
Dropbox Paper - dumindunuwan
https://www.dropbox.com/paper
======
ungzd
After looking at landing page, it's completely unclear what it is. Powerpoint
with comments? Pinterest for enterprise? Google Wave with Material design?
"Create, review, organize" — but even Quake level editor is about creating,
reviewing and organizing.

~~~
brianpgordon
Google Wave is exactly what I thought of. Like Wave, this is a polished, high-
quality, sexy solution for a problem that simply doesn't exist. People are
going to ooh and aah over it, and then keep using Slack and Google Docs.

s/Wave/Paper in this Wave obituary from 2010:

> Wave brought together elements of instant messaging, e-mail, microblogging,
> and collaborative editing in a single service that strongly emphasized
> concurrency and rich media. ... Despite its prodigious sophistication under
> the hood, the service never resonated with its target audience. Regular end
> users saw it as a mismatched amalgamation of disparate messaging paradigms
> blended together in a cumbersome Web-based interface.

[https://arstechnica.com/business/2010/08/wave-
cancellation-g...](https://arstechnica.com/business/2010/08/wave-cancellation-
google-gives-up-on-next-gen-messaging/)

~~~
grinich
The comparison to Wave is actually kind of funny here, since Dropbox Paper
came from the acquisition of Hackpad, which was a fork of Etherpad, which was
a startup that Google acquired to integrate with Google Wave.

It's a small world. :)

~~~
jimbokun
This is the clearest explanation in this thread of what Paper actually is.

------
isarat
Initially when Paper was launched I tried and left the product quickly. I was
using Quip a lot for my work as it's more developer friendly and easy to
manage.

I use Paper more and more these days with my team though we are into Google
for Work. Google Docs is a tough cookie and an office replica.

Those who are in to markdown, they would hardly go back to anything else for
formatting. The only catch with markdown is about creating tables Dropbox
paper has nailed it pretty well.

The product is more pleasing for eyes with better typography, cleaner design
and user experience. There's no friction to write. The people who collaborates
are more productive easily review and feedback. Also it's more developer
friendly with quick emojis with ":" shortcut.

Finally nothing beats the simplicity of Dropbox Sharing.

The product has lot more opportunities to grow. Expecting more integrations in
the coming days.

~~~
grayclhn
This has been my experience too, but paper's LaTeX rendering has been the
killer feature for me.

~~~
tedmiston
Wow, that was completely unexpected. What a nice hidden gem.

------
mikenew
As a former user of both Mailbox and Carousel, I think I'll pass.

~~~
hackcrafter
Were those not acquisitions that withered as opposed to Dropbox new product
ventures?

To be honest, I read through that whole page and I really am not sure I
understand what "Paper" is.

I'm guessing it's like slack + specialized components (lists/document
snippets) and file sharing designed around collaborating on a product or more
generally a project...

~~~
ukd1
Paper is a cross between a wiki and a google doc. It was based on
[https://hackpad.com/](https://hackpad.com/) from what I heard!

~~~
asidiali
Dropbox actually bought Hackpad and this is the fruit of that acquisition.

------
ktta
Another closed file format. I think we're are in need of a lightweight
document format, which is more complex than markdown, but needn't be as
complex as docx.

A quick google shows some results which look like pet projects of small
business which have obviously failed (since I've never heard of them before)

All of these new document formats that are pushed by big companies (some are
really great I actually love using Google Docs) try to tie the user as close
to their eco-system as possible.

When ever I try to maintain documents for long term storage, markdown seems
like the only good format. I've seen people talk about stuff like org-mode,
etc, but they all lack the fluidity and the WYSIWYG nature of Google docs,
docx etc. I'm talking about how markdown never actually stores pictures inside
the document, but just links to them, and you'll have to use a specific
application to view the rendered markdown, and a different one to edit or make
new ones.

I'm interested to see that does everyone else use for documents? And please
don't suggest docx+open/libre office. I'm still waiting for some of those
applications to properly handle a big file and I don't want to wait so long
for those applications to even open.

EDIT: Thanks for the replies. I think I should clarify something. I'm looking
for a WYSISWYG tool, like google docs/docx. I don't really have time to spend
doing the edit->render->see where you went wrong->edit cycle. This really
hurts productivity when you're editing large documents and increases the
barrier for new comers. I do use LaTeX but only when I need ultra sharp
looking documents with specific needs. I really like it, but only pull it out
when I need to write a paper and want the output in PDF. Other times, it's
really not worth the effort.

