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OS X Native OpenOffice: Alpha Release Buggy But Welcome

By Scott Gilbertson June 6, 2007 Categories: Operating Systems, Software & Tools

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Last month Sun announced it would lend its support to a native OS X port of the OpenOffice suite and yesterday OpenOffice.org released the first alpha version of an OS X native version of the popular, free alternative to Microsoft Office.

But before Mac users get to excited about shedding those Redmond chains bear in mind that this release is very alpha and comes with the follow, bold, red, all caps warning from the OpenOffice site:

THIS SOFTWARE MAY CRASH AND MAY DESTROY YOUR DATA DO NOT USE THIS SOFTWARE FOR REAL WORK IN A PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT

Having downloaded and tested the OpenOffice alpha I can attest to its bugginess. In fact it’s largely unusable, and while that’s to be expected in alpha software, I would characterize this as more of a proof of concept than an alpha (screenshots after the jump).

Thus far the list of missing features is nearly as long as the features list, but the release is a welcome sign of life for the OS X port of OpenOffice. Here’s a few cautionary notes from the release page:

  • You cannot print
  • PDF export does not properly work as the text won’t show on the page right
  • Starting OpenOffice.org from a shared folder does not work
  • Copy and paste does not fully work
  • OpenOffice.org will crash after quitting
  • Some text is not drawn in places like Impress
  • Impress will not recognize multiple monitors

OpenOffice for Mac will require OS X 10.4 Tiger

If the limited functionality doesn’t put you off, feel free to download and give it a try. Just be warned, it’s got a long way to go before it reaches to functional stage.

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Tags: Mac
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