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LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

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Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#11

Post by akie »

bobajeff wrote: post #4

It would be cool if they made a client side version of this using Emscripten.

Not sure how easy that would be. Emscripten converts C/C++ code to Javascript, but LibreOffice is written in Java.

Theoretically it should be possible as Emscripten actually converts LLVM bytecode to Javascript, and you seem to be able to convert Java bytecode to LLVM bytecode, but Emscripten's [portability guidelines](http://kripken.github.io/emscripten-site/docs/porting/guidel...) seem to say that you cannot compile multithreaded code, which I assume LibreOffice does use...

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#12

Post by DiabloD3 »

To those claiming that Office 365 somehow promotes web apps as your real apps... that isn't entirely true.

My company (the one I started, hi) uses Office 365, and all three of us use Office 365's full office suite, the actual real desktop app one.

What we use Office 365's cloud stuff for is their Exchange cluster (oh God, so delicious), and for OneDrive for Business (ie, what used to be Sharepoint).

Browsers just aren't fast enough to handle web apps that large (not picking on Office 365's web apps, anything that big just sorta murders browsers), and I don't think they ever will be. This isn't something you can solve when your only tools are HTML, CSS, and JS.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#13

Post by zx2c4 »

akie wrote: post #11
bobajeff wrote: post #4

It would be cool if they made a client side version of this using Emscripten.

Not sure how easy that would be. Emscripten converts C/C++ code to Javascript, but LibreOffice is written in Java. Theoretically it should be possible as Emscripten actually converts LLVM bytecode to Javascript, and you seem to be able to convert Java bytecode to LLVM bytecode, but Emscripten's [portability guidelines]( http://kripken.github.io/emscripten-site/docs/porting/guidel... ) seem to say that you cannot comp…

LibreOffice is written in C++, actually. There are some small components written in Java, but they're optional, and you can run LibreOffice on a system that does not have Java.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#14

Post by zelos »

lucb1e wrote: post #3

From the demo I saw, it worked as well as watching 1080p YouTube in a third world country. Someone figured it was smart to do server-side rendering and load your document as tiles using a technology designed for maps (the same as used in OpenStreetMap, and there it works well, because that's actually a map and not a document). The person argued WiFi was bad, but when typing on a 100mbps symmetric connection there was…

It's pretty unpleasant to use for me too over an ordinary office internet connection: there's noticeable lag for simple UI actions, and there are image compression artefacts when things change quickly on screen.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#15

Post by downtide »

ucaetano wrote: post #2

It's a bit sad to see LibreOffice struggling to maintain relevance when the market it tried to address suddenly became [nearly nonexistent] irrelevant. It reminds me of all those hundreds of early 20th century battleships that suddenly became completely irrelevant when the Dreadnought came by. [Edit: replaced nearly nonexistent with irrelevant to make my point clearer]

Which market are you referring to?

I still crave for a really nice word processor, spreadsheet, and easy database app (in the style of Access). I've always found *Office a bit rough around the edges.

My partner recently brought home an iPad from work. Word failed to play well with other (MS Word) Office documents, so file exchange and formats are still a complete pain in the neck. I will be using plain text until something better comes along.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#16

Post by pidg »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #12

To those claiming that Office 365 somehow promotes web apps as your real apps... that isn't entirely true. My company (the one I started, hi) uses Office 365, and all three of us use Office 365's full office suite, the actual real desktop app one. What we use Office 365's cloud stuff for is their Exchange cluster (oh God, so delicious), and for OneDrive for Business (ie, what used to be Sharepoint). Browsers just are…

+1 for Office 365. I wasn't convinced until I actually started working at a company that uses it properly. The collaboration features in the native desktop apps work beautifully.

Not having to endure emailed-round documents with multiple competing versions like "Report-Dec2015 Draft v5(FP,PL,KM) (2).doc" is worth the price of entry alone.

I feel sorry for those like the UK government who've been successfully lobbied by The Document Foundation into using open standards, and are now locked in to using one vendor - Collabora - and their proprietary fork of LibreOffice.