So formats which require me to render to HTML etc, are a no go. I'm looking
into ASCIIDOC but even that looks like it's very similar to markdown. And by
WYSISWYG, I mean I want to type, and press Ctrl+B to write in bold, and Ctrl+I
for italic and right click to insert hyperlink and so on. Not use asterisks
everytime whenever I want to make something bold. Sure it transparently to
that in the background, but I shouldn't have to worry about it.

~~~
nine_k
One of the problems is that people want different things from a "simple
document format".

Some want rendering-agnostic structure, like Wiki / Markdown / Org mode, that
emphasizes structure and text, with things like links, tags, etc.

Other want to print centered headers on level 1, and left-aligned for level 2,
and body text with a particular font, with fragments in a different color, and
pictures with text flowing around them, etc.

These two camps command different design goals. A format that makes one of
these easy adds complications and edge cases to the other.

The funny thing is, the same people periodically need one tool and the other,
and even want to mix them. Many of them would consider having two tools for
these jobs superfluous, especially if paid. They'd rather bend an existing
tool, because how hard it is to add spans of colored text? or collapsed
sections? It's, like, a hundred lines of code!

Hence the modern office formats, tolerably doing a huge spectrum of things,
none of them brilliantly, and hopelessly complicated.

~~~
sjy
I'm pretty happy with pandoc markdown, compiled to PDF or HTML using LaTeX or
CSS for styling, which achieves both of those design goals. But I also want to
compose my first draft in a WYSIWYG editor and send it to non-technical users
for editing (with tracked changes), so I do almost all of my writing in Word.
It's the user interface, not the file format, that I find limiting.

------
sz4kerto
It's a very nice service, I've started to use it for personal notes instead of
Onenote, but I have the feeling that MS will stay behind Onenote way after
Dropbox has shut down Paper.

------
tekacs
I'll throw Notion ([https://notion.so/](https://notion.so/)) into the mix
here, as an (as far as I can tell far more full-featured) alternative to this.

I've used Paper a number of times, starting from long before Notion was a
thing, having been a happy Etherpad and Hackpad user in the past. Somehow
Paper managed to inspire less in my collaborators than either the latter
services (where perhaps plain text was the factor) or than Notion (the
reaction of almost everyone I've shown it to has been amazement and
excitement).

Since this is the second time I'm mentioning Notion here, I'll reiterate that
I'm not affiliated - just a happy customer.

~~~
acchow
Looking at the landing page, I have built some hypothetical mental model on
how to use the app and its feature, but it's mostly guessing - it would be
awesome if they put up a video showcasing real-world usage and features.

"Task Board, Design Specs, Knowledge Base, Coding Docs, Team Handbook,
Roadmap" \- are these possible use-cases of the system? Or are they disparate
document types? You create a document and pick one of these types which
determines its features and layout?

"lets you nest pages inside each other" \- does this mean hyperlinking?

"No more markup" \- so WYSIWYG, just like Google Docs, Quip, MS Office, etc?

"Love using Trello" \- I don't know what Trello is.

There's Slack notifications, but can you @tag people?

~~~
tekacs
Use cases, kinda, yes, [https://trello.com/](https://trello.com/), yes.

I started explaining all of these in depth, but aspects of it would take an
order of magnitude more text to explain than they would to simply experience
first-hand - I'd encourage you to instead simply try out the first page of the
demo experience, which I think would be dramatically more information-packed.

------
binaryanomaly
I'm using Dropbox Paper since quite a while and I love it. For PCs it is
completely browser based and therefore works nicely on every platform - no
native apps needed. It has mobile apps. I cancelled my Evernote subscription
and account on the spot.

The only real downside at the moment from my point of view is that it does not
yet have an offline mode.

------
citrusui
It's not terrible. Personally, since I write in Markdown, it's an excellent
tool for my niche documents. It doesn't integrate with Jekyll, but it's close
enough. Simplenote is another decent app that happens to have Markdown
support, but the implementation isn't very good. No image previews, no tables,
and on occasion it will outright mess up the formatting in `code blocks`.

