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Show HN: JavaScript-first, open-source WYSIWYG DOCX editor

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Re: Show HN: JavaScript-first, open-source WYSIWYG DOCX editor

#31

Post by lelanthran »

bonesss wrote: post #25

> As an experiment The threshold for caring about experiments is exponentially higher in 2026 thanks to half baked vibe slop. Non-functioning software and demoware comes fast and cheap, regardless of author. > we gave Claude Code the OOXML spec Having used the former a lot and read the latter in detail, uhhh… Trim down the claims here, clarify the editor subset you plan to be supporting, and map the “last 90%”’s to h…

I agree with everything in this comment - FWIW, I was on the standards bodies in my country in 2008/2009 to establish a national standard for word processing documents.

We debated the OOXML spec in as much detail as time allowed, but we still didn't get through the entire behemoth of a thing.

ISTR that Microsoft representatives were also on the same subcommittee, and, but the MS rep was pushing very hard indeed to standardise on OOXML.

Too bad the OOXML format, itself, has MS-proprietary binary blobs built into the specification as part of the format.

ISTR we submitted a recommendation of standardising on ODF.

Re: Show HN: JavaScript-first, open-source WYSIWYG DOCX editor

#33

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

thisisjedr wrote: post #14
nubg wrote: post #10

Whats a Ralph loop?

https://ghuntley.com/loop/

Interesting post to link to, given the subject matter. Those Simpsons images don't have any credit, so I'm highly suspicious that they've been generated by AI and are violating copyright.

Re: Show HN: JavaScript-first, open-source WYSIWYG DOCX editor

#35

Post by ramon156 »

_the_inflator wrote: post #21

Someone has to do it: Please auto-ban any "We gave Claude/Gemini/Grok/OpenAO/Qwen/Mistral/WhateverLLMAI the spec and..." "and..." resolves to: - "and now we have this impressive result you won't believe!" 100% of the time this is attention seeking, live debugging - no value at all. Don't waste people's time. Any sound and reasonable story about results without misusing the public's eye is welcome, for example: - One…

At this point I agree, this is brogramming and its getting boring.

Re: Show HN: JavaScript-first, open-source WYSIWYG DOCX editor

#36

Post by ramon156 »

thisisjedr wrote: post #6
nayroclade wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you built this exact product, how long did it take you to reach 80% compatibility?

We don’t have a formal '% compatibility' metric yet, but it’s on our radar as a feedback loop mechanism for self-improvement. For now, we mostly rely on testing with our own and customer docs. In practice, we were seeing solid results after a couple of days of keeping Claude working in the loop and giving lots of feedback: .docx files along with screenshots annotated to highlight what didn’t work.

This is a very naive mindset, getting the last 10% is going to be 90% of the work. Learn from other projects that have tried and failed. I can guarantee you LibreOffice was not built with "our own and customer docs" as a test harness.

Re: Show HN: JavaScript-first, open-source WYSIWYG DOCX editor

#37

Post by Tade0 »

mediumdeviation wrote: post #2

Ah these poor fools. Having built this exact product (OOXML compatible editor in React) before, it took all of two minutes to find a bug. The issue is that the OOXML spec is not in fact definitive - Word is, and trying to implement it from the spec will produce something that works maybe 80% of the time then fall over completely when you hit one of hundreds of minor, undocumented edge cases. Assuming of course that C…

When I saw the title I couldn't help but ask myself: how?

The spec is over 5000 pages long - no way in hell a human could parse this in a reasonable timeframe and no agent today has nearly the necessary context.

EDIT: also, like you said: the spec is secondary to the implementation and was only published (and not even in complete form originally!) because Microsoft was asked by the EU to do that.

Re: Show HN: JavaScript-first, open-source WYSIWYG DOCX editor

#38

Post by duskdozer »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #33
thisisjedr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://ghuntley.com/loop/

Interesting post to link to, given the subject matter. Those Simpsons images don't have any credit, so I'm highly suspicious that they've been generated by AI and are violating copyright.

Yeah, what exactly is the top image supposed to be?

Also

>p.p.s don't miss out on free lifetime access

>Join thousands getting premium insights delivered weekly.

Re: Show HN: JavaScript-first, open-source WYSIWYG DOCX editor

#40

Post by k4rli »

throawayonthe wrote: post #27
jimjimjim wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel your pain. PDF applications have the same problem. The thousand page PDF spec isn't actually the spec, Acrobat is the spec.

do people still use acrobat? since pds becoming prolific in browsers and word and stuff i mean

IE was used well until EOL and is still being used in some places. I have no doubt Adobe Acrobat is the same way. Likely few if any new users but old ones will keep using what they're familiar with.
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