NeoOffice 3.0.1 delivers Snow Leopard compatibility

By Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 28 October 2009 06:37

Open Source

Changes in Snow Leopard broke all previous versions of NeoOffice, the Mac-friendly version of the OpenOffice.org open source office suite. Version 3.0.1 provides compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6, along with a couple of new features.

OpenOffice.org is a popular open source office suite, but in several ways it doesn't work the way Mac users expect. NeoOffice is an OpenOffice.org derivative intended to fix that.

But when Snow Leopard arrived, users were dismayed to find that it caused NeoOffice to stop working.

The NeoOffice team comprises just two people, so it isn't surprising that a new version wasn't immediately available - but now it has arrived.

NeoOffice 3.0.1 provides Snow Leopard compatibility, returns to the traditional native method of file locking (as in NeoOffice 2.2.6) in place of the custom method used in OpenOffice.org 3.0, and adds a new feature called NeoOffice Mobile.

NeoOffice Mobile is a subscription service that allows documents to be published from NeoOffice to a server, where they can be securely viewed in any browser or web-enabled mobile device.

NeoOffice users that donate at least $US10 per month to the project can publish up to 100MB of documents. Users that have donated during the past year will receive one month of NeoOffice Mobile service for every $US10 donated.

Those that haven't donated (or who donate lesser amounts) are limited to 10MB of storage space, and their documents expire after 48 hours.

Mac-specific features implemented in NeoOffice include Services support, grammar checking (requires Mac OS X 10.5 and higher), trackpad gestures, Image Capture, iLife Media Browser, native floating tool menus, and display of the usual menus when no document is open (OpenOffice.org displays a minimal set of menus in that situation, preventing the use of Recent Documents or Help, among other commands).