Of course, I am very hesistant to put my full trust into Dropbox. Their Mac
app has been known to work around security measures in macOS[0].

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12619722](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12619722)

An another note, does anyone here have a suggestion for a good Notes app with
Markdown and/or Jekyll support? Preferably one with a mobile app as well.

~~~
asidiali
IMO all the current MD editors/previewers stink for some reason. I spent 10
min throwing together [http://mrkdwn.pro](http://mrkdwn.pro) \- you can feed
it any direct MD file URL and it will render it in Github flavored markdown.
You can also directly go to a file like so:

[http://mrkdwn.pro/#/?url=](http://mrkdwn.pro/#/?url=)

and then add the URL to your MD file at the end.

Definitely not fully featured or anything, but a dead simple way to share and
read markdown files on the go.

------
rrggrr
Between Evernote, Office360 and Google Drive/Docs, etc. I'm of the opinion
this was wasted time and money; and that it will not be a revenue or user
growth driver for Dropbox. There are gaps in sharing and collaboration where
paid demand exists. They include: end-to-end persistent encrypted sharing;
File authentication; handwriting recognition/search; rule and ML based box
culling; content-aware rules; mesh-network sharing; blockchain integration;
content analysis for sourcing/data-viz; and so much more. I sense a lack of
imagination at Dropbox.

~~~
rrdharan
Dropbox's enterprise offering includes OCR with handwriting recognition:

[https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/22/dropbox-ios-app-
scanning...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/22/dropbox-ios-app-scanning-
sharing-files/)

I believe it was previously discussed on HN but I can't find the link anymore,
anyway they go into detail on the implementation here:

[https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/08/fast-and-accurate-
doc...](https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/08/fast-and-accurate-document-
detection-for-scanning/)

------
pducks32
I'm sorry but that first video is hilarious. That's the stuff Silicon Valley
HBO makes fun of. I'm all for people working together to make the world a
better place but I was in tears of laughter at that. I was looking for a (Made
by HBO) disclaimer somewhere.

~~~
Alex3917
The product itself looks great. But paying some marketing firm to dress up
Instagram models in outfits designed to evoke the feeling of a greek village
seems like a questionable use of money.

------
TuringTest
> Sorry, there’s an issue connecting to the network. Once it reconnects,
> you’ll be able to edit your doc.

This kills it for me. What good is a note-taking application if taking the
notes depends on having network connectivity, 100℅ of the time? (The message
appeared while writing, not even when trying to save).

I though the whole point of Dropbox was having a local copy of the document,
which was synchronized in the background? Why doesn't Paper work that way?

------
djhworld
I used this quite a lot over the past 6 months, for personal note taking
(didn't use any of the team/collaboration features or whatever)

It's pretty nice, supports inline LaTeX, embedding youtube, spotify, images,
tweets, PDFs, google docs and has a good markdown parser.

I've recently moved over to org-mode though, mainly because there are more
features (although it doesn't support the rich media things like embedded
videos etc, but has good enough solutions for images and LaYeX)

------
ukd1
We've used this since the hackpad days at Rainforest; it's actually great -
mainly spreadsheets!

------
thepumpkin1979
I can't believe they spent 3 years on this, I can do all this and more with
Quip as a super performant native Mobile and native Desktop. The killing
feature of Quip is it's ability to Mix, in a single document, an
spreadsheet(most of what you'd use in Excel), formatted source code, images,
todo-list, mentions & collaboration, version control and rich formatting. The
desktop app is a mix of web and native, but is not a memory hog like a CEF
app, it's pretty slick.

~~~
petetnt
Everything that you said in that post also applies to Dropbox Paper, sans the
desktop app which Dropbox doesn't (AFAIK) offer.

~~~
thepumpkin1979
Really? I couldn't find the spreadsheet, the table functionality is like
Markdown-like tables to me

~~~
petetnt
Yeah, sorry my bad, the table functionality is not nearly a replacement for
spreadsheets, we have been using Numbers / Excel / Google Sheets and embedded
those to the document if we have needed more robust data tables.

------
1_2__3
I can smell a favored executive's pet project stink from all the way over
here. And I'm not even pooh-poohing Dropbox - I love them and use them
religiously.

------
rcymerys
I just hope it doesn't end like Mailbox.

