ThinkFree Office Suite Not Compatible With Apples Leopard
November 18, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
1 comment so far Categories: Marketing, OSX, Puter Stuff, gnash-teeth
I don’t have much need to create documents, presentations or spreadsheets so the purchase of an outdated version (2004) of Microsoft Office for the Mac at $400 was not an option. I do often receive and need to read such documents and had purchased a copy of ThinkFree Desktop Edition which worked as well as expected before the Leopard upgrade. For the most part it could open simple word documents and spreadsheets, better than OpenOffice and did not require X11 to be running.
Of course the day after I upgrade OSX I needed to open up a few documents and spreadsheets. The native application TextEdit actually can open most word documents - minus any fanciness. The contents of the spreadsheet was a bit more problematic, but I did discover I could cheat. Leopards document coverflow actually allows you to view a file without opening it. In this way I was able to read the Excel file.
Downloading and reinstalling ThinkFree didn’t fix anything and the debugging tool provided zero useful information. A search for ‘leopard’ on their site yielded no results.
My next move as an interm solution, (unless I find the application useful) is running NeoOffice. It’s based off the work of OpenOffice.org office suite and is written in the OSX native Cocoa language. NeoOffice also makes use of some built in applications such as the Apple Address book, spell checker, fonts, and printing support. Being native allows for drag and drop, copy and paste, and not needing to run X11.
I’ll post comments if it’s a viable alternative.
