NC11 : Documents app?

Thanks for replying. I picked up a couple of tidbits Iā€™d been banging my head about, particularly the name of that new free cert site you mentioned, Lets Encrypt.

I take it youā€™re not keen on creating your own docker image for pi? Docker confuses the crap out of me for some reason.

4 posts were merged into an existing topic: OCR and (hardware) scanning

7 posts were split to a new topic: OCR and (hardware) scanning

Itā€™s sort of like a wiki, since you can make changes and submit a PR on github :thumbsup:

I donā€™t understand why the focus of this thread went from the Documents App to OCR.
I want to update to NC11, but since the Documents App isnā€™t there i canā€™t do that right now (for me collabora is not an alternative, too much overhead e.g. need for docker, too complicated to install).
Please bring back the Documents app or at least state why it is not possible.

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Was hit by surprise as well. Could you maybe at least raise a warning with confirmation, when you upgrade and an app will not be available afterwards. Would have spared me some annoying rollback operations :frowning:

Collabora seems not to be available for ARM processors (Raspberry Pi?), or at least, not in a dockerised version.
In the absence of Collabora docker for ARM architecture, is there a viable alternative that will enable editing LibreOffice and Microsoft Office documents?

Having said that, I am very deliberately moving towards writing everything in plain text such as MarkDown!

It is entirely possible, once someone maintains the codebase.
As itā€™s a plugin and not a core function, it requires someone with knowledge to keep it up to date.

I am also stuck with Nextcloud 10 and can not upgrade to Nextcloud 11 because the Documents app is not available.

I do not want to use Collabora Online. Is there any other alternatives? or any ideas if the Documents app will be one day available again in Nextcloud 11?

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it seems to me that @JasonBayton already answered your question before you wrote itā€¦
The Document app will be one day available again in Nextcloud 11 if

someone maintains the codebase

Just remember to take into account that

it requires someone with knowledge to keep it up to date

Up to now it seems that none has the will and knowledge to update and maintain it :unamused:

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Thanks for explaining the problem. I understand now that it is not available anymore because nobody is maintaining it.

This is quite a blocker because a lot of people including me is not upgrading the Nextcloud 11 because the Documents app is missing.

Not everyone wants or can use CollaboraOnline.

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Just to explain the background:

The documents app was based on WebODF, a 3rd party library which is unmaintained since essentially late 2015: https://github.com/kogmbh/WebODF/commits/master
Also, it was just able to do documents. No spreadsheets, no presentations. Which people asked so often about and which is important if we want to provide a real alternative to Google Docs and the like.
As much as we would like to, we could not have put the resources into maintaining the library on our own and then developing new features on top.

Now Collabora Online is done in collaboration with Collabora (the folks from LibreOffice). Itā€™s well-maintained by an established company. This is perfect since we can simply integrate it.
Of course there are a bit more technical requirements, but this is the only workable solution at the moment.

All of you are very welcome to contribute to make the whole process easier and improve Nextcloud for everyone ā€“ get involved. :slight_smile:

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:thumbsup:

Are you kidding me? Thank you for your detailed explanation but this sentence is a bad joke.
Collabora is not usable for nearly all Nextcloud users on a Shared Hosting plan.

I know that, and sorry about that. But WebODF is simply not maintained, so itā€™s not viable. You are very much welcome to continue maintaining it or getting someone to do it: https://github.com/kogmbh/WebODF

Personally I only used the Documents app mostly for viewing documents in the browser, rather than downloading them and opening in a doc editor. More recently I tend to save docs as both original and PDF, then I can open the PDF to view and download if I want to edit.

Iā€™m not keen on running docker (I have a full LXD environment and more than happy to run collabora in that if was officially installable outside of docker) so Iā€™ll likely wait until the ONLYOFFICE app arrives now.

I keep wondering if the Markdown Editor could solve the issue for some of the people writing here.

It offers:

  • a way to modify text from within Nextcloud using a simple app
  • nice formatting
  • a ā€œsort ofā€ collaborative editing (you can share the .md file, other users can modify it, you have versioning and activity with Nextcloud functionality)

The addition of PDF exporting capability would be an extra bonus!

There are already two github issues about it:

The docs feature was dope. I hope it will return in the future. I simply have no plans on wasting another public ip for a collabra server. :frowning:

@all & AlexHowser
Alex is absolutely right. I love this add on, because itā€™s easy to use without great requirements.

I do not need big collaboration software ā€¦ with extra administration etc.
I am with PINK in her Melbourne concert: ā€œI prefer to keep things simple!ā€

Do not know, why Frank Karlitschek as author, or who ever kicked this add on out of Nextcloud since update to version 11.0.2.7 without any warning!!!

So my appeal to Frank: Bring this add on back in the future. Not only me will appreciate it, or in German: Frank, ich wĆ¼rde es sehr begrĆ¼ĆŸen, wenn dieses wirklich nette StĆ¼ck Software wieder in den nƤchsten Versionen von Nextcloud funktionieren wĆ¼rde. Dank im Voraus.

So long the best to the community
soyo

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I vote we close this down now, cc @tflidd

To summarise:

  • The app is unmaintained
  • The codebase the app is built upon is unmaintained
  • The app being compatible with NC was good fortune, not intentional

Hereā€™s what you can do now:

  • Run Collabora
  • Run ONLYOFFICE
  • Try the Markdown editor
  • Export your docs to PDF

Hereā€™s what you can do to get the app back:

Collabora isnā€™t perfect but itā€™s supported; for anything else itā€™s going to require the community steps up.

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