Mac Office Software

I've recently bought a new Mac Book for my wife[1] and it
came without  
any Office software installed. Well, we got a 30 day
evaluation copy  
of MS Office.

My first instinct was to install OpenOffice, but the Mac
version  
doesn't look anywhere near as polished as the Windows and
Linux  
versions. It's just a port of the Unix version and
therefore I needed  
to install the Mac X Server first (why isn't that part of
the standard  
OSX installation?) and even then it looked a bit clunky - it
opens an  
xterm as it starts the X Server and (for reasons that I
couldn't work  
out) all the menus were in French. So I uninstalled it
pretty quickly.

So what do other people use on their Macs? Is there a decent
free (or  
even cheap) office suite for the Mac? Or do I just have to
bite the  
bullet and buy MS Office?

Any advice from the iGeeks would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

Dave...

[1] And I must say that OSX 10.4 is a _lot_ nicer than the
10.2.8 or  
whatever we were running on Piers' old Powerbook. Still not
as nice as  
Gnome (IMHO), but I could get used to it.

-- 
site: http://dave.org.uk/
blog: http://blog.dave.org.uk/

On 8/23/06, Dave Cross <davedave.org.uk> wrote:
>
> So what do other people use on their Macs? Is there a
decent free (or
> even cheap) office suite for the Mac? Or do I just have
to bite the
> bullet and buy MS Office?

I'm using NeoOffice:

http://www.neooffice.org/

Seems worky.

-- 
Adam Auden - UNIX Metal Geek
whois bimble.net

Dave Cross:
> My first instinct was to install OpenOffice, but the
Mac version  
> doesn't look anywhere near as polished as the Windows
and Linux  
> versions. It's just a port of the Unix version and
therefore I needed  

Try the other mac version: http://www.neooffice.org/

-- 
    buf[hdr[0]] = 0;    /* unbelievably lazy ken (twit) */ 
- Andrew Hume

On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 11:29:12AM +0100, Dave Cross wrote:
> 
> I've recently bought a new Mac Book for my wife[1] and
it came without  
> any Office software installed. Well, we got a 30 day
evaluation copy  
> of MS Office.
> 
> My first instinct was to install OpenOffice, but the
Mac version  
> doesn't look anywhere near as polished as the Windows
and Linux  
> versions. It's just a port of the Unix version and
therefore I needed  
> to install the Mac X Server first (why isn't that part
of the standard  
> OSX installation?) and even then it looked a bit clunky
- it opens an  
> xterm as it starts the X Server and (for reasons that I
couldn't work  
> out) all the menus were in French. So I uninstalled it
pretty quickly.
> 
> So what do other people use on their Macs? Is there a
decent free (or  
> even cheap) office suite for the Mac? Or do I just have
to bite the  
> bullet and buy MS Office?

If you just want a word processor and presentation software,
then I
found Apple's iWork package to be very usable.  At around
£, it's not
unreasonably priced.

    http://www.apple.com/iwor
k/

You're spot on about OpenOffice being utterly unusable
though.  You
might want to try NeoOffice instead -- it's some kind of
native OS X
port.  But the released version is only OOo 1.1 right now. 
2.0 is still
in beta.

    http://www.neooffice.org/

-Dom

On 23 Aug 2006, at 11:29, Dave Cross wrote:
[...]
> So what do other people use on their Macs?

strings blah.doc ?

> Is there a decent free (or even cheap) office suite for
the Mac? Or  
> do I just have to bite the bullet and buy MS Office?

Unlike the rest of the cretin developers at Microsoft, their
Mac  
developers actually appear to posess Clue. So if you find
you do  
actually need to do anything more with Word documents than
just read  
those that have been emailed to you, it might be worth
buying or  
otherwise acquiring a copy.

> Any advice from the iGeeks would be much appreciated.

I prefer writing documentation in LaTeX using Aquamacs
Emacs, but I'm  
perverse like that.

> [1] And I must say that OSX 10.4 is a _lot_ nicer than
the 10.2.8  
> or whatever we were running on Piers' old Powerbook.
Still not as  
> nice as Gnome (IMHO), but I could get used to it.

... and I find GNOME and KDE to be horribly crufty in their
attempt  
to clone the Windows look and feel. If I want Windows, I
know where I  
can find it.

These days, I relegate Linux to the server where it does a
fine job  
so long as X11 gets nowhere near it.

On Wed, Aug 23, 2006 at 11:29:12AM +0100, Dave Cross wrote:
> So what do other people use on their Macs? Is there a
decent free (or  
> even cheap) office suite for the Mac? 

