'It's where the industry is heading': LibreOffice team working on WebAssembly port The LibreOffice team has been working on a port to browser-hosted WebAssembly, and hopes for a working demo by summer 2021. "It's the way the industry is heading," said Document Foundation board member Thorsten Behrens. Browser-based versions of the open-source office productivity suite already exist in the form of Collabora …
"“All too often, technologists solve problems by introducing additional layers of technology abstractions and disregarding simpler solutions, such as outreach and engagement,” he wrote."
BBC iPlayer has a 1992 documentary about the short history of atomic power stations. A similar quote is given to explain what went wrong with the promises and expectations.
I really cannot see the point of porting Libre Office to a browser, increased security risk, more memory required and the necessity of being online to use it all make it a bit of a waste of time. And MS and Google have this stuff well covered already. They'd be better off using the reaources for rewriting the especially crappy bloated bits. No thanks, I still have a copy of Office 97.
"No thanks, I still have a copy of Office 97."
I still have BBEdit and TextEdit plus a couple more that I use most of the time. MS Word has more options, but it's so cumbersome to use that a simple text editor is fine. I also have an old version of Ragtime, a business document application. Pricey, but it's a great text, spreadsheet, image, graph document builder that's simple but goes deep if you need to. I use it to make forms for my business.
The beauty which can be also the curse of WebAssembly in the browser is that its applications use in other proprietary and relatively closed Operating Systems are both a voluntary and premeditated exercise initiated at both the discretion and personal behest of the programmer/WebAssembly coder/authorising user ...... or abuser as the case can so easily be if one doesn't have a great deal of common good sense or a penchant for the dark side, floating and flirting with a live evil.
Take care in that space place. There be monsters there that be more than just daemons.
Anything that has a dependency on something else you can't control can be broken in seconds. Are they going to make sure their software works on all browsers or only a select few? What happens when a an update on a browser borks functionality? The browser publisher isn't going to be too bothered if your product isn't working. Especially if they have their own or have a "partner agreement" with your competition.
A few people need a backend for collaborating on docs simultaneously. Most people don't. Those that do also are going to be big organizations that fixate on security as well so aren't as happy about hosting anything in the cloud other than vetted marketing materials. I worked in aerospace in the US and that's governed by ITAR (International Trade in Arms Restrictions). We were required by law to maintain data security. Google Docs wasn't a legal option although it took a big scare for the CEO to understand that (after I left). The company had to undergo an audit when they bid on a government contract and it came up as an issue, to put it mildly. Cloud hosted files are leaked daily and sometimes it isn't caught for months. So far, none of my filing cabinets have lost any materials.
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