LibreOffice Online v1.0.....
LibreOffice takes to the skies, or rather cloud, in its first online release. Neil Mohr wonders if its just annoying smog or a soaring cumulonimbus?
We test out the first release of the fully open source cloud document editor.
As part of its push to conquer the office world with open source Collabora has released version one of COOL or COllabora OnLine. It’s part of the wider Collabora CloudSuite effort that’s attempting to deliver LibreOffice to every type of device running both on and offline. Currently in its version one state Collabora is aiming this at enterprise deployments (typical government and business installations) where the system can be integrated into an existing infrastructure.
As an individual though you’re able to deploy your own COOL instance via the Collabora CODE initiative at www.collaboraoffice.com/code where you can grab a pre-built 64-bit VirtualBox image of the COOL server. Using this it’s trivial to fire up a COOL server and start using the online system via any modern browser.
Using OwnCloud through its plug-in system, Collabora has built the LibreOfficeKit API, which enables the reuse of the LibreOffice C++ code to load, save, edit and render documents as image tiles with a JavaScript/ NodeJS front-end that handles the interface and rendering the document contents. It means the existing LibreOffice code can stay as is, with supported features exposed via the API.
Logging in presents you with the familiar OwnCloud interface – Collabora will customise this for clients – that provides a new Collabora Online section. In here you can edit and create documents, spreadsheets and presentations via LibreOffice’s Writer, Calc and Impress. While this means you’re able to load, edit, save and create both standard ODF and Microsoft DOC(X) files, the editing features differ greatly from the desktop LibreOffice.
We fear change
An easy way to describe COOL is as Google Docs meets LibreOffice. Take Documents, it’s capable of displaying rich documents but the editor lacks many editing features you might be expecting. So while there’s full support for formatting, styles and tablets there’s no word count, spell check, find/replace or basic stripping of formatting. It’ll import the full range of image formats, diagrams from the likes of Visio and even link charts from external spreadsheets.
This deep support for formats but minimal editing persists across all of the office applications. Calc feels the most accomplished as it needs the least editing, but it still lacks any formula shortcut menus, charting features, sorting and filtering. Impress offers no animation, drawing tools and themes etc. What it does do well is that it’s slick, consistent, stable and works as you’d expect. It’s impressive that it imports a wide range of complex documents with ease, no matter if they’re ODF or Microsoft. This will be down to the LibreOffice code at its heart. In its current form it’s very much like Google Docs was in its infancy, but even here its import/export capabilities are far better.
Accessing documents on tablets and phones is also possible through the browser. On a phone interface things were hampered by the soft keyboard jumping in the way but things seemed to function fine. On larger tablets this is less of an annoyance. We understand a full tablet app is planned, which should provide easier editing.
At this stage the stability and performance matches what we would have hoped for. The functionality certainly lags the competition, but Collabora is entering the market very late in the day; Google Docs appeared around 2006 so has a decade of development, Microsoft Office Online appeared around 2010.