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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

#61

Post by ucaetano »

RottenHuman wrote: post #39
ucaetano wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I edited my post, my point was that the market for pure offline office productivity suites has become irrelevant, since the competition now is between a pure cloud-based service and a mix of offline and cloud based service :)

And why should LibreOffice not be able to integrate a "cloud service" into their suite? The extension interface of Libre Office even lets me think that this would be technically a triviality to integrate. Maybe with an open standard instead of a propriety and closed eco system, with the freedom to choose whom you trust with your data, or to host it yourself.

Oh, they can, no doubt about that. And that's what the post is about, trying to stay relevant in a changing market. But it adds a lot of complexity, since it switches from a product to a service.

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

#62

Post by rplnt »

spdionis wrote: post #24
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…

> implying that watching youtube in 1080p is not easier in third world countries compared to first world... (looking at you Europe).

I though Europe had much better access to fast and cheap Internet compared to USA? Lowest offering from my ISP is 100/10 for around $16. No problems with HD video. Especially not with Youtube's interpretation of HD.

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

#63

Post by vidarh »

akie wrote: post #46
zx2c4 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, I learned something today :-) I must have been mistaken because Open Office was always insisting that I install Java for it to work, so I guess I misremembered. Thanks!

It would ask for it, but it was never required to work - I've run Open Office, and Star Office before it, on many systems without Java.

It just disabled some functionality.

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

#64

Post by mark_l_watson »

As a Linux user, I really like the web versions of the Office365 apps. The functionality is good for situations when I need to work with other people's documents and not taking up disk space for installed apps is a fine feature for the new world of SSD storage on laptops.

I also find Google docs handy to use, even though I use markdown stored in the cloud for writing my own content, managing research notes, etc.

I like the idea of being able to self host cloud services but ownCloud and LibreOffice face stiff functionality competition.

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

#65

Post by acaloiar »

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…

I suspect that latency can be reduced significantly by limiting tile sizes. They currently use 256x256 tiles, forcing a new tile transfer every time a mutating user action takes place (e.g. a new character typed). A one-size-fits-all tile is unlikely to satisfy users of varying bandwidth and latency tolerance.

Of course, further steps can be taken as well, such as adaptive resolution and client-side rendering extrapolation. Personally I commend them on a bold strategy. At the very least, they will have contributed to the body of alternative web application architecture patterns.

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

#66

Post by oever »

stephenr wrote: post #49

Is there still not a reasonable quality, open-source browser based 'office' app? Open Document is all XML right, so it's not like a browser can't read/write the format because its some binary blob..

There is WebODF, which is 100% pure client-side JavaScript.

http://webodf.org/

http://webodf.org/demo/

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

#67

Post by ucaetano »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #55
ucaetano wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah, there will always be a place. But that's not what really matters, but the size of that place. Cloud-based productivity systems can replace native apps for over 90% of all corporate functions (marketing, HR, sales, etc.). Sure, you'll still need native systems for a few heavy functions (finance will keep on using excel for quite a while), but most of the use cases don't need a full-sized productivity suite.

You could just as easily use a lightweight native productivity suite. None of the arguments you're making imply web-based solutions in of themselves.

I'm not implying the web-based solutions are the only which will exist in the productivity suite market. But they are where the mass market is moving to. Native suites will still exist in niche cases, but they will have a very hard time competing with lightweight, low-overhead web-based suites.

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

#68

Post by stephenr »

oever wrote: post #66
stephenr wrote: post #49

Is there still not a reasonable quality, open-source browser based 'office' app? Open Document is all XML right, so it's not like a browser can't read/write the format because its some binary blob..

There is WebODF, which is 100% pure client-side JavaScript. http://webodf.org/ http://webodf.org/demo/

Looks nice, it's a shame it's AGPL though.

Seriously, multiple down votes? I didn't even get to mentioning toe-jam.

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

#69

Post by pascalmemories »

oever wrote: post #66
stephenr wrote: post #49

Is there still not a reasonable quality, open-source browser based 'office' app? Open Document is all XML right, so it's not like a browser can't read/write the format because its some binary blob..

There is WebODF, which is 100% pure client-side JavaScript. http://webodf.org/ http://webodf.org/demo/

I never knew about this until now. That looks pretty amazing and I can see all sorts of potential.

There's all sorts of debate above about office 365 (some reads more like slick advertising astro-turf - people really shouldn't bite at that stuff) but this could be great for many web based business automation apps. I can think of a few things I've done in the past this would have been great for. I see it's already being built in to Zafara and Roundcube.

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