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WebODF: JavaScript Open Document Format Editor Deemed Stable
oever (233119) writes with news that WebODF (an Open Document Format editor written entirely using Javascript and natively rendering the XML document using CSS) 0.5.0 has been released, and the developers are declaring this release stable enough for every day use. TheMukt chides Google for not supporting the OpenDocument Format well and claims that the newly released WebODF 0.5.0 in combination with ownCloud is the answer to this deficiency.
A WebODF developer blog highlights all the goodies in the first WebODF release where the text editor is considered stable and made available as an easy to use component. These include extensive benchmarking, unit testing, and advanced HTML5 techniques to give the editor a native feel.
There's also touch screen support, and better support for real-time collaborative editing. A demo shows off a few of the features.
This is fast and responsive. Does it avoid long-standing Word problems, such as figures that jump away from captions, paragraphs that adopt the adjacent style just because you're moving them around, and the like? For professional writing, I'll stick to LaTeX for now. For collaborative writing, something like this could be nice (and improve on half-baked solutions like the editor in OneDrive (very slow) or Google Doc (not word-compatible). So, I think this would have to be able to export / import Word docs seamlessly, due to business pressure everywhere...
Does it support markdown?
Very nice. I just wonder does it use fonts off the web server, fonts on the client, or both? (And are any of the font license issuers freaked out about the former?)
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
My guess is that while you can use it and get work done it isn't quite up to the feature set they had in mind for a version 1
It's stable and ready for every day use, as long as you don't need page breaks. I have a 3 page odt containing page breaks and WebODF just throws all of the text and images at the bottom of the first page.
How is this ready for every day use without supporting something as basic as page breaks? Page breaks go back to Word 1.beforeiwasborn
...so that our NSA overlords have it on a silver plate. And for god's sake, don't encrypt. Only terrozists do that !!!!!!!
Because modern browsers are the closest thing we've ever gotten to an actual cross-platform ecosystem with an efficient distribution system baked in. While not 100% by any mean, we're pretty close to a point where you write an app for Chrome, and it will just work in other browsers, including IE back a few versions. You have to make sure not to use certain features, but you don't need annoying abstraction libraries like you would in native code to support *nix vs Windows, nevermind mobile operating systems.
And because of that, the ecosystem around the language is blooming, and the code written can then be used in other environments, like server/client (node.js) and data (mongo). The language sucks, but what was made around it is blissful.
Why is there this trendy craze to rewrite everything in a badly designed browser scripting language? ...
imo, it's being pushed by the malware people. They want to have a mess of bad code 'out there' running in everyone's browser. It makes the attack surface so much larger.....
Are you serious? The applications exist for when you have access only to a computer and a browser. it doesn't matter what operating system it runs, it doesn't (or shouldn't) matter what browser it running. It doesn't matter that you have no admin rights. If you need to edit a document, it should just work.
And if I only have a computer, and python/libraries installed I could run a python program (substitute any other language platform for where you said 'browser).
you have no point.
browsers still aren't equivalent, are very insecure and are targeted by privacy invaders, malware producers, etc.
One day you will get a real job and that app you just spent a month making the CEO will like and want to run from his IPad at the airport.
You can either learn to program IOS, or just do it in javascript and it will still work when he decides next week to look at it from his Android phone. While things like Citrix can work for this, that crappy javascript works without plugins and can work better.
Maybe. Which version of python does your program run under? They have a lot of trouble maintaining compatibility between minor version numbers.
Further, everyone has a browser. Not everyone has python. Fewer still have the random version of python you need to run your program.
Required reading for internet skeptics
or really? Microsoft forces upgrade and whole place stops working. or Oracle's recent java fixes break the API. or, everyone needs flash upgrade and some other plugin from mars. IE required for this, firefox for that....I deal with that nonsense daily.
Thin clients (the hardware boxes) have the same issues, funny some of the ones from even three years ago can't be upgraded to handle current "standards"
Because the general complaint about OpenOffice/LibreOffice was that Java made it too fast. /s
Next up! A web browser written in Javascript.
Seriously? It doesn't matter if you have admin rights? And thus no means of local storage? So we should all push our documents out 'on the cloud'? So Google or Microsoft has control of everything we do? We should push them out onto 'the cloud' running binaries on machines we don't have admin rights to, giving out passwords each time we do?
I like local storage. It goes beyond liking, actually. I expect local storage. Crap like this just makes it easier for software publishers and 'services' to eliminate the need for, and thus the access to, local storage.
Plus, dinks who write web pages aren't programmers. No matter how many 'script' tools they heft around.
Looking forward to see this build into web mail solutions.
Thank you for a non-smartass answer.
Dark Reflection
You're drowning. Sorry, but reality doesn't agree with your uninformed opinions. JS has been impressively stable, and cross-browser issues have been negligible for a long time now -- none of which, I'll remind you, have been language implementation compatibility issues.
Listening to you, one would think that the web barely functioned, with users needing multiple browsers, and various versions of each, to use a handful of sites. That's clearly not the case.
Here in reality, the web is developing nicely in to a convenient application platform. JS is an impressive language, far more sophisticated and capable than the alternatives you've suggested. (New and constructor functions were the big mistakes, leading to all sorts of confusion, and later hate, for those who didn't take the time to learn the language before using it. Luckily, they're unnecessary. Try actually learning the language. I'll bet your opinion will quickly change.)
also, bet your shit doesn't run on the browser on my son's non-smart net10 phone
I'll bet your python program doesn't run either. What was your point again? That you don't like JS or that the web is incapable of being used exactly how it's being used?
