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LibreOffice running natively in the browser via WebAssembly

lab.allotropia.de

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Re: LibreOffice running natively in the browser via WebAssembly

#61

So... I still use Apache OpenOffice, but it takes about 30 seconds to Rosetta itself every time I launch it on an M1 Mac. For some reason it never caches. The load time on this was actually about the same. I'd try it again from my desktop, but it pains me to think of whoever's paying for the bandwidth on it today.

Why in the world don't you switch to Libre Office?

I tried it awhile back, but it's also extremely slow on an M1 and I found the UI issues even more annoying than the ones I was used to in OpenOffice.

Re: LibreOffice running natively in the browser via WebAssembly

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do I run flatpak on iPhone?

You encourage Apple to implement a sandboxing API and a Linux compatibility layer. Even Windows has made progress with WSL.

Fuggedabout it. That would undermine their whole business model. Knowing Apple, I wouldn't be surprised if they remove WASM support from mobile Safari on the grounds that it's "bad for battery life".

Re: LibreOffice running natively in the browser via WebAssembly

#63

I remember when LibreOffice was called Star Office and would run like molasses on a Celeron 300A OC to 450mhz machine. The office suite would take up most of the ram and eventually crash due to system resource exhaustion. Now we can run the whole thing in a browser like it's Minesweeper. Wow.

It also had its own desktop/file manager back then. Good thing they removed it, although I often thought it could have been a nice optional feature to make small dedicated office machines that would load a very light OS image with the bare minimum necessary to run it without an underlying desktop manager.

Re: LibreOffice running natively in the browser via WebAssembly

#66
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "No-one will put their private documents on the Internet! You're mad!" I miss the days when people had this much common sense.

Indeed, people have got used to running their stuff on other people's machines.

TBH, "In a browser" (like here) is pretty different from "on the Internet" (like google docs). Except that if someone was to make slight changes to the hosted application, it could leak everything.

Re: LibreOffice running natively in the browser via WebAssembly

#69
Impressive, although much slower compared to the native one, at least on this (admittedly not stellar) 4300GE machine: the about window takes like 5 seconds to display, and page scrolling is a lot slower. Also caching doesn't seem to work: if I close it and load it again it seems to start the download/compilation process again, which is both a network and resources hog. Didn't wait for it to complete though, so I can't be 100% sure. Nonetheless an impressive result; I believe we still have to find a killer application for the technology; simply porting native apps to the web, to me beyond the technical accomplishment is the least interesting one, and also dangerous if misused because it encourages the transition to remote applications, which would take away from the users any control on which software they run.

Re: LibreOffice running natively in the browser via WebAssembly

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why in the world don't you switch to Libre Office?

I tried it awhile back, but it's also extremely slow on an M1 and I found the UI issues even more annoying than the ones I was used to in OpenOffice.

As far as I understand, apache open office is not really in active developement, unlike libre office. So maybe try it again at some point.

(the main developers left open office to fork it as libre office, after oracle aquired sun and open office with it, but destroyed it and after it was burned and pretty much without contributers, donated the name to the apache foundation, who for reasons unknown to me, do not want to merge again)

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