What I love about Paper (compared to Google Docs and similar tools) is it's
simplicity. Formatting options are extremely limited, so all you have to do is
just to type and it'll lay the document out for you.

This is actually the best feature, since you don't waste time adjusting tab
stops and figuring out how to make bullet lists work (which was like 50% of my
time when writing documents in regular editors).

------
bachmeier
I've been using the beta for quite a while. I haven't used it extensively, but
I will probably use it more once it takes off. Early on in the beta process I
requested Mathjax support. They added it, and now all you have to do to insert
an equation is type a double dollar sign (ie, $$). That's sort of a killer
feature, because most of my communications will involve equations at some
point.

------
tschellenbach
We used for a few rounds of design frontend review. It's actually quite slick.
Seems like it's 90% there for a google docs replacement.

~~~
Cyph0n
And Google Docs is X% there as a MS Office replacement.

~~~
andybak
Does Office have robust real-time simultaneous editing. I imagine Office 365
might have (does it?) - but how about desktop Office?

Genuine question. I'm asking about Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

~~~
Cyph0n
I used the Office collaboration features last with Office 2013 on Windows, and
they were quite primitive. Basically, the document is synced with OneDrive.

The online version of Office has realtime collaboration AFAIK.

------
philfreo
I love Dropbox Paper. The way I explain it is:

It's like Google Docs if it was designed today instead of a decade ago.

My team uses it instead of Google Docs for Feature Specs, Meeting Notes, etc.

------
dmd
What about it? This was released in October 2015.

~~~
criddell
Do you use it? What do you think about it?

~~~
dmd
I've tried it. It's kind of a joke, compared to Google or Microsoft's
offerings in the same space.

------
xutopia
So essentially it's Google Wave but in a vertical layout.

~~~
azinman2
Except far more focused

~~~
llccbb
And named after a ubiquitous wood product

------
ematvey
Honestly I don't see where all the sci-fi analogies and Wave comparisons are
coming from. I've been using Paper in beta for several months now, and it is
nothing more then a slick, streamlined version of the Etherpad , which
arguably was a slick and streamlined version of Wave.

It has all the features I used from GDocs, it is convenient and pleasant to
look at. Long-form notes are very pleasant to write there. Note-taking aspect
of this is definitely something they should explore more.

------
vonklaus
Finally, they released google docs. I jest, buy I am going to give them
(Dropbox) another shot. Google docs is _very_ frustrating. From dumping me
into an unorganized pile of text w/o folders to just enough features to make
it complicated to do basic stuff but bot enough to do advanced...or even
normal stuff.

Dropbox has done some annoying stuff w/ their offerings, but i'm going to try
paper out and if I don't get burned after a few months i'll upgrade to paid.

~~~
harshaw
Google docs organization is a mess. Honestly, I think an old school file
system hierarchy that everyone sees would be better.

Paper seems like wave (not google docs), and you really need a spreedsheet
feature to have a competitive product IMO.

~~~
lylo
Google Drive for Teams is coming soon which I'm hoping will solve a lot of
these problems

[https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2016/11/google-team-
dri...](https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2016/11/google-team-drives-early-
adopter.html?m=1)

------
trumbitta2
I _hate it_ when a website takes over my preferences and sets the language to
Italian solely based on my IP. Hate. It.

~~~
exodust
On the subject of annoyances with this page, I hate that everything is spaced
out so much. So little information spread over a huge scrolling area. I
thought this fad was dying out, but apparently not. So unnecessary and looks
awful on a large monitor.

------
bjoernm
In case you're looking for a more wiki-like experience that supports internal
links, markdown, and real-time editing check out
[https://www.nuclino.com](https://www.nuclino.com) (I'm a Co-Founder)

------
sambe
I haven't tried it, but I get that familiar feeling: you are stepping outside
of your core business in a way that will be easily shut down if not making
targets. See Carousel in Dropbox's case (nice product, very few complaints,
presumably little to zero profit) but companies tend to treat these as
moonshots instead of new businesses - it has to be a roaring success to last.

------
Angostura
All these lovely services in the comments that I would love to use at work,
but I can't because, I'm in the UK, working with somewhat sensitive personal
data and there is no way we can commit that stuff to a data centre in the U.S
somewhere these days. I'm not sure what the solution is, other than letting
people self-host.

~~~
nicolas314
Second this. All these fancy services are neat but hosting private data in the
US is seen in Europe as a major security risk, when it's not a complete no-no.
Would be cool to know about self-hosted options.

