Changes in NeoOffice 2.1

[pluby]

We've been working busily on upgrading the NeoOffice code to work with a combination of the OOo 2.1 code and Novell's ooo-build code. In the last couple of days, I finally got NeoOffice to install and run. There is still lots of work to do before the NeoOffice 2.1 Early Access release is ready, but it is far enough along that I wanted to tell everyone what changes to expect. Here's the list that I have so far:

1. Neo 2.1 preferences will be in a new folder as the OOo 2.1 code doesn't seem to handle reading OOo 2.0 preferences directly:

~/Library/Preferences/NeoOffice-2.1

2. There is no "first run" wizard that asks you to agree to a license, import settings, and register. Instead, importing of any NeoOffice 2.0 preferences will happen automatically and NeoOffice 2.1 will go straight to opening a document window instead of badgering you for all sorts of information.

3. There is an enhanced OpenSymbol font that will correct most, but not all, math symbol display problems that OOo has. Note, however, that to get this work, you will not see the Mac OS X Symbol font in the NeoOffice 2.1 font list as I found that part of the problem is that the OOo code assumes that any font named "Symbol" must be the Windows Symbol font and, as a result, tries to have the Mac Symbol font render Unicode characters that it has no glyphs for. The Mac Symbol font will still be used for font fallback purposes, but NeoOffice will use Novell's enhanced OpenSymbol font to render any text in your documents that are set to the Symbol font.

4. The Neo 2.1 installer will require that you have Java 1.4.2 or higher installed. While Java 1.4.1 would work, it had serious bugs and performance problems so we're not going to support it. Note that although I compiled Neo 2.1 on Tiger, it will run on 10.3.9 and, most likely, earlier versions of Panther just like Neo 2.0.3 AB 3. The only hard requirement is Java 1.4.2 or higher.

5. I am attempting to solve problems with duplicate fonts in this release. Up until Neo 2.0 AB 3, I have used the last font when there are duplicate fonts. Neo 2.1 will use the first font. This will hopefully decrease the problems with duplicate fonts that users see. But, it is also possible that it will make things worse. Fortunately, if it makes things worse, I can just switch it back.

6. It's been mentioned in other forum posts but just for completeness, Neo 2.1 will have the new icons that some of our users have developed, the ability to open, edit, and save Office 2007 .docx files, and execute Excel VBA macros.

7. Since Neo AB 3 now can use your web proxy settings in System Preferences if you are behind a firewill, Neo 2.1 will no longer open the welcome, donation, and patch download pages in a separate browser. Instead, Neo 2.1 will open then a separate, read-only, document windows within NeoOffice. The "magic" opening of browser windows was a little too similar to the behavior of popup ads so keeping display of these pages will hopefully not be as worrisome for many users.

That's all the big changes for now. I'll update the topic if I find any more changes.

Patrick

[sardisson]

Definitely worthy of a 0.1 update

And this post makes it easy for me to crib when doing the "major features" section of the release notes and MacUpdate/VersionTracker/Apple listings

Thanks for the update!

Smokey

[LemonAid]

[Samwise]

I understand that NeoOffice 2.1 will now build all the way without breaking ? I'll try building this weekend then (hopefully all should go well - fingers crossed). If there's something I can do to help you with the 2.1 release, let me know.

too

P.S. As usual, I will use gcc 4.0 although I'm on PPC.

[pluby]

[Samwise]

It's just to remind you that my build is slightly different than the official PowerPC builds.

I suppose (as in hope) that, unlike the OOo and Neo anoncvs, I don't need to login to get read-only access to ooo-build's svn repository ?

[pluby]

FYI. Do a cvs update -d after the next anoncvs sync to get the OpenXML support. I just integrated it into the installer a few minutes ago.

Patrick

[Samwise]

Thanks. In order to get it, I don't need to rebuild the OOo portion of the build, right ?

[pluby]

[OPENSTEP]

For those building, look at the updated instructions in the README as there are a couple of extra things that you need to set up in order to build including getting subversion installed and on the path and also getting the Mono tools installed (ooo-converter is C#).

ed

[sardisson]

From the other thread: Novell's Solver will be in 2.1

(Mostly reposting this here so I can scan just one thread when writing stuff )

[pluby]

[pluby]

FYI. I have committed some fairly significant changes to NeoOffice build this week including adding some new files and adding the latest icon packages.

So, when you do your next cvs update, be aware of the files that appear as conflicts. These are new files that I have added to the build.

Also, note that after you do your cvs update, all of the NeoOffice custom code will be rebuilt. This is because I added some environment variables to the build so these new environment variables will force the affected NeoOffice modules to rebuild.

Patrick

[pluby]

I made one more big change today (hopefully it will be the last before EAP starts):

1. I added a new hsqldb module to the NeoOffice custom code. You will need to cvs update -d in your neojava folder to get this new code.

2. I removed a couple of files in the vcl module. You will need to delete your build.neo_vcl_patch file before you rebuild so that the vcl/unxmac*.pro folder is emptied.

Patrick

[ovvldc]

And Apple just released security and Java updates. I hope they don't give you any trouble at this stage..

Best wishes,
Oscar