2d ago

Web-based Document Editor?

Hi all,

What fast but functional document editor do you recommend? I would like to add custom fonts and do some page layout work, but otherwise nothing too fancy.

Suggestions?

32 comments

you could have a look at etherpad. seems pretty cool and is extensible with plugins. i don't know about resource consumption and security aspects, tho, because i don't personally use it. there are also a few publicly usable instances to test it out (see their github). keep in mind, however, that those come with plugins and do not reflect the vanilla state of the tool.

OnlyOffice is probably going to be your best bet.
- Do you have any experience installing only office?
  I've tried installing it many times over the past decade with only one successful attempt about a decade ago.
  Every few years I try to install it again and fail
  I'm trying to install it now but again, nothing. I've tried installing it using the official scripts which wreck the operating system. Dame for using the official debs.
  So I tried using the docker version and that just doesn't do anything at all. I try opening the page on the right port and it connects and disconnects immediately.
  I've used only office and it's awesome. However, nothing is as hard to install as onlyofffice
  
  Is this shitty AI? This comment makes no sense. If not AI, maybe some key words got mixed up?
- Why not libreoffice
  Edit: I believe it’s maintained unlike the former
  
  OnlyOffice is not the unmaintained OpenOffice.
  
  So, LibreOffice can be used over the Internet in a web browser?
- As long as you’re okay with an interface that slavishly clones the terrible MS-Word ribbon bar.
  
  Okay, what would be your alternative?

i don't know much about custom fonts, but there are two main options for self-hosted "word" replacements:
Collabora CODE - LibreOffice wrapped up as a web application
OnlyOffice
I use Collabora with Nextcloud (hence the link).

Nextcloud has collabora integrated.
- Unfortunately I am not a fan of NextCloud, it's just too slowwwwww :(
  
  you can set up collabora without nextcloud, as well
  
  it's definitively fast on my installation. Might I suggest looking at the log level and making sure it's not set to INFO or DEBUG? That's what was holding my instance back.
  
  I had the same experience, tried other stuff and eventually came back. Maybe I didn't have redis and Maria setup right before but it's much better for me this time around.
  Totally not saying that's what was up for you though, it's not for everyone.
  
  My AIO is very fast on mid hardware

Moving this to a top-level comment.
Overleaf is fantastic, as long as you are okay with non-WYSIWYG document editing and learning some LaTeX.
Typst is also worth looking at, as a similar concept. It uses a very different language than LaTeX, but feels more in touch with modern sensibilities.
- i find the latex fonts weird to deal with. for me it is more a thing of setting up your template the way you wanr it and keep sailing with that.
  
  I find them okay, but I am much more concerned with consistent fonts than with a variety of decorative fonts.
  The default fonts feel very old-fashioned though.

There’s cryptpad though I don’t have a clue how complicated it is to manage. But it’s a decent user experience.
- Cryptpad is basically a frontend to ONLYOFFICE web. It's nice, but ONLYOFFICE requires quite a bit of system resources because its java based. As an alternative, I highly recommend WPS Office instead. Significantly more lightweight. It's an application for Portainer-EE, too. So it's basically a 1 click install.
  
  This is like that other recommendation of a linuxserver/kasmvnc docker image as well. It doesn't allow for collaborative editing like cryptpad or google docs does.

@fikran VSCode

32 comments