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#17

Post by scholia »

coldtea wrote: post #8
ucaetano wrote: post #2

It's a bit sad to see LibreOffice struggling to maintain relevance when the market it tried to address suddenly became [nearly nonexistent] irrelevant. It reminds me of all those hundreds of early 20th century battleships that suddenly became completely irrelevant when the Dreadnought came by. [Edit: replaced nearly nonexistent with irrelevant to make my point clearer]

> It's a bit sad to see LibreOffice struggling to maintain relevance when the market it tried to address suddenly became nearly nonexistent. If you mean that we've moved from desktop office apps to cloud-based Office apps that's absolutely not true. The numbers I've seen for Google Docs etc are insignificant compared to office workers using MS Office and the rest. People who think Cloud docs have "won" apparently don…

This is true. However, the cloud is part of Office 365's ecosystem play. You get the full-strength Office programs installed locally (Windows and Mac), plus the ability to work in the cloud, plus the mobile apps for Windows, iOS and Android.

Even if "99% of office workers in enterprise/businesses/governments etc" do their work on the desktop, there's still some appeal to being able to get what you want where you want it. This is where LibreOffice is trailing badly (as is Google Docs).

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#18

Post by r3bl »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #12

To those claiming that Office 365 somehow promotes web apps as your real apps... that isn't entirely true. My company (the one I started, hi) uses Office 365, and all three of us use Office 365's full office suite, the actual real desktop app one. What we use Office 365's cloud stuff for is their Exchange cluster (oh God, so delicious), and for OneDrive for Business (ie, what used to be Sharepoint). Browsers just are…

I bought Office 365 so I could have full MS Office compatibility while I'm using Linux (not saying LibreOffice is bad, I just sometimes need perfect compatibility).

That didn't turn out to be a good idea. First of all, to actually open something in the web app, first I have to add it to OneDrive. I cannot add it to OneDrive without actually opening OneDrive on the web because it doesn't have a Linux client. Once I actually open something up, "Install X for your device" just kept popping up (it changed recently).

It's still nowhere near the desktop experience, but I hope it will before July (when my license expires).

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#19

Post by scholia »

downtide wrote: post #15
ucaetano wrote: post #2

It's a bit sad to see LibreOffice struggling to maintain relevance when the market it tried to address suddenly became [nearly nonexistent] irrelevant. It reminds me of all those hundreds of early 20th century battleships that suddenly became completely irrelevant when the Dreadnought came by. [Edit: replaced nearly nonexistent with irrelevant to make my point clearer]

Which market are you referring to? I still crave for a really nice word processor, spreadsheet, and easy database app (in the style of Access). I've always found *Office a bit rough around the edges. My partner recently brought home an iPad from work. Word failed to play well with other (MS Word) Office documents, so file exchange and formats are still a complete pain in the neck. I will be using plain text until som…

>I will be using plain text until something better comes along.

Didn't RTF coma along a couple of decades ago?

Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365

#20

Post by douche »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #12

To those claiming that Office 365 somehow promotes web apps as your real apps... that isn't entirely true. My company (the one I started, hi) uses Office 365, and all three of us use Office 365's full office suite, the actual real desktop app one. What we use Office 365's cloud stuff for is their Exchange cluster (oh God, so delicious), and for OneDrive for Business (ie, what used to be Sharepoint). Browsers just are…

I've been pleasantly surprised with the online versions of Word and Excel in the past year or so. I don't do anything fancy with them, but it actually feels like a nicer experience than firing up the desktop versions - I do try to keep all my docs in OneDrive, which helps.

The one thing they really need to work on, for me to be super happy, would be their Lync/Skype platform. Either overhaul the old Lync 2013 client that they did a quick Skype reskinning on, or provide a decent API that could be used with Office365, like what they have for on-prem instances with UCMA. Lately, I've been having better luck using the open-source Lync plugin for Pidgin than with the official Lync client - lots of weird things like presence not updating, contact lists getting borked, memory leaks with the client causing crashes, etc.

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