any standalone open source presentation or spreadsheet apps

Joined
Nov 24, 2004
Messages
726
Reaction score
11
Points
18
Your Mac's Specs
Black Colorware PowerBook 1.67 GHz G4, 2 GB DDR2, 100GB 7200 RPM
Anyone know if--

--there are any standalone open source presentation or spreadsheet apps currently available or in the works?

I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but it's late and I'm bored.

My situation is thus: I bought Office 2004 S&T edition with my iBook in Dec. '04. It came with three licenses, so when I upgraded to a PowerBook the following year, of course I put it on that. In Fall '08, when I upgraded to the 2.66 GHz iMac, I did the same thing, using my third and final license.

A year into this computer, and I am sick of running this suite in Rosetta. It's wonderful software, but when I can open Photoshop and Illustrator at the same time faster than I can open or shut down just MS Word, that's pretty sad.

I've used NeoOffice. I'm so grateful it exists; I frequently recommend it to people. But the all-in-one interface is bloated and tiring to me. I'm also suffering from a major case of broke, so Mariner, Office 2008, and iWork aren't really in the cards right now. Though university subsidizing and education pricing brings Office 2008 pretty close to affordable ($47), I'd still rather use that money to keep my social life's respirator running. Obviously piracy is also entirely out of the question.

So, along comes Bean to rescue me from enslavement to Word. Bean is a truly wonderful word processor; sure it's lacking custom headers & footers for now, but it's got everything else I need for writing; not to mention it's incredibly light, fast, and neither RAM nor processor-intensive. Discovered this a couple weeks ago.

Fast forward to today. Earlier I decided to test out Monolingual's "processor architecture" function, never having used it before. As I was pressing the button, I thought to myself, "Office 2004 might cease to function after this." Sure enough, it did. I still have my key and the install DVD, but before I dig them out and start the cycle over, does anyone know of any little underground open-source projects worth looking at for spreadsheets or presentations?

I know I'm both cheap and picky, a bad combination, but if you don't ask you don't get, and I *do* contribute the time and effort I can into helping improve the open source projects I find through testing nightlies, bug reports, basic patches, etc, so I'm not a total leech.

I'm also seriously considering just using Google Docs since neither of those things are a mission-critical part of my computing existence right now. Anyone have a lot of experience with it? If so, what can't it do that you feel as though you need?
 

CrimsonRequiem


Retired Staff
Joined
Jul 24, 2008
Messages
6,003
Reaction score
125
Points
63
Your Mac's Specs
MBP 2.3 Ghz 4GB RAM 860 GB SSD, iMac 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 32GB RAM, Fusion Drive 1TB
Joined
Aug 17, 2009
Messages
446
Reaction score
4
Points
18
Location
East Bay, CA
Your Mac's Specs
17" MBP C2D 2.8 4GB OS X 10.8 | iPhone 5
Did you read his post at all? Hehe, he has already used NeoOffice and is looking for something less popular I guess but still operational. Good luck.
 
Joined
Jul 9, 2009
Messages
356
Reaction score
3
Points
18
Location
Colorado
How about OpenOffice? I've used the presentation app and it is quite good. And the spreadsheet is also good.

(I did read the OP but not DarkestRitual's. I still suggest OpenOffice.)
 

cwa107


Retired Staff
Joined
Dec 20, 2006
Messages
27,042
Reaction score
812
Points
113
Location
Lake Mary, Florida
Your Mac's Specs
14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
Did you read his post at all? Hehe, he has already used NeoOffice and is looking for something less popular I guess but still operational. Good luck.

I've found OpenOffice's UI to be far less bloated and clunky compared to NeoOffice's Java-based UI. The two are not the same.
 
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
1,096
Reaction score
8
Points
38
Your Mac's Specs
White MacBook. iLife '09. iWork '09. Mac OS X 10.6
Boy. You all beat me to it. OpenOffice will do it, but if I recall correctly it comes in a suite, so it's not standalone.
 
OP
Meyvn
Joined
Nov 24, 2004
Messages
726
Reaction score
11
Points
18
Your Mac's Specs
Black Colorware PowerBook 1.67 GHz G4, 2 GB DDR2, 100GB 7200 RPM
Yeah. I appreciate the suggestion, and OpenOffice.org has improved for the Mac a lot with version 3.0, but it's still not standalone, it's still bulky and heavy-duty in my opinion. It still feels like using a Swiss Champ to clean your teeth when a toothpick will do.

I'm starting to like Bean for word processing and Google Docs for other things. Anyone else have thoughts?
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top