Is there any effort or discussion yet about collaborative use of libreoffice applications?

[Gerry T.]

Hi Stu, your question on collaborative use of LibreOffice is a very
valid question.

I think no one doubts the need for proper support of collaborative
editing in LibreOffice. For LibreOffice (desktop) it is necessary in
order to be competitive and a requirement that it can be used in
workgroups. In my work environment, there is barely any complex
document, which is not shared and collaboratively edited in the team
(MS-based, unfortunately LibreOffice desktop does not support this). I
agree to your statement that fat clients (and here you mean LibreOffice
desktop) will always be superior and thus need support for collaborative
editing earlier or later.

The problem is that the implementation of collaborative editing in
LibreOffice (desktop) is rather complex as it requires an advanced
internal change tracking system. This is a substantial effort. That's
why no one dares to actually start this in the LibreOffice desktop code.

There are efforts, though:

Please see bug 133984: "Enhancement: Support for real-time and offline
collaborative editing in LibreOffice (desktop)".The bug description
lists a number of ressources for collaborative editing in LibreOffice.
See the bug description:
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133984.

The most notable work done recently is the work by Svante which he
describes here:
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133984#c8

Maybe your idea links nicely to these efforts. I hope that the massive
undertaking of supporting collaborative editing in LibreOffice (desktop)
starts earlier than later.

Best, Gerry


> Well, I wasn't trying to start a flamewar or a drama episode or anything. I
> didn't know collabawhatever was a thing.
> but a) it looks like a commercial product? b) it sounds like they just run
> libreoffice on a web server and project the instance to whoever's on that
> webpage. c) somebody has to supply the 'cloud' that it runs on.

> I'm a big fan of fat clients. ms word and libre office will always be
> superior to google docs (in my opinion only obviously) because it runs
> locally on my machine. What I was getting at was a way to make a fat client
> collaborative.

> But if there's no interest, I'll drop it.
> Thanks for the info.



On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 9:07 AM Marc Roos <M.Roos at f1-outsourcing.eu <https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice>> wrote:

>//>/:) No but is really a question. I want to try a bit this libre office />/online and I am not even able to get a simple test environment running />/that creates a odt file that I can edit from multiple clients. />/Even the manual of libre online online ~50% writing about other />/products/services. />//>//>//>//>/-----Original Message----- />/Cc: nixo; libreoffice />/Subject: Re: Is there any effort or discussion yet about collaborative />/use of libreoffice applications? />//>//>//>/Why do people send collabra office stuff on a libre office mailing />/list???? The question is clearly about libre office. />//>//>//>/Oh sorry then. I will now go back in the corner to enjoy my popcorn. />//>/--tml />//>//>//>

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