision to kill support for gcc 3.3 based applications and only support gcc 4.0.
Even if gcc 3.3 was supported, OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X still does contain some assembly code which is specific to the PowerPC processor. While very small in comparison to the amount of C/C++/Java code, the assembly code is critical and without it OpenOffice.org/Neo can't run.
I had a problem starting Open Office on my new iMac Intel. After some research I found out that X11 was not installed on my computer. After installation of X11User.pkg from install disc 1 (path: System:Installation:Packages) Open Office started immediately.
I hope this will help other users with the same problem.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2006 12:17 pm Post subject:
The X11 OpenOffice.org ports, either 1.x or 2.x, are compatible with Intel machines up until the point where they encounter a Java dependency. For the most part, if X11.app is installed, OOo can run in Rosetta without Java loaded and you can get access to non-Java functionality. However, the moment when Java is required, the PowerPC app will segfault. This includes things requiring the XSLT engine, some auto-formatting wizards, and OOo Base (or anything else hassling with database connections through JDBC).
NeoOffice, on the other hand, uses Java as a bridge to Cocoa for all drawing and font handling and needs access to Java to even do simple tasks like displaying the splashscreen, so it's a no go from the start.
OOo X11 will continue to work properly provided users don't need any Java dependent funtionality. As it stands, however, some core parts of 2.0 are implemented via Java bindings so, until the native x86 OS X port is finished, the available functionality will definitely be less than on other platforms.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 4:48 pm Post subject:
Brief update of OOo status: preliminary builds of OOo X11 for Mac on Intel are available although ther eare still some bugs that need to be worked out. Check out the OOo X11 Mac webpage for the latest details.
There are still no plans for support of Neo with Mac on Intel at this time until after the Neo 2.0 project is completed. This is due to underlying incompatiblities with Java and Rosetta as well as incompatibilities of gcc4 (required for Mac on Intel) and OOo 1.x.
Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 3:30 am Post subject: "It's just a recompile, right?"
Two blog posts worth reading—one from an Adobe Creative Suite developer and one from a Microsoft Office developer—if you're one of those people still wondering why complex applications with large codebases like NeoOffice aren't Intel-native yet:
Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 7:49 am Post subject: Re: "It's just a recompile, right?"
sardisson wrote:
Two blog posts worth reading—one from an Adobe Creative Suite developer and one from a Microsoft Office developer—if you're one of those people still wondering why complex applications with large codebases like NeoOffice aren't Intel-native yet:
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 10:24 am Post subject:
Well, the bigger problem is that CodeWarrior for Mac OS X has been discontinued and Motorola/Freescale/Metrowerks sold the rights for their x86 tools right before Apple forced the shift. So the Codewarrior compilers are no longer viable. There are other compilers available for OS X (IBM, Intel, etc.) but they don't cross-compile to my knowledge.
Apple isn't forcing development tools on anyone. It's more that there really aren't any other solutions and no companies making them.
While Neo has always used gcc, other major applications are on CodeWarrior and will take longer to move (Adobe, MS Office, etc.). The PowerPC emulator is fairly fast, though. Don't be surprised if some companies don't bother to go Intel native and instead keep on going with CodeWarrior+PowerPC. Depending on the application, it may not even need to be moved. Neo & OOo are up the creek because of their Java dependencies which don't function with the Rosetta environment.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:55 am Post subject:
Some of this topic is out of date now, but thanks for the link to a gcc 3.3 package.
The primary thing that drove the gcc 3.3 comments was Neo 1.x which, being based on OOo 1.x, required the gcc 3.3 compiler. Efforts to get OOo 1.x to play nicely with gcc4 failed.
There are no plans to move Neo 1.x onto Mactel machines at this time. Neo 1.x will remain a PowerPC only release.
OOo 2.0, the base for Neo 2.0, compiles with gcc4. Neo 2.x is where we'll be focusing on Mactel work as a result.
Joined: Apr 25, 2006 Posts: 2315 Location: Montpellier, France
Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2006 1:26 pm Post subject:
Yes, NeoOffice is a port of OpenOffice.org that runs on a Mac (including Intel-based Macs since July 1 and Alpha 4 - and even earlier for Early Access subscribers).
There is also OpenOffice.org (X11) for Mac OS X. It also runs on Intel-based Macs (presently, Release Candidates are available via an FTP server).
Both have their pros and cons. OpenOffice.org/X11 is faster than NeoOffice, but Neo in more integrated with Mac OS X and has a more Aqua-like user interface. Moreover, the Aqua Beta release - which should be made available on August 2 to Early Access subscribers - is going to include even more Aqua stuff than ever before.
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