~~~
HarveyKandola
_At the risk of getting down-voted for self-promotion..._

For self-hosting try
[https://github.com/documize/community](https://github.com/documize/community)
\-- WYSIWYG or Markdown, integrate data from Trello, GitHub, or roll your own
integration.

Still early days yet, but you should get a feel for docs/wiki/SaaS data
embedding.

~~~
Angostura
Thank you. I wil. Take s look.

------
antoncohen
Dropbox Paper is fantastic. You can write Markdown, or use GUI menus. Inline
code and code blocks are great, just like normal Markdown. Great for meetings
notes, design docs, anything you want to share and collaborate on. So much
nicer to write in than Google Docs. It is designed for digital, not as an MS
Word clone.

I like writing in Paper so much that I use it to write things I'm not going to
share via Paper. I actual copy and paste out of Paper into email or Google
Docs when I work for companies that don't use Paper. I'll write things like
READMEs in Paper first, before moving them to a .md file.

The UX is so well thought out. For example, the link creation is so simple.
You copy a URL, like from the URL bar, then highlight the text in Paper that
you want to be a link, and Cmd+V. The highlighted text will now be hyperlink
to the URL on the clipboard.

The mobile app is handy too.

~~~
140am
I had no idea there is a separate "Dropbox Paper" app

------
mychael
The comments on this thread remind me of Drew's "Throw away your USB Drive"
post from 10 years ago.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)

------
Grue3
I'm impressed how the landing page is completely localized in Russian. Even
the screenshots. You can switch the language in the selector at the bottom
with like 20 different languages. Pretty cool for a small(?) company like
Dropbox.

------
morkro
For anyone interested, I've build a desktop client for Dropbox Paper:
[https://github.com/morkro/papyrus](https://github.com/morkro/papyrus)

------
posnet
I wonder if they are using operational transforms or CRDTs underneath for the
collaborate editing.

~~~
rrdharan
Operational transforms.

[https://github.com/ether/pad/tree/master/infrastructure/ace](https://github.com/ether/pad/tree/master/infrastructure/ace)

(I used to work on Dropbox Paper)

------
sosedoff
Similar, but specifically tailored for Markdown:
[https://usecanvas.com/](https://usecanvas.com/)

------
huac
The other notable "Google Docs/Office killer" is Quip. Previous HN discussion
of that:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12205855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12205855)

My gripe with these is that after using Word, these feel rigid and not full
featured enough. And only with Google docs do you get what realtime
collaboration should feel like.

~~~
rrdharan
I have not used Quip.

I used to work on Dropbox Paper, and I now work at Google (again) and use
Google Docs for work documents (for obvious reasons) while I keep personal
stuff in Paper.

