Update:

> LibreOffice is also available for PPC

Official support for MacOSX/PPC has ended in October 2013 with version 4.0.6.2. Therefore, unofficial builds of new versions are being provided there:

http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/manulix/other/libreoffice/

Unofficial support for Linux/PPC remains unaffected by this, of course.

No offense, but this is MorphOS. Let the OS4 guys figure their own way. I wouldn't contribute to any OS4 software.

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I tend to agree, as many OS4 packages are less than impressive.
So, Steve, any idea if you can talk Eric into picking this idea back up and running with it?

You said you have some G5s, and I'm sure we could dig up a laptop for Eric if portability is an issue.

Don't know if there was a discussion about it, and i know it is a half solution, but AFAIK Libreoffice has an option to work as a web app. So someone set up a server and install the needed files, and then you can use libreoffice under MOS and OWB.

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Using_LibreOffice_in_a_Web_Browser

[ Edited by Derringer 12.02.2014 - 00:19 ]

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Is this project dead, or alive? I would really like to see a modern word processor with full printer support and the ability to open and save-as, almost any of the currently used word processing file formats.

I know that it probably would be a huge task to port and it might take years to complete, but I would support such a project, if a bounty was set up to get Libre Office ported to MorphOS.

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This "browser-mode" is roughly the equivalent of running Libre Office via VNC on a separate machine, except that VNC would be a more flexible approach since you could run other applications as well (plus the image compression methods are likely more optimized and adaptive).

The only thing that OWB would do is download PNG files showing the LibreOffice user interface. None of the actual editing functionality would be run inside the web browser. To reach decent levels of performance, you will need a rather fast connection to the server.

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As far as I know, I have to accept responsibility for it's demise (Steve can correct me if I am wrong).

I wanted to ship Eric a better system than I had on hand so by the time I obtained what I wanted to send, Eric was no longer fired up about pursuing the project (at the time, Steve also had a few G5s but this was before support was introduced).

I played around with an earlier source myself, but later revisions are more monolithic making it difficult to port parts of the program (the word processor in the earlier version could be compiled separately).

As my record of shipping things in a timely fashion is not that great, currently I'm just focusing on making amends to the friends I still owe stuff too.

A word to the wise (which means I probably can not take my own advice), if you are going to support something, do it passionately.

BTW - David, are you back in the US?

> at the time, Steve also had a few G5s but this was before support was introduced

He said he had 3 G5 machines just 2 days before MorphOS for G5 was released:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=9&topic_id=9163&start=57

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Here, yes, but he told me about them earlier.
But in any case this was long after I should have sent a G4 to Eric.
Therefore I still feel responsible for this situation.

I did have four PM G5s, two of which ended up not being 100% health wise. Now, I have two G5s, one dedicated MOS 3.4 machine and the other configured as an OSX 10.5.8 machine. I also have a Mac Mini G4 1.42 machine.

The learning curve for Eric would be pretty steep. He's never done anything with Amiga or anything Amiga-like. He knows nothing about MUI and that would be a steep curve for him as well. I think he got discouraged due to the fact that he would be starting from square one with something completely new to him...not the standard coding that he does on an everyday basis.

Myself, I'm not a programmer. I'm a reliability engineer. I look at failures and analyze the what, where, when and why it failed type stuff. So, I really would be no help at a port besides the overall reliability of a product and the going through testability and finding problems and ascertaining a root cause.

Personally, I think this would be a great project. I would love to see it happen and I'd like to help out with it, but looking back when we started this, it may have been a little to advantageous for Eric to handle given what would have been involved.

Steve

[ Edited by SteveE617 13.02.2014 - 09:28 ]

Well, that relieves me of some of the guilt.
At this point, I support Cinnamon writer's further development and would do the same for Libre Office, but we would need a dedicated developer.

Right now my spare time is be absorbed by work with a Coldfire development system.

Is this project, or a similar office suite of programs, ever likely to materialise for MorphOS, in whatever form that might be, as it seems to me that it is something we really need?

Is there anyway of obtaining the source code for any of Digita's programs, e.g. Wordworth, Datastore, Organiser, etc.. to maybe pursue an up-to-date version for PPC, or any other office suite that was available for the Amiga in the hey days?

> Is there anyway of obtaining the source code for [...] any other office suite
> that was available for the Amiga in the hey days?

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=32&topic_id=8818&start=64

Man... if anyone knows where every single reply and tidbit of info ...it would be Andreas.

