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Comment by Joel_Mckay

12 hours ago

Most use PDF for exchanges anyway, as there is no guarantee the receiver system has all the document components/features used to author content.

10% of users with MacOS Office 2019 installs just got NERF'd by Microsoft. This story will not encourage users to spend more money on a disappearing rabbit trick. =3

The critical point is collaboration on a document. I wish LO had this. You know, like other collaborative editors online, where you can see the other person's cursor and inputs live and all that, with a conflict free data structure driving it all. LO needs this, if it ever wants to replace MS Word in businesses. Even if it would be totally fine for most situations to edit sequentially, there are those cases, when multiple cooks are trying to change a company document, and now they can't, and need to be in a call, to organize their editing or share their writing ideas, because the tool doesn't allow them to edit at the same time.

It does not even have to be in a web UI or browser. Just somehow make it possible to easily connect and edit collaboratively. I know, I know, it is a huge ask, unfortunately.

  • >It does not even have to be in a web UI or browser

    LibreOffice Writer online was not popular, so it is understandable you assume it doesn't exist. There is also the trivial headless Linux remote desktop cloud hosting with 100% identical functionality.

    >"edit at the same time"

    Perhaps you meant: "View -> Toolbars -> Track Changes..."

    Most documents that support OLE have difficulty handling concurrent writes. Office 365 abandoned desktop publishing in 2019, and replaced it with a web document management system.

    Best workaround is every user imports each instanced changes: "File -> Merge Document."

    And manually handle any collisions.

    I would post how to setup your own remote collaborative environment on an $8/month host, but people seem like they are not interested. =3

    • Are you talking about the LO WASM thingy? (https://wasm-test.libreoffice.org/)

      I have recently tried to use it, but couldn't find a way to open files from local computer in it. It showed me a fake filesystem and dragging and dropping files also didn't work.

      I have not used another web browser LO thing, I think. If you are talking about another thing, do you have demo site/link?

      > Perhaps you meant: "View -> Toolbars -> Track Changes..."

      No, I mean a mode or so that is like online word processors like Google Docs, where you see the cursor of someone else, with their name, and can see them typing live, while you are also typing somewhere in the document. Unless "Track Changes" somehow enables connecting to someone else and seeing their actions concurrently, it is not what I am talking about. I really mean collaboratively editing a document, at the same time, seeing changes others make live, not merging afterwards (the git model).