O'Reilly: OpenOffice/NeoOffice on Mac OS X | Linux Today

O’Reilly: OpenOffice/NeoOffice on Mac OS X

Written By
Web Webster
Web Webster
Oct 8, 2002

[ Thanks to Jaja for
this link. ]

“Open Office contains 7.5 million lines of code, and produces
240 megabytes of executable code. It isn’t just a large project;
it’s a huge project.

“Before you start porting something like this, you have to ask
yourself what kind of programmers you have. Old mac coders may not
know Unix, and vice versa. You need both. And you have to ask
yourself about your users. Do they want something with typical Mac
‘fit and finish’?

“There was a three stage porting approach:

“Phase 1: Get it to compile. (Just treat Mac OS X as another
Unix)
Phase 2: Wean it away from X11. (Get it to run without an X
server.)
Phase 3: Adopt Aqua look and feel. (Make it behave like a Mac
application.)

“Phase 1 (just getting it to compile) took a whole year…”

Complete
Story

Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

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