OpenOffice.org is finally getting native Mac OS X support. The open source office suit has been available for Windows and Linux for years. And since 2005, you've been able to run OpenOffice.org on OS X, but you needed to install the resource-intensive X11 environment to get it working.

This summer, the development team offered the first alpha of a native version of OpenOffice.org for OS X. In other words, there's a standalone installer and you the applications are themed to look like native Mac apps. But as with any alpha software, install at your own risk and expect many bugs. For example, you couldn't print documents at first. That might be a dealbreaker.

Now the team has announced that they plan to have a fully functional version working for OS X by the time OpenOffice.org 3.0 is released in September 2008. The new version will include support for Apple's Aqua interface.

Of course, if you can't wait that long, you might want to check out NeoOffice, an independently produced OS X port of OpenOffice.org.

[via ComputerWorld]

As long as we're talking about word processors that have come a long way since we last talked about them: Mac users should sit up and take note: NeoOffice 2.1 arrives on March 27th.

NeoOffice is a OS X port of OppenOffice.org by a group of developers who have thought from the beginning that the Main OO.o team was taking the wrong tack in offering X-11 support on the Mac. Early NeoOffice releases were all-Java wrappers for OO.o (and were known as NeoOffice/J); recent releases have been Aqua native and, as of version 2.0, included both Intel and PPC binaries. NeoOffice 2.1 will include all the features of OpenOffice.org 2.1, including support for Office 2007 XML documents and Virtual Basic (VBA) macros. And, of course, possibly the coolest icon of any app on any platform.

NeoOffice also includes NeoLight, a plugin that allows Spotlight to index both content and metadata of OpenOffice and OpenDocument files. Users of main openOffice.org distribution can download NeoLight as a stand-alone application.

NeoOffice releases are named for the OpenOffice releases they're based on. Since this isn't an official OpenOffice.org release but a project based on OO.o, NeoOffice releases tend to lag a little behind their official brethren, so NeoOffice 2.1 will correspond to OpenOffice.org 2.1, which has been out for a while. While that sometimes means not being on the cutting edge, the NeoOffice release cycle does have a couple of advantages for uses. The most important, of course, is that NeoOffice is a native app. A less obvious benefit is that by the time a Neooffice release is rolled out, it contains the first several rounds of bugfixes to the OO.o codebase.

For those of you who just can't wait, there is still a NeoOffice 2.0 version available for download, and an Early Release version of NeoOffice 2.1 is available to people willing to support the project with a donation of $25 or more.

Considering the slow start that it got, I'm somewhat surprised that NeoOffice, the Mac-native port of OpenOffice.org, has hit version 2.0 just a year after the project's first official release. While OpenOffice.org runs on OS X, NeoOffice comes with a bundle of Mac-specific features like Finder and Mail.app integration, Aqua menus, native drag-and-drop support, and OS X font support. Back in October OpenOffice.org's porting team announced they'd drop the X11 version, "bite the bullet, and do the thing right, in Cocoa," but so far the fruits of that labor have yet to be seen, so for now the best option for some may be NeoOffice. Currently the download is available only in PowerPC flavor, but if you're antsy you can join NeoOffice's "Early Access Program" for a fee.

[Via Slashdot]