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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.
It can use fonts embedded in the file and fonts provided via css. Fonts provided via css can be stored on the server or, when WebODF is used in a desktop or mobile application, on the local machine. There is not really anything for font license issuers to freak out about. PDF can embed fonts too as can OOXML. Providing fonts via css is common on the web these days and of course one should check the license when doing so.
In collaborative mode as used in ownCloud, each document edit is stored as an operation such as AddImage, AddText, MoveCursor etc. (WebODF implements Operation Transformation for editing) With this stack of operations and the original document, any intermediate state of the document can be recreated. There is currently in WebODF no method for displaying changes in a single document, but it's straightforward to show different versions of a document side-by-side in your website or application.
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.
Because the general complaint about OpenOffice/LibreOffice was that Java made it too fast. /s
Next up! A web browser written in Javascript.
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