OpenOffice previews Mac-native software suite

Posted on 5 Jun 2007 at 10:48

OpenOffice.org has released an early alpha of the Aqua version of its eponymous office software suite.

While previous versions have required the installation of Apple's X11 environment, the Aqua build runs natively in OS X. The advantages of this are numerous, including tighter integration with the system and other applications, a more familiar and friendly interface and better performance.

However this may not be evident in this alpha release, which will not print, has problems with copy and paste and tends to crash when you tell it to quit. This is very much as test release. As the OpenOffice website warns: 'this software may crash and may destroy your data do not use this software for real work in a production environment'.

With that in mind, you can download the alpha from porting.openoffice.org/mac.

Development of the Mac version received a major boost last month when Sun Microsystems announced that it is devoting two engineers to work on porting the software to the Apple OS, reversing a 2001 decision. OpenOffice was originally developed by Sun as an alternative to the ubiquitous Microsoft Office, before being released to the open source community.

NeoOffice provides an alternative - and already OS X-native - Mac port of the OpenOffice code.

Author: Simon Aughton

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