OpenOffice Beta Released for Mac OS X

The OpenOffice.org Project on Monday finalized a public beta version of the open source office productivity suite for Mac OS X. Formed two years ago by Sun Microsystems, OpenOffice.org has already brought the project -- based on Sun's StarOffice suite -- to Windows, Linux and Solaris.

Although the beta release for Mac OS X is a major milestone for developers, the port still requires XFree86 and may not appeal to novice users. XFree86 is the standard X11 Windowing System included in almost every Linux distribution, and is able to run on the Darwin core found in Mac OS X.

"While the Mac OS X/Darwin Porting Team feels this Public Beta release is tentatively for public use, much remains to be done and the release is still primarily for developers. It still contains bugs, is missing some functionality, is not completely stable, and requires additional software to run, such as the XWindows windowing system from the XFree86 project," wrote project organizers on the OpenOffice.org Web site.

The beta release can open, create and save files, and print to any printer supported under Mac OS X 10.2 or Darwin 6. Many bugs have been fixed from the previous developer release as well. Developers encourage users to submit feedback and even contribute code to the project.

An updated delivery schedule puts a final release early next year, but the timeframe is largely dependent on volunteers and could be compressed with additional help.

"Work is continuing to create a stable, bug-free port based on OpenOffice.org 1.0.1, which will include both the XWindows version and a Mac OS X Quartz/Aqua graphics version, but more developers are needed," project members wrote.

A new developer build, numbered 643, was also released Monday for Windows, Linux and Solaris. Import and export filters for DocBook, XHTML, FlatXML and mobile devices are included in the test release.