Abiword is quite nice on a Mac, although it is just a word
processor. http://www.abisource.com/

> Or do I just have to bite the bullet and buy MS Office?
[2]

> [1] And I must say that OSX 10.4 is a _lot_ nicer than
the 10.2.8 or  
> whatever we were running on Piers' old Powerbook.
Still not as nice as  
> Gnome (IMHO), but I could get used to it.

With you on that. Although in the 9 months or so I spent
with 10.3 I
found its differences just being increasingly annoying and I
fled back
to FOSS land as soon as the startup I was working for at the
time went
from "Not making any money" to "Going to
collapse at any minute".

[2] Linux spoilt me. I found OS X to be a constant cycle of
"Focus
follows mouse? $15 shareware. Virtual desktops? $15
shareware. Something else you take for granted at home? $15
shareware".

-- 
David Dorward                                      http://dorward.me.uk

Quoting Adam Auden <adambimble.net>:

> On 8/23/06, Dave Cross <davedave.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>> So what do other people use on their Macs? Is there
a decent free (or
>> even cheap) office suite for the Mac? Or do I just
have to bite the
>> bullet and buy MS Office?
>
> I'm using NeoOffice:
>
> http://www.neooffice.org/
>
> Seems worky.

Ah. OpenOffice rebuilt for Aqua rather than X. Sounds
sensible. I'll  
investigate further.

Thanks,

Dave...

-- 
site: http://dave.org.uk/
blog: http://blog.dave.org.uk/

On 23 Aug 2006, at 11:29, Dave Cross wrote:
[snip]
> So what do other people use on their Macs? Is there a
decent free  
> (or even cheap) office suite for the Mac? Or do I just
have to bite  
> the bullet and buy MS Office?
[snip]

I use NeoOffice <http://www.neooffice.or
g/> OpenOffice with a Mac OS  
wrapper for most of my MS Office related documents. Still
nowhere  
near as nice as MS Office on the Mac, but considerably more
Mac-ish  
than OpenOffice on X.

I use Apple's Keynote for presentations which is jolly
nice. If your  
wife's Word usage more oriented towards the desktop
publishing /  
layout end of the spectrum she might like Apple's Pages
app. If it's  
more document oriented NeoOffice is probably a better bet.

AbiWord is quite nice as a WP too <http://www.abisource.co
m/>

Cheers,

Adrian

On Aug 23, 2006, at 11:29, Dave Cross wrote:


>
> I've recently bought a new Mac Book for my wife[1] and
it came  
> without any Office software installed. Well, we got a
30 day  
> evaluation copy of MS Office.
>
> My first instinct was to install OpenOffice, but the
Mac version  
> doesn't look anywhere near as polished as the Windows
and Linux  
> versions. It's just a port of the Unix version and
therefore I  
> needed to install the Mac X Server first (why isn't
that part of  
> the standard OSX installation?) and even then it looked
a bit  
> clunky - it opens an xterm as it starts the X Server
and (for  
> reasons that I couldn't work out) all the menus were
in French. So  
> I uninstalled it pretty quickly.
>
> So what do other people use on their Macs? Is there a
decent free  
> (or even cheap) office suite for the Mac? Or do I just
have to bite  
> the bullet and buy MS Office?
>

You could take a look at NeoOffice - it's a derivative of
OpenOffice  
but Aqua native - http
://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/download.php
Apples iWork is OK but Pages is a bit more Microsoft
Publisher than  
Word and it doesn't have a spreadsheet.


>
> Any advice from the iGeeks would be much appreciated.
>


>
> Cheers,
>
> Dave...
>
> [1] And I must say that OSX 10.4 is a _lot_ nicer than
the 10.2.8  
> or whatever we were running on Piers' old Powerbook.
Still not as  
> nice as Gnome (IMHO), but I could get used to it.
>

It can be made nicer with a few extras too.

nic


>
> -- 
> site: http://dave.org.uk/
> blog: http://blog.dave.org.uk/
>
>
>
>

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006, Dave Cross wrote:

> Quoting Adam Auden <adambimble.net>:
>
> > I'm using NeoOffice:
> >
> > http://www.neooffice.org/
> >
> > Seems worky.
>
> Ah. OpenOffice rebuilt for Aqua rather than X. Sounds
sensible. I'll
> investigate further.

I've been using the beta (OOv2-compatible) version
occasionally without
anything disasterous, or even moderately bad, happening.  A
lots of my
docs (which admitedly isn't a lot of docs) were from OO2 on
other
platforms, so it seemed worth the risk.

You might want to investigate RCDefaultApp from rubicode.com
too - OS X
has some really clever, nifty method of linking file
extensions, mime
types, creator codes and actual applications.  But no easy
way of
remapping such things yourself.  With RCDefaultApp you can
stop it trying
to open the MS test drive every time you click on a
doc/xls/etc and point
at at NeoOffice or whatever.


the hatter