There was a rift in the developer community a while back between a few of the volunteers and Oracle (who bought Sun who had started the project). OpenOffice - this is the base of both LibreOffice and NeoOffice. The last release was 8 months ago so I'm not sure how actively developed it is.Ģ. It used to be free but you're now required to make a donation. In other words, they made it fit in better with the OS.
OPEN OFFICE VERSUS NEOOFFICE CODE
NeoOffice - this project took the OpenOffice source code and made it a good OS X citizen. Let me try to explain the differences (I might be generalizing however)ġ. If that is important, then MS Office is required. Also, keep in mind that opening and saving documents in native MS Office formats does not guarantee that all capabilities will go both ways. I have both Pages and Keynote Pages does some things I need for page layout that none of the above programs can handle.
OPEN OFFICE VERSUS NEOOFFICE PRO
I also have begun using Nisus Writer Pro (native. Since I never use databases it isn’t a problem.įor serious writing I use Mellel, best for my work with Hebrew. It only has the three main programs (write, calc, impress), so no database. (see Symphony Wiki for many helpful links.) It is actually the most stable of all the various forms (OpenOffice, LibreOffice, etc.). But I also keep the IBM rendition called Symphony. The major problems for LibreOffice on Mac: 1) tables do not make the round trip to MS Office very well, including how the margins are affected 2) scrolling is still a problem on the Mac 3) bidirectional work is not complete (I use Hebrew as well as Greek, Latin, German, and English).įor my exchange work, LibreOffice is the one I use most. Keep in mind for these exchange files we do not use complicated stuff (seldom footnotes, bibliography, etc.) I exchange files (word processing and spreadsheets) with several others, and LibreOffice works most of the time. Then with the split last year and the appearance of LibreOffice, I switched to that and use it now. About two years ago it was good enough that I finally began using it (when needed). I have had OpenOffice on my computers during that entire time just to follow progress and giving feedback. I kept it until early this year, but seldom used it the past two years. But the free “demanded fee” caused me to back away. For a long time I used NeoOffice because it was indeed more Mac-like than OpenOffice. I have not used any MS program since early 2008 (I had been a power user for Excel (Windows) at a Fortune 100 company for 8 years).