the mac community and 2006

[jakeOSX]

forgive me, but i am a bit frustrated.

i've used staroffice for a long time. then openoffice since the day it came out. when i got my mac (not a convert, but a returner) i followed the OO.o betas through, installing them one by one to use.

All because i knew one day, soon, there would be a nice aqua port.

yes, i understand, more people use wintel machines, but i'd wager a larger percentage of mac users would use OO.o.

so now we wait until 2006. or we do something about it. now i'll be honest, after webprograming, my programming skills never passed back "how to ## in 21 days" books and "hello world" applications. but i'd help however i can.

is neoOffice the way to go? can we change the intent from an experiment to a full blown port? i think we have the base to do it. maybe set up a sourceforge group, or send out posts to macslash and such asking for help. the programmers are there, we just need to get them onboard.

maybe the way to go is to get GPL code and start fresh, and make something, yet again, uniquely mac.

I dunno, i think we should talk intent and purpose. maybe change frustration into fire. with an OO.o port, the mac community has a chance to show the rest of the open source community that we are serious.

just my thoughts, i'm sure more will come.

-jake

[fa]

Well, for the moment, NeoOffice is the way to go for the Aqua port. While an aquafied OpenOffice.org probably won't be ready for a long time, we're targetting a good NeoOffice release based off of 1.1 sources for January.

I'm frankly not sure what to do to get developers. We've been trying for years, and not many people stick around.

Dan

[pluby]

FWIW, while NeoOffice is being developed, NeoOffice/J is almost completely done and runs without need for X11! It doesn't have any Aqua stuff, but at least it runs as a native Mac OS X app and uses native fonts and printing.

Check it out at http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/ or checking at the NeoOffice/J testing forum for the lastest features.

Patrick

[jakeOSX]

Ok, so we have the /J version for a pseudo quick fix (right?) and the full Neo for a 1.1 Jan release. Sounds a lot better already.

How much are we allowed to advertise? by that i mean, can we do MacSlash / Slashdot posts about wanting developers?

Question. What would be the difference between NeoOffice and an aquafied OO.o?

Next Question. What non-programming aspects of the development are there, and when should they be started? do we need things like icons? buttons? (like a graphic artist?)

Next Next Question. Who is hosting this site? I looked into my server, and don't think i can support the server space needed (working on about 200 megs with four sites) but could definatly help host more sites as they come through. I'll look into where we can get server space, and post findings.

I'd like to help, though like i said, not sure what i can do yet.

-jake

[OPENSTEP]

Thanks for the offer of help Right now it's split between planamesa and my personal DSL...which is why the CVS is so slow. The easiest way to help out is to set up binary mirrors or mirror the main website in case it gets /.d (it grinds my DSL to a halt, but I can stilll serve up redirect requests at a reasonable rate of 500 / minute).

In the time since Dan's and Patrick's postings, I've engaged to get us into a campaign to yank out another interim release of OOo. I suspect, however, that we will not be allowed to make drastic changes with it like introducing sheets and alternative interfaces...

There exists the argument that Neo exists to allow us to have personal control, and to an extent, that's its strongest point. Not control, but freedom. E.g. we can do whatever we want to research and play without needing someone else's permission to do so. As a hobbyist developer, I will admit...it sucks that you can't even try a crazy idea since you know it won't be allowed in a project unless you break out the thumbscrews (e.g. OOo).

ed

[schlesi]

Hi,

maybe I could help out with hosting capacity. I'm already mirroring NeoOffice/J and actually playing around with the "Zope"-server. I'm running a 900MHz-Athlon-box with Gentoo-Linux, connected via 1Mbit/128kBit-DSL-line.The server is located in Germany.

Because it's my at-home-server, it may be down sometimes (like today ;-( ).

Tell me, how I could help.

Thomas

[jakeOSX]

Ok (hoping this time this will post)

First, glad to see everything is up again. =) i was worried.

setting up a mirror of the site itself (main, not trinity) should be no problem. i don't run a server at home (well, not yet) but pay for space. (hence why i am limited) so at the moment i don't think i'd be very useful with respect to mirroring actual files (unless there are smaller sub-projects, but we can discuss when that comes up). i'll see about doing that soon.

ed, i am still a little confused about the 'allowed' part.

is a macslash.org or slashdot.org posting on neo calling for programmers ok? if so, would there be use for them? (would you guys be able to handle imediate attempts at help, or should we hold off on trying to get help?)

I want to help, what can i do?

jake

[jakeOSX]

Ok (hoping this time this will post)

First, glad to see everything is up again. =) i was worried.

setting up a mirror of the site itself (main, not trinity) should be no problem. i don't run a server at home (well, not yet) but pay for space. (hence why i am limited) so at the moment i don't think i'd be very useful with respect to mirroring actual files (unless there are smaller sub-projects, but we can discuss when that comes up). i'll see about doing that soon.

ed, i am still a little confused about the 'allowed' part.

is a macslash.org or slashdot.org posting on neo calling for programmers ok? if so, would there be use for them? (would you guys be able to handle imediate attempts at help, or should we hold off on trying to get help?)

I want to help, what can i do?

jake

[OPENSTEP]

In terms of mirroring, yeah, anything is helpful if it gets /.d. Hopefully that won't happen Hosting binaries would be awesome since that's one of the biggest drains on my conection. The website is designed to be intentionally low bandwidth But if it gets /.d I can set up the DNS to do a round-robin style allocation between all of the mirrors

In terms of the 'allowed' issue with OpenOffice.org, it's more of a political thing then a technical thing...basically, to make a change to OpenOffice.org within its framework it needs to fall within the Sun release schedules (e.g. 2005/6 for major new features) and be approved by the "project leads". Most of the project leads are still Sun employees (exception of lingucomponent, porting), so if it's a feature not needed for their work or a bug fix it becomes a real uphill battle to get additions approved.

When fighting the battle to get something approved for incorporation into the source code takes 2-3 times as long as writing it in the first place, it becomes a very frustrating atmosphere in which to work. And even then there's no guarantee that changes are accepted.

So in terms of what's "allowed", I can't say since I'm not one of the Sun project leads. What I do know, however, is that a simple patch to add a third modifier key so we can use Command, Control, and Option on a Mac keyboard was disallowed from being committed into the 1.x source by the Sun project leads. That doesn't bode well for executing a major overhaul of the program to become a Mac application (or Gnome HIG compliant, or whatever). I've been scraping to try to get together the support we need to do it within OOo (ok, complaining until they start listening) but it's getting tiring.

There's no room in the project for "exploratory" style development or really for drastic platform specific customization without a lot of frustration. Thus NeoOffice was created to provide us a sandbox for exploring these things. The idea is if we can get them right, then perhaps Sun will accept them. It's beginning to happen with our Draw* API for controls already.

ed