IMO Paper's realtime collaboration experience is superior to Google Docs. I'm
curious to know if you've tried it and what you find better about Google Docs?

~~~
huac
Actually, I was thinking of Quip when I wrote that. Quip locks the entire
paragraph that is being changed, so others cannot work on the same paragraph.
This is less than ideal. I actually do think Dropbox Paper is pretty good for
collab, so that wasn't initially fair. My favorite feature is seeing who
contributed to which line of the document.

I do find both Quip and Paper more suited to notes than documents, however.
Writing a formal doc feels odd when your defaults aren't 12 pt Times New
Roman, but maybe that won't be a consideration in five years. After all,
there's some dissonance in saying "this is too pretty to use."

------
divan
I'm using Paper for 2+ years now, including for some team projects, and it
literally makes me want to write docs and documentation.

------
rpearl
This has been around for a while? I'm not sure why this is surfacing on HN
now.

Here's an article from 2015: [https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/15/dropbox-
announces-paper-a-...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/15/dropbox-announces-
paper-a-google-docs-competitor/#.6qjorz:OU6K)

------
samstave
Regarding some of the sentiments in this thread... I have to agree...

How exactly does this help me/large teams?

Their customer list, sure, has "cool names" \-- but the workflow support this
provides seems to focus on 19 year old college grads who were forced to do
group projects and have only ever touched a macbook air.

"beautiful interface" \-- do you know how many pitches (including multiple
companies from the decades past) attempted to sell their idea on "clean UI"
failed and failed and failed?

Look if this works for you - then use it - but a white dude and an asian chick
sitting in a clean room with a mac thinking about their "marketing" is pretty
boring.

So - what does this do? How about show me the problem the two in the landing
are working on...

\---

 __ _" Before - we were trying to get the reqs from the PM to the devs based
on the input from the marketing research of what our customers were asking for
WRT features... the pipeline was clogged and nobody was on the same page...
emails, PPTs, MTGs etc - nothing worked... then we brought in this new tool -
spent a month and a half selling it to the devs to get them to actually create
a fucking account, and 18 months later - we are 3% more effective than we were
before!"_ __YAY!

Sorry - thats how I see tools like such, "Lets disrupt 40 years of DNA on a
particular workflow that our experienced devs have been using by showing them
a lot of minimalistic whitespace and hi-res stock photos!"

how about turn this into a slack hook and let the devs do their thing and be
up-front that this is for marketing and PMs and the devs should never see it.
It should create requests of (producer of widget) via whatever method that
(producer of widget) is used to....

or... found your freaking startup from day-one on a freaking tool...

Finally, it would seem that things like this are relegated to very small teams
- and you should be wary of attempting to get other groups in your co to drink
your cool UI kool-aid.

/cynicism...

------
bluetidepro
Does anyone know if they finally changed it with the official release so that
when you make a document it actually stores a markdown file or html file
somewhere in your actual dropbox? I absolutely hate how the current beta has
it so it's disconnected. I want to be able to write stuff in paper but have
access to the originals via sync so I can update them locally in maybe
something like Sublime and just have it auto update in Paper itself.

------
ficho
Is this some sort of Etherpad revival? :) Would be awesome

~~~
rrdharan
In a way, yes. See grinich's comment which explains the chronology/genealogy:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13524866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13524866)

------
jest3r1
It's an operating theatre though.

 _These and other features may require our systems to access, store and scan
Your Stuff. You give us permission to do those things, and this permission
extends to our affiliates and trusted third parties we work with._

So, in order to work on collaborative documents, I give Dropbox, Dropbox
affiliates and trusted third parties access? Who are these people?

 _Others working for Dropbox. Dropbox uses certain trusted third parties (for
example providers of customer support and IT services) to help us provide,
improve, protect and promote our Services. These third parties will access
your information only to perform tasks on our behalf ..._
[https://www.dropbox.com/terms](https://www.dropbox.com/terms)

Maybe not so great for business data privacy compliance then?

I know it's not just Dropbox, but the idea that I'm creating business content
in some pseudo-document format that an unspecified number of people, including
outsourced IT, have access to is unsettling.

It's a gold mine for Dropbox of course. They control the document format,
making it really easy to data mine. They know exactly what everyone is working
on. Your team spends hours planning bigger, brighter ideas, and someone is
watching.

And they hold us hostage forever. Export is .docx only and the export
formatting is atrocious, non usable.

What ever happened to encryption for cloud-based services? We're giving all
our data away.

\--

Now, with all that said, Dropbox Paper does solve a number of problems
businesses face. The bare bones editor, overall simplicity, and elimination of
the traditional file format makes it really easy to use, especially when
collaborating with folks that may not create documents every day.

Paper docs are giving Basecamp, non-developer Confluence Pages (JIRA) and web
hosting at our office a run for the money. Because it doesn't feel bloated.

Plus, there's too many options for these types of business productivity tools
at the moment. Simpler is better in this regard, as navigating all of the
options, and training people, is a project nobody really wants to commit to.
At least not at our office.

That makes Dropbox Paper a good fit for something.

~~~
rrdharan
> Export is .docx only and the export formatting is atrocious, non usable.

You can also export as MarkDown.

------
qz_
But what does it, you know, do?

------
aduffy
Are they simply taking this out of beta? I've been using paper for over a year
now, it's a lot like Quip but integrated with Dropbox

------
joshpadnick
Very thoughtfully designed. I liked it better than Quip. But all our docs are
in Google Docs, which sometimes includes spreadsheets, which doesn't appear
supported. The very nice UX around collaboration isn't enough to justify the
migration pain of moving hundreds of Google Docs and losing some of our gdoc
non-text docs.

