Thursday, June 23 2005 @ 04:49 AM EDT Contributed by: glosser
eWeek reports on two alternative office suites for the Mac.
Major milestones were recently announced for two Mac
OS X-compatible software suites that could provide an alternative to the near-ubiquitous Microsoft Office. The free NeoOffice/J, an open-source software development project created by Patrick Luby and Edward Peterlin, has reached its "first stable release," and
South Korea-based Haansoft has announced that it will ship a Mac OS X version of its ThinkFree Office 3.0 suite close on the heels of the July release of the Windows version.
NeoOffice/J 1.1 represents the first "final" release of the office suite, which includes a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software, and a drawing application. It also offers improved text handling and bug fixes to the earlier Final Candidate release.
According to its creators, NeoOffice/J is compatible with most Microsoft Office files. Unlike some open-source office suites, NeoOffice/J users can drag and drop as well as copy and paste data to and from other applications.
In addition, NeoOffice/J uses a standard Mac OS X installer, presents native Aqua menus, does not require Mac OS X users to install and use X11 software, uses Mac OS X fonts and has native printing support.
