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submitted 1 week ago by fikran@lemm.ee to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

Hi all,

What fast but functional document editor do you recommend? I would like to add custom fonts and do some page layout work, but otherwise nothing too fancy.

Suggestions?

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[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

OnlyOffice is probably going to be your best bet.

[-] Hawke@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

As long as you’re okay with an interface that slavishly clones the terrible MS-Word ribbon bar.

[-] tja@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

Okay, what would be your alternative?

[-] Hawke@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I’m not a huge fan of Google as a company, but Google Docs seems to be the first and only one that actually put some new thought into how to organize their toolbar, so that’s my go-to.

Edit: thinking a little further, my other go-tos are Overleaf or Typst. Those do require that you be okay with a non-wysiwyg editor of course, but they are excellent.

[-] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Why not libreoffice

Edit: I believe it’s maintained unlike the former

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 8 points 1 week ago

OnlyOffice is not the unmaintained OpenOffice.

[-] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 1 points 1 week ago

Thanks for the correction

[-] Dirk@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago

So, LibreOffice can be used over the Internet in a web browser?

[-] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 7 points 1 week ago
[-] Dirk@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago

Ah, I see. Not as native web application, though.

They’re using Alpine Linux, install X and Openbox and Xvnc and serve KasmVNC via Nginx and connect via KasmVNC to that X instance. LibreOffice is started in fullscreen and looks like a slightly blurry web application.

But in reality it is just a regular desktop installation with some extra things.

@fikran@lemm.ee, maybe this is a solution? I wouldn’t recommend it because it’s not really a web-based document editor.

[-] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 2 points 1 week ago

Oh that looks horrible, never mind!

[-] Dirk@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

Usually you just see LibreOffice and nothing else, so it’s fine, I guess. Not a web-based editor, but usable.

I use Collabora CODE, which is an online version of LibreOffice. I don't know a ton about the technical details, but I'm pretty sure it does server side rendering.

Here's a guide to configure it with Nextcloud.

[-] truthfultemporarily@feddit.org 8 points 1 week ago

Nextcloud has collabora integrated.

[-] fikran@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago

Unfortunately I am not a fan of NextCloud, it's just too slowwwwww :(

[-] 5PACEBAR@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

it's definitively fast on my installation. Might I suggest looking at the log level and making sure it's not set to INFO or DEBUG? That's what was holding my instance back.

[-] mr_pip@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 week ago

you can set up collabora without nextcloud, as well

[-] fikran@lemm.ee 1 points 5 days ago

Do you have any guidance on that? I haven't been able to find anything.

[-] mr_pip@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I was talking about this docker image: https://hub.docker.com/r/collabora/code/

correction from my side: it is the development edition, which means rolling release and possibly less stability, but it is worth a try imho (but i do not use it personally)

[-] ITGuyLevi@programming.dev 3 points 1 week ago

I had the same experience, tried other stuff and eventually came back. Maybe I didn't have redis and Maria setup right before but it's much better for me this time around.

Totally not saying that's what was up for you though, it's not for everyone.

[-] buedi@feddit.org 3 points 1 week ago

A few releases ago they made massive improvements in Speed. I use NC since the Split from OwnCloud and that performance Upgrade recently was truly impressive.

Mine is okay, but maybe I just have high standards. I'm using redis and postgresql, so I'm probably about as optimized as I can be. Page loads in like 2-3s, but I wish it was faster.

If there was an alternative to Nextcloud that could replace Google Docs and wasn't written in PHP, I'd switch. I don't need much, I just want to access documents and spreadsheets in the browser.

But Nextcloud is good enough.

[-] Kuvwert@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago

My AIO is very fast on mid hardware

i don't know much about custom fonts, but there are two main options for self-hosted "word" replacements:

I use Collabora with Nextcloud (hence the link).

[-] Lodra@programming.dev 6 points 1 week ago

There’s cryptpad though I don’t have a clue how complicated it is to manage. But it’s a decent user experience.

[-] Xanza@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Cryptpad is basically a frontend to ONLYOFFICE web. It's nice, but ONLYOFFICE requires quite a bit of system resources because its java based. As an alternative, I highly recommend WPS Office instead. Significantly more lightweight. It's an application for Portainer-EE, too. So it's basically a 1 click install.

This is like that other recommendation of a linuxserver/kasmvnc docker image as well. It doesn't allow for collaborative editing like cryptpad or google docs does.

[-] Hawke@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Moving this to a top-level comment.

Overleaf is fantastic, as long as you are okay with non-WYSIWYG document editing and learning some LaTeX.

Typst is also worth looking at, as a similar concept. It uses a very different language than LaTeX, but feels more in touch with modern sensibilities.

[-] mr_pip@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

i find the latex fonts weird to deal with. for me it is more a thing of setting up your template the way you want it and keep sailing with that.

edit: typo

[-] Hawke@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I find them okay, but I am much more concerned with consistent fonts than with a variety of decorative fonts.

The default fonts feel very old-fashioned though.

[-] mr_pip@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

you could have a look at etherpad. seems pretty cool and is extensible with plugins. i don't know about resource consumption and security aspects, tho, because i don't personally use it. there are also a few publicly usable instances to test it out (see their github). keep in mind, however, that those come with plugins and do not reflect the vanilla state of the tool.

[-] fredbrooker@witter.cz 1 points 1 week ago
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
51 points (100.0% liked)

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