[Tsilou B.]

German news site Macnews.de reports:

Wie der deutsche Ableger der OpenOffice.org-Initiative heute mitteilte, wird es nun doch eine native Mac OS X-Variante des freien Office-Paketes geben. Entsprechendes wurde auf einem Community-Workshop am vergangenen Wochenende beschlossen. Demnach soll der Aqua-Cocoa-Port von der deutschen OpenOffice.org-Mannschaft vorangetrieben werden, die ein entsprechendes Entwickler-Team initiiert hat. Auch neue Developer-Kollegen sollten für "die zukunftsweisende Mac-Technologie" besonders unterstützt werden, hieß es - man sucht also noch Mitstreiter. Einen Zeitplan nannte OpenOffice.org bislang noch nicht.

Rough translation:
The German offshoot of the OpenOffice.org initiative today disclosed that there will be a native Mac OS X version of the free OpenOffice package. This was decided on a community workshop last weekend. According to this the Aqua Cocoa port is to be advanced by the German OpenOffice.org team. It was said that new developer colleagues will also be specially supported for "the trend-setting Mac technology" - thus co-workers are still sought. A schedule was not yet released.
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I think that's pretty good news.

[Millennium]

Isn't that basically NeoOffice/J?

Also, keep in mind that this is likely to be Cocoa/Java, not Cocoa/ObjC. In practice this doesn't actually mean much, but some people insist on using only "pure" Cocoa/ObjC apps.

[Tsilou B.]

It looks like this port is not NeoOffice/J, but a "real" Cocoa port. I didn't post the last sentence of the news item:

Das Büropaket liegt bis dato nur als X11- sowie Java-Variante (NeoOffice/J) für den Mac vor, was viele Macianer verwunderte.

translation:
The office package is currently only available for the Mac in an X11 and a Java variant (NeoOffice/J), a fact that amazed many Mac fans.

So I'd guess that this means there's really going to be a "native" (non-Java) port of OpenOffice 2 for the Mac. I also think if this "German OpenOffice team" would help creating NeoOffice/J now, you could find something about that on the Neo homepage or forum.

[TETENAL]

"Still looking for contributors" "Schedule not yet released"

Everything as usual.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Tsilou B.:
It looks like this port is not NeoOffice/J, but a "real" Cocoa port.

This is probably NeoOffice/C then: same team, different branch. But NeoOffice/C is still written in Java. Cocoa can be accessed from Java, so it is as real a Cocoa app as any other. Only the language is different.

[Tsilou B.]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
"Still looking for contributors" "Schedule not yet released"

Everything as usual.

Of course "Looking for contributors", but apparently they already have a team which will work on this port. Until now, there were only the three developers of NeoOffice. They aren't German, so if there's now a German team porting OpenOffice to the Mac, it means there are finally some more people working on it. This hasn't happened before, although the NeoOffice devs have often said they were looking for contributors.

"Schedule not yet released" - if they really started a new port this weekend, it would be unbelievable if they already had a schedule. Let's hope they'll publish one in the near future.

"Everything as usual" - No, because the NeoOffice devs had announced that they the native OpenOffice port for the Mac had been canceled because there were not enough people working on it. They were going to concentrate on NeoOffice/J only.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Tsilou B.:
"Everything as usual" - No, because the NeoOffice devs had announced that they the native OpenOffice port for the Mac had been canceled because there were not enough people working on it. They were going to concentrate on NeoOffice/J only.

Not quite correct. The OpenOffice devs announced that they were cancelling their port (which was different from NeoOffice/J) because no one was working on it, and they then endorsed NeoOffice as the closest thing to a Mac port that was out there. The NeoOffice folks have not cancelled anything.

[Tsilou B.]

Originally posted by Millennium:
This is probably NeoOffice/C then: same team, different branch. But NeoOffice/C is still written in Java. Cocoa can be accessed from Java, so it is as real a Cocoa app as any other. Only the language is different.

I believe NeoOffice/C was not written in Java. Look at the latest released build:

http://www.neooffice.org/incendiary_goblin.html

"entire source base compiled as Objective C++"

But NeoOffice/C is no longer under active development and unlike NeoOffice/J, it was not planned as a stable version of OpenOffice for the Mac, but only as a fork of OpenOffice where the developers could "explore methods and problems that may be encountered when porting OpenOffice.org to run natively on Mac OS X".

I still hope this new team aims for a real port of OpenOffice to the Mac that will be maintained to the same level as the Solaris, Linux and Windows ports.

[Tsilou B.]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Not quite correct. The OpenOffice devs announced that they were cancelling their port (which was different from NeoOffice/J) because no one was working on it, and they then endorsed NeoOffice as the closest thing to a Mac port that was out there. The NeoOffice folks have not cancelled anything.

You're right. Of course, NeoOffice/J wasn't canceled. It's actually quite usable these days and a nice alternative to Microsoft Office.
I only said "the NeoOffice developers had announced..." because it was Edward Peterlin who announced it, and he was not only in the OpenOffice team, but he's also one of the active developers of NeoOffice.
To sum it up: there are/were four versions of OOo for the Mac:

• OpenOffice/X11: This one has always been developed, but is not really native and will always feel like a quick port from Linux.
• OpenOffice/Aqua: This one had been canceled, but maybe that German team will now work on it again.
• NeoOffice (now called NeoOffice/C): Prototype for technologies that could be used for the OpenOffice/Aqua port - no longer developed because the "approach it was using was slow and impractical".
• NeoOffice/J: Port of OpenOffice using Java. Already much better integrated with Mac OS X than OpenOffice/X11 (full font support, native menubar). This port has never been canceled and at least the NeoOffice developers see this port as the future of OpenOffice for the Mac.