Office for Mac 2011 Not All Cocoa

On the Office for Mac Team Blog, it was confirmed today that they are behind in writing all the components of Microsoft Office for Mac in Cocoa. For the Office 2011 release, the new Ribbon and Outlook will be written in Cocoa, but the remainder of the apps will not. This does not bode well for Word, and its compatibilities for things such as OSX Services. Still no word on Unicode R-t-L Hebrew either.

Create a Custom Paste Command in Word 2008

In Microsoft Word 2008, you can create custom Applescripts and the place them into a special folder giving them unique keyboard combo assignments. In this way, you can, create custom functions or combinations of functions that initiate with just one keystroke. For instance, let's say you wanted a simple paste command in Word, but one that first took care of some formatting changes for you. By way of example, let's say that you often copy scripture text from Accordance but before you paste it into your Word document, you want to remove the formatting and also remove the pilcrow symbols (¶) and the space following them from the text. A simple script can accomplish both tasks automatically for you.

1. Open Applescript Editor inside your Applications/Utilities folder (In OS X 10.5 this app is called Script Editor and found at Applications/Applescript)

2. Paste the following 7 lines into a new document window:

set theText to the clipboard

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "¶ "

set theText to text items of theText

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""

set theText to theText as string

set the clipboard to theText

tell application "Microsoft Word" to paste special (text object of selection) data type paste text

(The last line of that script is kind of long, so make sure you do have it all on one line.)

3. Save the AppleScript as a script in ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Word Script Menu Items
(which is Word's user info inside the Documents folder of your Home folder). 

4. Give the script a descriptive name such as "Paste Scripture" but also add "\cV" (without the quotation marks) to the end of the name. This sets the keyboard combination to Control-v.  (for more info on adding keyboard shortcuts, have a look here.)

5. From now on, in Word, you can hit Control-v to run the script which will remove the Pilcrows ¶ and paste unformatted text into your document.

Next Mac Microsoft Office due late 2010

Microsoft made an announcement this week about next year's (yeah, right) release.

Microsoft announced Thursday that the next edition of Microsoft Office for Mac will be released in late 2010. The new edition of the venerable office suite will include Outlook for Mac, a new application that will replace the Entourage.

They also announced a reduced pricing scheme, the Home/Student edition and the Business edition. I'm skeptical that they will make the 2010 release date? And if they do, I'm very skeptical they will improve right to left Unicode support.
Followup:
Etherington at TAB has a source that VBA is being reintroduced into Office 2010. I would certainly welcome that, but I think this discussion has made me realize I won't be buying Office '10, just like I haven't purchased Office '08.
You've gotta love Miller at MacWorld who writes:

My first reaction to Microsoft’s Thursday announcement that it will release a new version of its Office suite for the Mac in 2010 can be summed up in one word: Why?

Update: Someone reminded me that my prediction was 2012: Unicode Hebrew Coming to Word 2012!

Update: Microsoft still anticipates the next Office Mac release at the end of 2010. No definitive word yet on right-to-left Unicode languages, but it IS confirmed to include VBA.

Microsoft will end support for Office 2004 in October

Microsoft announced this week that it is ending support for Office for Mac 2004 in October. What that means for those of us hanging on to 2004 is that security updates will stop after that points.

Some of us have stuck with 2004 because of VBA functions we rely on. However, I would suggest anyone switch by October, and for enterprise contexts, you need to get your VBA applications recoded in Applescript by then.

Mellel's New Features Get Coverage

I was pleased to see that Mellel got good coverage of it's new features in anarticle by MacTech Magazine.

I own Mellel. I think they're doing great stuff with it. But I confess I never use it. But I'm glad it's there.

New iWork '09

Apple this week announced the new version of IWork, their word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software bundle. We have previously discussed the medial place Pages has played as a word processor for doing biblical writing. It does have some unicode Hebrew support even. However, I think I've finally found a version of iWork that I'll be purchasing. The new addition of Applescript support is the deal breaker for me.

I'll be interested to see more reports and reviews on Pages '09 and Numbers '09.

IBM Lotus Symphony - Now with Mac OS X Support Available

Enter another big player into the Macintosh Word Processor arena. Right now, it's just in beta, and has limited language support, but let's wait and see.