Required reading for internet skeptics
HTML5 local storage. Not useful for large documents, but more than enough for most purposes.
I couldn't figure out a way to add a table of contents. Otherwise it seemed pretty decent.
Did you read the summary or look at the app? This has nothing to do with the cloud, nothing to do with Google and nothing to do with Microsoft.
It's Javascript. It runs locally. Just because it's inside your browser doesn't mean either the app or the document has to be 'in the cloud'.
I would say your original question was answered, and relatively civilly. Saying that the respondent has no point seems a bit petty. The point was made, and quite ably. Your counterpoint is also clear enough, and readers can decide how much merit and validity it has.
I am not convinced, either, that JavaScript is an elegant language, but I am less convinced that it is crap than I was was back when it referred to nothing more than an array of incompatible pidgn dialects. The fact remains that its greatest strength is its ubiquity as a lingua franca.
It is difficult not to be favorably impressed that a resource has been written in JavaScript which shows so much promise.
Nevertheless, it works[tm]. The good has two arch-enemies, and both are winning almost each battle: the better, and the good enough.
Potentially of interest if there was a shred of setup/implementation information, after an hour of looking, following false trails and futzing I gave up.
Do I open up my Galaxy Note 3's pen context to perform a Microsoft Windows function or do I just use terminal to cntrl+ click?
ownCloud is one of the projects that uses WebODF. It is software to install a personal cloud on your own hardware. There are also native Windows applications using WebODF. There's also a Firefox OS app to view ODF documents on your phone.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
Doesn't it have as much local storage as you give to it?
Ezekiel 23:20
Link zotero to this and you'll have a solution academic collaborators have been looking for since the beginning of word processing.. Seriously, we need a collaborative writing platform which allows multiple authors to add citations.
Maybe but my guess is that the people who run that project disagree with the idea that "0.0" should be the version assigned to the first line of code and "1.0" should be the first version deemed stable and ready for general use.
I agree with that kind of numbering so I agree with the GP in this case. I think software statuses are easier to understand when people conform to the 0.0/1.0 convention.
Everyone gets to number their software any way they want, and everyone else gets to gripe about it if they don't like it.
the developers are declaring this release stable enough for every day use
anyone see anything wrong with that statement?
This is actually a very bad assumption. Lots of software start off with the major version being zero as zero indexing stuff is extremely common when it comes to programming and it only gets bumped when there is a non-backwards compatible change.
This is no longer the trend.
This is why Mozilla and friends have been pushing for web standards the last 12 years or so.
Today we can develop scalable, web-based applications and only require a modern browser. IE9 made great strides and IE10 is even better from what I hear.
Today I can develop something in Firefox, test it across the board (Opera, Safari, Chrome/Chromium, IE, mobile browsers) and they usually just work. No plugins, no bullshit.
Also, any business with more than 25 computers should be using Windows Server on a Domain to enforce upgrade policies. As in, test the updates on a dev box, and push updates if there are no issues.
TL:DR, your point is moot in todays modern web.
This is a really impressive start. It's not done, but they don't claim it is. It's responsive and does quite a bit.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
The WebODF developers take security very seriously. WebODF runs in a browser and web browsers are the most battle hardened sandboxes available.
WebODF has no more access to your hard drive than any unprivileged website. If you press the icon to open a file, WebODF asks the browser to let the user pick one file. That file, and only that file that the user chose, is then passed to WebODF so it can open it. This is no different from an HTML form for uploading files. The difference is that WebODF does not need to even pass the file to a server. It is a client-side library that can parse a file purely in the browser without any network access.
If you use WebODF with a CMS, you can let the CMS decide which files WebODF has access to. When WebODF loads a document, it checks for any JavaScript present and prevents it from being executed.
WebODF is set up such that you only need a few files to run it and all those files can be hosted on your own server or placed in your own application. There is no need for any reliance on any 3rd party.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
https://github.com/kogmbh/WebO...
I like Dojo in part because it attempts to make all the core widgets accessible. From:
http://dojotoolkit.org/referen...
"Dojo has made a serious commitment to creating a toolkit that allows the development of accessible Web applications for all users, regardless of physical abilities. The core widget set of Dojo, dijit, is fully accessible since the 1.0 release, making Dojo the only fully accessible open source toolkit for Web 2.0 development. This means that users who require keyboard only navigation, need accommodations for low vision or who use an assistive technology, can interact with the dijit widgets."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I own a company that builds custom web-based applications for businesses. Certainly not fortunte 100 companies, but businesses with a dozen or more users doing their job with the system 9-5, Mon-Fri.
Personally I don't use Windows at all. Not sure what the snarky comment about Windows Server was all about. I'm not the IT person for these companies, I am simply familiar with the features offered by it and have seen it in place at most of the businesses we deal with.
For the past two years, targeting IE9 has worked well for us. I've convinced some businesses to use Firefox or Chrome instead, as they were still on WinXP.
We don't use any Plugins, and stick to standards as best we can. We also avoid flashy, animated crap. Its business, not TV.
We also build general public stuff. We dropped support for IE7 over a year ago, its made things a lot easier. We're still discussing when to drop support for IE8 in these projects.