How opinions change. Some time ago, I would have argued that MorphOS needs a complete functional office set, nowadays: I do most of my office work in a browser with either GoogleDocs or Microsoft Office. These webapps deliver me more then enough functionality for my day to day business and private use.

It increases the pressure on the browser and the IP stack because they will have to be fast and standards compliant, or you will get a notice like ' we only offer limited functionality because of an unknown browser '. These services can be used browser only, but if you want to work nicely with them, you will need a connection to either OneDrive or DropBox (Microsoft) or GDrive (Google).

So my wishlist for Morphos just got smaller :)

I didn't realise that some "buy-out" had already been agreed with the author/rights holder for Final Writer, which of course is great news, though I used to use Wordworth a lot more as that overall was a far more feature-rich and versatile program.

So thanks for that information Andreas.

Final Writer always seemed to be a close second, in the features it offered, and though I own Final Writer 4, 5 and 97 it always seemed more awkward to use than Wordworth, so I am not as at ease using it, but as/when the MOS version is released you can be sure I will buy a copy, as long as the price is reasonable.

Having said that Final Writer on its own is not an office suite, so is there any conversion of a popular office suite likely, or even being considered viable, as that is what we really need - some way of importing MSWord doc files, etc. as without that we are still way behind other OSs with such functionailty, and that is my main point.

As I have mentioned before, if all we want is a word processor, then supporting Cinnamon Writer makes a lot of sense.
It already has Word compatibility.

@Jim

As well as Calimero: http://world-of-amiga.eu/download/Calimero_beta_0.12.lha

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Yes, supporting these products mighthelp them get out of beta.

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How childish... There are so few develpers in Amigaland, that an universal binary "MorphOS" + "OS4" will benefit of a larger userbase for things like discovering and signalling bugs and could rely on a more vaste bunch of programmers and coders.

[ Edited by Raf_MegaByte 11.05.2015 - 16:29 ]

As much as I would like to see a full featured native office suite for MorphOS, I fail to see the point. Printing is still an issue, and MS Word compatibility is still very basic on the word processors we do have. Google Docs seems like a much better solution for now. I use it all the time. The only drawback is the memory leaks in OWB, but the auto save in it makes it as worry free as it can be.

As far as the fighting over OS4 or MOS, just get the devs together and combine efforts. We are way to small to have so many parallel projects like that happening at once!

> universal binary "MorphOS" + "OS4"

Does something like this exist? I've never come across it.

For libraries, you can achieve something close enough by using the old way to mix 68k and PPC files on one single volume:
your.library <- 68k or alien code
your.library.elf <- MorphOS code

On MorphOS, the ".elf" file will be used. The other one on other systems.

Or just use an IconX script using "version MorphOS" to run a binary or another.
The end user will only see one directory containing one single icon...

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The end goal is an office suite not just updating Final Writer.

~Tim

I am glad to see someone else is actually "on the same page" metaphorically, and literally - apologies, but the pun was intended.

A dedicated office suite would make this OS more of a serious contender for more people to consider it rather than having to go "outside" to create a document of whatever kind as MOS doesn't have anything recent that is good enough to speak of.

I have tried Cinnamon Writer, and it just doesn't do "what it says on the tin" additionally the author, Claus Desler, who I have spoken to, seems to have been very quiet of recent, with no updates than the initial release - which was basically useless.

Carsten Siegner, author of Calimero. has been very active, and seems recently to have been trying to improve Calimero, and some of his other programs, but Calimero is definitely a "Work-In-Progress" as there are lots of issues with it not behaving stably - well not when I have used it, and I have reported it back to him, but he is currently, as far as I am aware, still working on fixing the issues, and does regularly improve it with new features.

I use Pagestream a lot, now that it is working, though that was after some initial issues with getting it to work (no text or fonts issue - which many users seem to have had this trouble), and that is my mainstay for documents using MorphOS, as most, if not all, of the other older "Legacy" 'office' software has issues that make them troublesome, and cause me to side-step them for most documents. GUI in Final Writer does not initiate correctly, and WordWorth does not print out to USBPAR device, as far as I am aware, and I get very poor results, if any, with Turboprint.

I haven't had any issues recently with printing on MorphOS, with my HP 2500 colour laserjet, as it supports PostScript, and Zukow's Beta Printing (USBPAR device) system works very well. Though I would clearly like to see it finished and incorporated into MorphOS, as it is fiddly having to install it manually after each MOS update, but it seems it is most of the way to being completed, as far as I can tell, though some additions like zoom printing, preview printing, booklet (multi-page) printing, etc. would make it a really great feature of MorphOS.