Appleworks and NeoOffice/J

Georges · Guest

Is it possible to import Appleworks text files in NeoOffice/j ?

Glenner · Oracle Joined: Feb 03, 2004 Posts: 241 Location: Scotland

George, I am afraid NO cannot open AppleWorks files. The file formats NO can read are listed in the following document in the Wiki
http://neowiki.sixthcrusade.com/index.php/NeoOffice_File_Formats
If you have AppleWorks you could of course always re-save the files in one of these file formats.

Moebian · Guest

a Mac app like NeoOffice not being able to convert files belonging to a Mac word processing app like Claris or Appleworks. That's kind of anti-Mac if you think about it.

Glenner · Oracle Joined: Feb 03, 2004 Posts: 241 Location: Scotland

Moebian, that view may be understandable but how many Mac users will have used AppleWorks for serious office work? When I switched to Mac I tried AppleWorks for a short time but then quickly had to make a decision whether I would purchase MS Office or settle for some other product. And luckily then NeoOffice came along which allowed to swap files with MS Office users and has an open standard file format. I have never ever been sent an AppleWorks file by anyone. The only thing I can recommend is to open files in AppleWorks and re-save them as a .doc file or something similar NeoOffice can open.

Moebian · Guest

How many Mac users got Appleworks free with their computer?

Me.

I'd be nuts to pass up a free WP program rather than pay $100+ for Microsoft Office. Appleworks wasn't that bad. Some people are picky on their word processing programs. I'm the kind of person that's happy if it can just input what I type in, print it out & save...nothing too detailed. I switched to NeoOffice only because I was getting tired of going in Classic mode just to use Appleworks 5. I'll do what you suggested though. Good idea. I tried OneClickConverter...an app that supposedly converts AW files into Word & other word processing program files...but it stunk. I'll just resave. I should have thought of that before.

Guest · Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 11:48 am Post subject: Consumer Macs

All consumer Macs (iBooks & iMacs) come with AppleWorks.

AppleWorks 6.2.9 runs in Mac OS X and is available from store.apple.com

Guest · Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 12:20 pm Post subject:

please remember that openoffice.org is not a mac program. all of the file filters in neo are from oo.o and thus are heavy on the windows side of the fence.

the 'neooffice' part of the code is providing the ability to use openoffice.org without X11.

applework's file format are closed. meaning it would be difficult to write a converter for it (not to meation such a task would be too time consuming for the neo coders, they are focusing on bigger things now, like the 1.2 release and then onto 2.0). however, neo is opensource, so if you, or anyone, writes a filter for appleworks it could be encorportated (as was the wordperfect filter).

if it makes you feel any better, until very recently, files created in ms works could NOT be opened by ms office.

-j

kcavaliere · Pure-blooded Human Joined: Dec 24, 2004 Posts: 34

It's a bit rough to compare AppleWorks 5, a very old OS9 (an earlier) app and NeoOffice. AW has a proprietary file format. No program can read/write AW files except AppleWorks. This is not unusual. Not many programs can read Microsoft Works data, for example.

This is not a NeoOffice or OpenOffice problem. Apple could release the specs for the file format and someone could write a filter if there was any motivation.

Many AppleWorks users, myself included, have been waiting for years for Apple to update 6.29. We're still waiting for iWork to have a spreadsheet. Macworld came and went, no update to AppleWorks and no spreadsheet for iWork. However, you can get a nifty discount on Microsoft Office. Oh. Office does not read AppleWorks either. Thankfully we have NeoOffice and OpenOffice.

These proprietary file format problems are the exact reason that an open file standard is very important, not just for open source software, but for commercial software as well. This may not seem to be important for common tasks, like letter writing, but imagine if your medical information or diagnosis could not be read at a critical moment because of a proprietary file format. I'm sure we all can come up with better examples.

Ken.

Guest · Posted: Fri Jan 20, 2006 9:14 pm Post subject:

http://www.dataviz.com/products/maclinkplus/mlp_xlators.html

No OOo file format support. Sad

kcavaliere · Pure-blooded Human Joined: Dec 24, 2004 Posts: 34

Looking at the MacLink Plus and conversion Plus list of supported formats I noticed that there is no NeoOffice/OpenOffice/StarOffice format translator. It would be nice if they supported this document format, even though it is destined for greater things.

Moebian: AppleWorks 5 had a version of MacLink extensions that handled a very broad range of file formats. These were not native to the program. It was a huge sticking point to many people that AppleWorks 6 did not have the same translators.

NeoOffice, thankfully, supports a great many modern formats, without the need for any external apps. That's mighty impressive.

Ken.