NeoOffice


NeoOffice is an office suite for the macOS operating system developed by Planamesa Inc. It is a commercial fork of the free/open source OpenOffice.org that implements most of the features of OpenOffice.org, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, and graphics program, and adds some features not present in the macOS versions of LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice. Current versions are based on LibreOffice 4.4.

History

Versions of OpenOffice.org for Mac prior to 3.0 did not have a native Mac OS X interface; they required either X11.app or XDarwin to be installed.
NeoOffice was the first OpenOffice.org fork to offer a native Mac OS X experience, with easier installation, better integration into the Mac OS X interface, use of Mac OS X's fonts and printing services without additional configuration, and integration with the Mac OS X clipboard and drag-and-drop functions. Subsequently, both LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice followed NeoOffice's lead and implemented similarly native Mac OS X versions.
NeoOffice began as a project to investigate methods of creating a native port of OpenOffice.org to Mac OS X. The project now called NeoOffice was originally dubbed "NeoOffice/J", reflecting its use of Mac OS X's Java integration to enable a native application. A related project was NeoOffice/C, which was a simultaneous effort to develop a version using Apple's Cocoa APIs. But NeoOffice/C proved very difficult to implement and the application was highly unstable, so the project was set aside in favor of the more promising NeoOffice/J. The "/J" suffix was dropped with version 1.2, since there was no longer another variety of NeoOffice from which to distinguish it. Many of these releases were preceded by a version that only Early Access Members could download; these versions were released about a month before the official release date.
All versions from NeoOffice 3.1.1 to NeoOffice 2015 were based on OpenOffice.org 3.1.1, though latter versions included stability fixes from LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice. NeoOffice 2017 and later versions are fully based on LibreOffice.
In 2013 NeoOffice moved to a commercial distribution model via the Mac App Store. As of 2016, the source code is still available for free, but the software package is only available with the purchase of a commercial license.
OOo versionVersionRelease dateRelease Notes
1.0.3.1NeoOffice/C 0.0.1June 22, 2003Incendiary Goblin build
1.1.2NeoOffice/J 1.1 Alpha 2September, 2004-
1.1.3NeoOffice/J 1.1 BetaDecember, 2004-
1.1.4NeoOffice/J 1.1 RCMarch, 2005-
1.1.4NeoOffice/J 1.1June 22, 2005-
2.0NeoOffice 1.2 AlphaNovember, 2005-
2.0.1NeoOffice 1.2 BetaJanuary 2, 2006-
2.0.1NeoOffice 1.2February 1, 2006-
2.0.2NeoOffice 1.2.2March 30, 2006-
2.0.2NeoOffice 2.0 Alpha PowerPCApril 25, 2006-
2.0.2NeoOffice 2.0 Alpha 2 PowerPCMay 9, 2006-
2.0.2NeoOffice 2.0 Alpha 3 PowerPCMay 23, 2006-
2.0.2NeoOffice 2.0 Alpha IntelJune 5, 2006-
2.0.2NeoOffice 2.0 Alpha 2 IntelJune 19, 2006-
2.0.3NeoOffice 2.0 Alpha 4July 1, 2006-
2.0.3NeoOffice 2.0 Aqua BetaAugust 1, 2006-
2.0.3NeoOffice 2.0 Aqua Beta 2August 15, 2006-
2.0.3NeoOffice 2.0 Aqua Beta 3August 29, 2006-
2.1.0NeoOffice 2.1March 26, 2007Introduced an icon set with designs that more closely resemble typical Mac OS X icons than those of OpenOffice.org.
2.2.1NeoOffice 2.2.1August 27, 2007-
2.2.1NeoOffice 2.2.2October 9, 2007Bug fixes
2.2.1NeoOffice 2.2.3March 17, 2008QuickTime video support, Menus available when no documents are open, Import images from scanners and cameras
2.2.1NeoOffice 2.2.4June 16, 2008Media browser support, native floating tool windows, support for newer trackpad gestures, support for horizontal scrolling
2.2.1NeoOffice 2.2.5September 15, 2008Bug fixes, speed improvements, apple remote support in Impress.
2.2.1NeoOffice 2.2.6October 27, 2009Last version to support Mac OS X 10.3.
3.0.1NeoOffice 3.0March 31, 2009Introduced access to the Mac OS X spellchecker, grammar checker, address book and media browser; users of languages not supported by the Mac OS X spellchecker can use the Hunspell system originally used. It also improved support for Microsoft Word 2007, Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 documents, and for spreadsheets with Visual Basic for Applications macros that made their debut in version 2.1. Speed improvements, command clicking on window titlebar, Mac OS X 10.5 grammar checker. Requires Mac OS X 10.4 or above.
3.0.1NeoOffice 3.0.1October 27, 2009-
3.0.1NeoOffice 3.0.2February 1, 2010Added native Mac OS X text highlighting, smoother text kerning and more
3.1.1NeoOffice 3.1.1May 10, 2010Added support for "Look Up in Dictionary" context menu item in Writer to look up a word's definition, if it exists, in Mac OS X's Dictionary application. Also, users can view 10 versions of each NeoOffice Mobile file, The NeoOffice Mobile window is collapsible, and the NeoOffice Mobile menu uses less space in NeoOffice's menubar.
3.1.1NeoOffice 3.1.2September 7, 2010Temporary files are encrypted when FileVault is enabled. Fix for bugs that cause embedded images to be lost after saving Writer or Impress documents.
3.1.1NeoOffice 3.219 April 2011Mac OS X 10.7 Lion support, more font support, smaller PDFs
3.1.1NeoOffice 3.322 August 2012High resolution text on Retina displays, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and Gatekeeper, Cocoa replaces Java
3.1.1NeoOffice 3.422 October 2013OS X 10.9 support, last version to support 10.6 & 10.7.
3.1.1NeoOffice 20139 August 2013First NeoOffice version available in Mac App Store, OS X 10.8 minimum required.
3.1.1NeoOffice 201412 June 201464-bit and OS X 10.10 support
3.1.1NeoOffice 20159 September 2015OS X 10.11 support.
LibreOffice versionVersionRelease dateRelease Notes
4.4NeoOffice 201717 August 2017First version to be based on LibreOffice

Supported file formats

Listed here, in the order of appearance in the Save As dialogue box, are the file formats supported for saving documents in NeoOffice 3.1.2. In cases where NeoOffice is used to edit a document originally in a Microsoft format, NeoOffice can save to that format without loss of formatting.

Word processor application



By default, NeoOffice loads and saves files in the OpenDocument file format, although this can be changed by the user. The OpenDocument file format is an XML file format standardized by OASIS.

Licensing

Sun first released OpenOffice.org under both the LGPL and SISSL, later under only the LGPL, with a requirement for copyright assignment for any contributions to the main code base, which allowed Sun to create proprietary versions of the software. NeoOffice chose not to assign its code to Sun, which prevented Sun from using NeoOffice code in official OpenOffice.org versions.
There were initially some attempts to resolve the licensing differences and foster more direct cooperation and code-sharing between the NeoOffice and OpenOffice.org developers. However, the NeoOffice developers said that they preferred to work separately from OpenOffice.org because "coordination requires a significant amount of time." The OpenOffice.org developers said that "a proposal to work together has been made, and NeoOffice developers refused". The NeoOffice developers subsequently expressed support for LibreOffice and the launch of The Document Foundation.
Though NeoOffice is sold commercially, the source code is still available for free under the terms of the GPL.