There are already WebODF (http://www.webodf.org), used in ownCloud Documents, and OnlyOffice (http://onlyoffice.org)
LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365
101–110 of 143 posts
Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365
#102Is 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 also ONLYOFFICE: http://onlyoffice.org
Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, not against open standards. Microsoft OOXML is an open format. You might recall it's (controversially) the Ecma, ISO and IEC standard format, and is supported by LibreOffice and OpenOffice. So even if MS did something terrible, the documents would still be editable when everyone switches over to LibreOffice - dependent on how well they've implemented OOXML. And I'm not even against what Collabora are doing, I thi…
Microsoft's OOXML is a joke, no matter who rubber-stamped it. It's effectively the binary Office formats expressed via XML. Any office suite adding support for it still has to include the myriad piles of compatibility hacks they did for binary Office documents. OOXML contains several "transitional purposes only" formats that were obsolete before they ever went through the joke of a "standardization process", rather t…
> the "standardization" process itself was effectively politics, not technology.
All standardization processes are politics, pretty much by definition; defining a spec is technical, agreeing to a standard is political.
Not to say that the standardization of OOXML wasn't a particularly bad outcome, but "bad" vs. "good" is a different distinction than "politics" vs. "technical".
> By contrast, there are multiple independent implementations of ODF.
IIRC, OOXML is implemented by OOo/LO and Google Docs as well as Microsoft Office, the former two are independent implementations from the latter, if not also from each other. (I'm not sure any of those implementations are bug-free as compared to anything that has been standardized, much less fully compatible with each other -- ISTR even the Microsoft one early on had significant reported divergences from the standard.)
Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365
#104Besides dude. Referring to poor countries as belonging to the third world implies that a second world exist. The second world collapsed with the Soviet Union and does not exist any longer. The preferred nomenclature is developing countries.
> The preferred nomenclature is developing countries. This term has always reeked of over-euphamism to me. I'm not arguing that "third-world" is any better, but what do I call countries that aren't developing? Right now, "developing countries" is used both to refer to countries that are actually developing (Kenya, for example) and as a polite way of saying "poor countries" (e.g. Somalia). Seems like we should have a…
also, "developing countries" tries to establish an absolute rank and a division between countries. What are you taking into account when you say "developed", money? health? happiness? depending on what you use you'll get way different groups of countries
Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365
#105From 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…
This also means that it is expensive to run this service, you can only do so much server side rendering per server, much much less than you can response to REST API calls with a little bit of JSON data as both Google Docs (and our service http://Clara.io do.) This ownCloud service is bound to stay smallish until they embrace a true client side rendering approach.
> This also means that it is expensive to run this service, you can only do so much server side rendering per server,
Of course there is a limit but for the personal use it should not be a issue, for the enterprise use it still should not be issue because it has caching mechanism and server only renders changing tiles, and a 16 core machine easily can handle hundreds of simultaneous users which is cheaper to operate than buying license for the any other office suite per user and employing a IT worker to install that office suites and maintain company wide document sharing.
> This ownCloud service is bound to stay smallish until they embrace a true client side rendering approach.
there is already client side rendering solution in ownCloud called Documents and uses webodf, but it only satisfactory for the simple needs.
Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365
#106Besides dude. Referring to poor countries as belonging to the third world implies that a second world exist. The second world collapsed with the Soviet Union and does not exist any longer. The preferred nomenclature is developing countries.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10743584 and marked it off-topic.
Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365
#107Is 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..
Etherpad (http://etherpad.org) is an OSS cloud document editor app.
It has a pretty reasonable set of formatting, revision, and
import/export options out of the box, and also a large set of plugins
(http://static.etherpad.org/plugins.html). Supported import formats are
plain, doc, docx, odt, rtf, and html.
There's a demo on the homepage that runs on Sandstorm.io, so you can very easily self-host or use managed hosting via the Sandstorm framework (https://sandstorm.io).
EtherCalc (https://ethercalc.net/, not related to Etherpad) is an OSS cloud spreadsheet app. Demo on homepage, also available on Sandstorm.
Sandstorm has several other office/productivity apps, and in my opinion, is the clearest route to an effective OSS cloud office suite. I am hopeful for LO Online, but tile-based rendering seems like a bad choice. I have no doubt it will be packaged for Sandstorm at some point, but Etherpad is looking much better as of now.
Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365
#108This is wasted effort IMHO. The killer app of Office is Excel and NOTHING has come close to replacing it. In India, almost all laptop manufacturers give the option of preloaded Ubuntu. Yet people choose to pay for Windows - for either Excel or Photoshop. I would pay a large sum of money for a compatible spreadsheet. It is well worth doing a startup around. Everything else - Word or PowerPoint already has reasonable s…
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Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Microsoft's OOXML is a joke, no matter who rubber-stamped it. It's effectively the binary Office formats expressed via XML. Any office suite adding support for it still has to include the myriad piles of compatibility hacks they did for binary Office documents. OOXML contains several "transitional purposes only" formats that were obsolete before they ever went through the joke of a "standardization process", rather t…
> the "standardization" process itself was effectively politics, not technology. All standardization processes are politics, pretty much by definition; defining a spec is technical, agreeing to a standard is political. Not to say that the standardization of OOXML wasn't a particularly bad outcome, but "bad" vs. "good" is a different distinction than "politics" vs. "technical". > By contrast, there are multiple indepe…
> All standardization processes are politics, pretty much by definition; defining a spec is technical, agreeing to a standard is political.
Little to no "defining" went on in the OOXML process, hence my use of the phrase "rubber-stamped". What little did take place seems to have been limited to adding more documentation for dangling references to undocumented bits, such as some of the "compatibility" options.
And no, there should be no "politics" in the agreement to a standard. The standard should be seeking the best solution to a problem, not the one best aligned with any particular party's best interests. No "I'll compromise on this if you compromise on that". And certainly no "let's make sure the people who would be inclined to say no don't get invited". OOXML wasn't just politics, it was dirty politics.
Re: LibreOffice as a service offers alternative to Google Docs, Office 365
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the "standardization" process itself was effectively politics, not technology. All standardization processes are politics, pretty much by definition; defining a spec is technical, agreeing to a standard is political. Not to say that the standardization of OOXML wasn't a particularly bad outcome, but "bad" vs. "good" is a different distinction than "politics" vs. "technical". > By contrast, there are multiple indepe…
> All standardization processes are politics, pretty much by definition; defining a spec is technical, agreeing to a standard is political. Little to no "defining" went on in the OOXML process, hence my use of the phrase "rubber-stamped". What little did take place seems to have been limited to adding more documentation for dangling references to undocumented bits, such as some of the "compatibility" options. And no,…
> Little to no "defining" went on in the OOXML process
Yeah, defining a spec often happens outside of, and prior to standardization (refinement of the definition may or may not happen during a standardization process.) A standardization process with little defining can be bad or good, depending on why there is little defining.
> And no, there should be no "politics" in the agreement to a standard. The standard should be seeking the best solution to a problem
"Best" is subjective, and involves balancing concerns which different parties will weigh differently; producing a consensus on that is inherently a political process.
> OOXML wasn't just politics, it was dirty politics.
On this much, we agree.