[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 133984] Enhancement: Support for real-time, synchronous collaborative editing in LibreOffice (desktop)

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133984

--- Comment #4 from Gerry <gerry.treppel at googlemail.com> ---
(In reply to Aron Budea from comment #3)
> (In reply to Gerry from comment #2)
> If there are features missing from LibreOffice Online that'd be important
> for certain kinds of professional work, wouldn't it make more sense to add
> those instead?

For complex documents and spreadsheets, online office suites (including
LibreOffice Online) are no real option and will not be for a very long time (or
maybe never). LO Online needed no less than all the features of LibreOffice
desktop while having no time-lag, offline-working capabilities and full
interoperability with files saved/opened locally. 

The following scenario is no future scenario, but everyday office life;
actually it is a very typical case: A colleague uploads the draft of a report
to MS OneDrive (e.g. 200+ pages with full layout, several tables of contents
(headings, figures, tables), several chapters with dozens of tables,
figures/drawings, cross-references and hundreds of bibliographic references),
and annexes. Five persons collaboratively work in MS Word desktop on this same
shared document: One person reworks some chapters and copies lots of prepared
and layouted text into these chapters and partly works offline on the document
during a train ride, syncing changes back later. The second person improves the
figures and tables and has to copy lots of stuff from local MS Excel and MS
Powerpoint files and several images from the local file system. The third
person reworks the bibliographic references with Zotero. The fourth person
works on layout and table of contents. The fifth person does proof-reading and
adds comments and changes in the track changes mode. 

Therefore, I am very surprised that you don't consider collaborative editing an
important feature for a desktop office suites. In the 2020s, IMHO this is a
must for any desktop office suite to be suitable for enterprises and
professional team work. 

These are typical requirements that need the fidelity and feature-richness of a
desktop office suite:
* Working with large, complex documents or big spreadsheets.
* High performance and no time lag with such large documents and spreadsheets.
* Full interoperability with files (documents, spreadsheets, drawings, images)
that are saved locally, i.e. edit with external program; import/insert &
export/save; copy & paste.
* Ability to work offline on the shared document/spreadsheet and sync back the
changes later when online.
* Navigating and copy & pasting between several sections of a document, but
also from other documents or objects from other office modules (tables from
Calc, drawings from Draw, etc.)
* Ability to use LibreOffice extensions such as the bibliographic software
Zotero.
* Ability of open several windows of the same file showing different sections
next to each other.
* Ability to collaboratively work with files that are hosted on file sharing
systems such as MS OneDrive, MS Sharepoint or others (i.e. there is no LO
Online).

LibreOffice desktop is perfectly suited for complex documents like that, but it
unfortunately does not support collaborative editing. In this regard,
LibreOffice desktop substantially lags behind the competition of MS Office.
This is sad, because LibreOffice is superior in so many ways when dealing with
complex documents.

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