IBM Lotus Symphony - Buzz: Lotus Symphony Release 1.2 with Mac OS X Support Available: "Lotus Symphony Release 1.2 with Mac OS X Support Available

Lotus Symphony release 1.2 is now available and includes Beta support for the Mac OS X platform in English. I know many of you have been waiting for this new platform and hope you will take the time to try it out and give us your feedback. We expect to have a Generally Available version for Mac in all the languages we support in 1Q09.

In addition to the Mac OS support, we have added some new enhancements to our Data Pilot support in our spreadsheet tool and have made the Ubuntu platform Generally Available. We've also made some performance improvements. For all the details on what's included in this release take a look at the release notes."

Native OpenOffice Is Finally Here

The continued progression of OpenOffice on the Mac platform is very exciting news for those who write and work on their Macs.

If you've not read previous comments on OpenOffice, it is the open source community initiative towards developing and improving an open platform software sweet that can replace the functionality of Micro$oft Office. I had been running NeoOffice, which provides a java wrapper to OpenOffice, allowing it to run well on newer Macs, but this new release of OpenOffice is in a fully Mac native version. I was excited about this when I first got the beta some time ago. Read here for some notes about the OpenOffice 3.0 Release and for download options.

OpenOffice is an excellent choice for some solutions. For instance, we have a Mac lab in our church... no need to buy Micro$oft Office for them all... we can now deploy OpenOffice at no cost. It opens many, many file formats, including the newest Office formats, so works great in an inter-office setting. You have nothing to lose in giving it a try... it's free!

Get Bookends and Mellel for $49

If you do not have the word processor Mellel and the bib software Bookends, then this deal is sweet for you. MacUpdate has included these two must-have apps for bible scholars in the latest software bundle from MacUpdate.

Get them for $49 (along with some other apps for which I have no opinion, though if MacJournal gets included, that's good news).

Open Office to Receive Renewed Energy Towards Mac OSX Native Version

Sun Microsystems has decided to contribute to the porting of Open Office to Mac OSX. What we currently have is a version available through the X11 interface (lame), and NeoOffice-J which is a java code wrapper (quite good but not 100% native). We're talking now of renewing the completion of the Aqua port of Open Office. That is great news for Mac users.

I was delighted to read one area of emphasis:

After that I could imagine that input needs to be improved e.g. for internationalized input as in input methods.

It makes me think they'll be attentive to getting right unicode Greek and Hebrew, even right to left technology.

NeoOffice a great, free Microsoft Office Replacement

I confess it; I've been using Microsoft Word since 1991. I've been cheering on it's replacements. I've bought Mellel, tried out Nisus, and I've especially kept up with Open Source projects, for there is where I've thought the biggest hope lay. But I confess I've never installed Open Office or any of its derivatives. However, we're putting in a computer lab of all iMacs at our church and so have been exploring Open Source solutions for our application needs. And with NeoOffice having a new version this week, I've downloaded it, installed it, and played with it. And I think I may never buy Microsoft Word again.

NeoOffice is a very good, and free open source collection of office applications. It includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database components. It is the Mac OS X native aqua port of Open Office, and the new version 2.1 is now freely available. It works entirely with Word's .doc format and the new .docx XML format of Word 2007. It includes VBA macro support, so can use those Word Excell macros that the upcoming version of Micro$oft's Mac Office 2008 will lose. Hopefully, support for Writer VBA macros will follow. NeoOffice is completely user-ready. It installs as any commercial app, has a great help system, includes document wizards and templates, runs native on Intel or PPC and has Hebrew right-to-left Unicode support. I think the word-completion system is quite clever.

I'm telling you, I had no idea how well this Office suite had progressed. Here is a Feature Comparison from their web page.

It's not perfect. It has a large RAM requirement, no applescript support and Quicksilver can't grab text selections from it's window, but the VBA support will allow for workarounds for the spreadsheet at least. It may lack some advanced features one may need for book writing... though it contains Indexing functions, Table of Contents, Cross References and more.

Did I mention that this gem is free?

I would say, install it and give it a try, even if you don't need it. It will open your eyes to the incredible possibilities in community-based Open Source model of software development.

Oh, and NeoOffice is a web page creator, including this post.