~~~
desireco42
Nothing is better then Quip! :)

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smpetrey
The iOS app is a complete mess. I can't delete notes, I can't access Archives,
I can't rename folders nor delete them. I can't move notes between folders.

This leads me to believe the app was rushed but apparently there's a version
history I the App Store. I left as much feedback as I could through the app
but man, yikes.

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obeattie
At Monzo where I work, we use Dropbox Paper quite extensively for internal
RFC's in the engineering team. We'd probably prefer to use a Google product
since the rest of the company uses Drive so heavily, but Docs is simply
atrocious when you need to insert some code.

~~~
lylo
Why don't you use GitHub (or similar) and markdown documents etc for this?

~~~
obeattie
Commenting is painful.

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fiatjaf
What about that office suite that does the same and much more, in a much
prettier way, which even includes full-featured embedded spreadsheets in the
documents?

I mean Quip: [https://quip.com/](https://quip.com/)

~~~
fiatjaf
I thought Quip was a relatively small company and I liked them for that. But
now somehow they have a SALESFORCE brand.

~~~
rrdharan
Salesforce acquired Quip last year.

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andy_ppp
I have almost this idea too with some interesting twists; it's probably going
to be hard to complete with Dropbox though as a one man team. At least this is
only a component of what I plan to build and probably the least important
bit...

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debt
Man wtf Dropbox. There are literally thousands of smaller updates and
increments you can be making to the product. This type of stuff doesn't have a
market! Fire your design team and start over. It will keep not working!

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paglia_s
I really like the idea but I just tried the Android app and is super buggy.
Text formatting doesn't work, it seems impossible to delete docs... And that's
just what I found in 5 minutes of use

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vonklaus
After looking this over again, it kind of seems like a blogging platform. I'm
going to DL it later, but looks like it could be a sneaky way for them to
enter the content publishing space.

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eatbitseveryday
Very close in name to an existing tool, Papers [1], which is meant for
organizing research papers.

[1] [http://papersapp.com/](http://papersapp.com/)

~~~
geoffpado
Also the (now defunct) Paper by Facebook
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Paper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Paper)),
and Paper by FiftyThree
([http://www.fiftythree.com](http://www.fiftythree.com))

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sp332
"However you think — in words, code, pictures or motion — Paper brings it all
together in one place." Can you really communication in "motion" on this site?

------
ende
I don't know if this replaces google docs for me (for any serious document
editing), but it may possibly replace Evernote as a simple jot pad.

------
dandare
Is Condoleezza Rice still working for Dropbox?

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mgiannopoulos
Feels like a Confluence competitor actually

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kennysmoothx
Any one have an idea on what pricing will be moving forward? Can't seem to
find it anywhere.

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atmosx
Apparently at this year and age, communicating what a product does, is a real
challenge.

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overcast
This reminds me of OneNote on the web. With fancier animations, and less
functionality.

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andygambles
So is this essentially OneNote?

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sebleon
This is cool!

On a related note, someone should make Sketch files collaborative in real time
=D

------
whywhywhywhy
Just find it utterly surprising anyone is willing to invest time bringing
Dropbox products (other than their core storage product) into their workflow
considering their track record of killing off even popular products.

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gorkamolero
This is Quip, if they had a designer on board

------
poorman
So like a Basecamp clone?

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anentropic
Dropbox is too expensive

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kisna72
anybody else noticed incredible resemblence to quip.com?

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cjmcqueen
It's Google Wave.

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coleifer
Nobody's going to use this. Seriously, Dropbox.

~~~
petetnt
We are using it all day every day at our offices, it's a superb shared Notepad
that combines speed, simplicity, robust media features (such as embed, code
blocks...), notification system, Dropbox integration and share-ability into a
tight little package. Haven't looked back to Google Docs ever since.

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sagivo
dropbox evolution:

sync files - Google Drive

sync photos - Google Photos

sync docs that are like websites and also track progress and chat and tons of
other features you don't really need but will be shut down in a year!

------
elastic_church
A tech product called paper, how original of a skeumorph to bygone relevance
in a simplistic clear name about what the product actually does!

------
howfun
It is not April 1st right?

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dboreham
Pied Piper. I mean..Paper.

------
debt
Huh? Hopefully they didn't waste a ton of resources on this. I doubt there
even exists a market large enough to justify this.

