

LibreOffice to go Android and HTML5 - bergie
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/02/libreoffice-developer-shows-prototype-android-and-html5-ports.ars

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simonsarris
Oh Jesus we've already been through this. I sincerely hope the LibreOffice
team wisens up and looks at other group's efforts to try and do the same.

Mozilla Bespin became Mozilla Skywriter became "fuck it, we shouldn't have
used HTML5 Canvas as a text editor" and merged with Ace, which uses plain old
divs and not Canvas. It's not glamorous. But it's sane.
(<http://ace.ajax.org>)

The Canvas spec has an entire section devoted to why making a complex text
editor rendered in Canvas is a bad idea:

* Mouse placement of the caret has to be reimplemented.

* Keyboard movement of the caret has to be reimplemented (possibly across lines, for multiline text input).

* Scrolling of the text field has to be implemented (horizontally for long lines, vertically for multiline input).

* Native features such as copy-and-paste have to be reimplemented.

* Native features such as spell-checking have to be reimplemented.

* Native features such as drag-and-drop have to be reimplemented.

* Native features such as page-wide text search have to be reimplemented.

* Native features specific to the user, for example custom text services, have to be reimplemented.

* This is close to impossible since each user might have different services installed, and there is an unbounded set of possible such services.

* Bidirectional text editing has to be reimplemented.

* For multiline text editing, line wrapping has to be implemented for all relevant languages.

* Text selection has to be reimplemented.

* Dragging of bidirectional text selections has to be reimplemented.

* Platform-native keyboard shortcuts have to be reimplemented.

* Platform-native input method editors (IMEs) have to be reimplemented.

* Undo and redo functionality has to be reimplemented.

* Accessibility features such as magnification following the caret or selection have to be reimplemented.

~~~
forgotusername
> the cloud port will be powered by the existing LibreOffice code. The
> application will run on a server and its user interface will be painted in
> the user's browser window on an HTML Canvas element. The LibreOffice cloud
> prototype is powered by Broadway, an impressive HTML-rendering backend for
> the Gtk+ widget toolkit.

So basically for the cost of leveraging an existing library (Broadway), you
get LibreOffice in places you wouldn't previously, and it's much better than
the alternatives (rewrite LibreOffice from the ground up, or have no mobile
solution at all). Sure it's not perfect, but practicality > correctness.

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hencq
Wow, what I find most interesting is they're rendering GTK directly to canvas.
I wonder how it performs though. The video on the Broadway blog they link to
seems spiffy enough: [http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2011/03/15/gtk-html-
backend-upd...](http://blogs.gnome.org/alexl/2011/03/15/gtk-html-backend-
update/)

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djnliung
So is this where we are headed? In our blind rush to make everything run on
the web and take as much control out of the hands of the users as possible we
are turning web browsers into vastly bloated VNC clients? Excuse me if I throw
up a little at the thought.

~~~
Animus7
> In our blind rush to make everything run on the web and take as much control
> out of the hands of the users as possible we are turning web browsers into
> vastly bloated VNC clients?

This stuff is GPL'd, so I don't see how it takes control away from users. On
the contrary, this would give you far more control than you get from using any
other solution, since you can host it yourself.

And yes, it's like VNC, but I don't see how it would be inherently more
bloated.

Personally I welcome the trend towards software that can be used on any
machine with a browser.

~~~
streptomycin
> This stuff is GPL'd, so I don't see how it takes control away from users.

If you take GPL code and run it on a server, you don't have to release your
modifications.

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amatus
I'm seriously considering this as an alternative to Google Docs.

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j_col
Seems like a great candidate to use Enyo. HTML5+Enyo would mean they could use
the same code base on multiple platforms (Android, iOS, webOS...).

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callumjones
I really hope that's a rough prototype where it's focusing on the features and
not on the user interface.

~~~
CrazedGeek
Er, yeah: "The experimental Android prototype merely demonstrates that the
office suite can be made to run on Android devices. A touchscreen-friendly
user interface that matches the platform's native interface conventions will
be implemented before the tablet application is released to end users."

