The last version was 2022.7, released 2 September 2023.[3]
NeoOffice is no longer active as of December 2023. The project recommends users move to LibreOffice,[4] to which Patrick Luby of NeoOffice is a contributor.[5]
History
Versions of OpenOffice.org for Mac prior to 3.0 did not have a native Mac OS X interface; they required that either X11.app or XDarwin 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 (pull-down menus at the top of the screen and familiar keyboard shortcuts, for example), 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 interfaces.
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.[6] NeoOffice 2017 and later versions are fully based on LibreOffice.[7]
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 was only available with the purchase of a commercial license.[8] This has changed in 2022 as the code and all commits are released on GitHub. Moreover, the whole application is free of charge. Currently the NeoOffice website has the tag line, "An old fork of LibreOffice", and the notice: "The NeoOffice project is no longer active. As a replacement, you may want to try LibreOffice".
A timeline of major derivatives of StarOffice and OpenOffice.org with NeoOffice in light purple
Introduced 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 MicrosoftWord 2007, Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 documents, and for spreadsheets with Visual Basic for Applications macros that made their debut in version 2.1.[15] Speed improvements, command clicking on window titlebar, Mac OS X 10.5 grammar checker. Requires Mac OS X 10.4 or above.[16]
NeoOffice 3.0.1
October 27, 2009
NeoOffice 3.0.2
February 1, 2010
Added native Mac OS X text highlighting, smoother text kerning and more[17]
Added 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.
NeoOffice 3.1.2
September 7, 2010
Temporary files are encrypted when FileVault is enabled. Fix for bugs that cause embedded images to be lost after saving Writer or Impress documents.
Universal installer, runs natively on Apple silicon Mac computers[28]
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.
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 (notably StarOffice). 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."[29] The OpenOffice.org developers said that "a proposal to work together has been made, and NeoOffice developers refused".[30] The NeoOffice developers subsequently expressed support for LibreOffice and the launch of The Document Foundation.[31]
