OnlyOffice or Collabora?

ℹ️ Support 📄 Office
41

OnlyOffice works fine for me too after I fixed an issue with the Docker image (if rabbitmq fails to restart, make sure you run the docker image in interactive -i mode).

The relatively new secret token to prevent unauthorized access is also nice, but I have not tested yet how that effects external editing? I guess it should work fine as everything is still done through the Nextcloud?

The only nit-pic I would have is that the fonts and icons look a bit blurry even on my 14" 1080p screen. But I guess that is one of the limitations of the free community document server.

43

Yes, there should be no problems with JWT (the access token) while editing externally, do not worry.

As for the graphics in your editor, this doesn’t depend on the solution. What web browser do you normally use with ONLYOFFICE? Please visit your browser settings and check if zoom is different from the original 100%, this might be the case.

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44

Ok great.

I am using Firefox, but yes it turned out to be a scaling issue. I have “layout.css.devPixelsPerPx” set to “1.3” to have a slightly larger overall view as otherwise 1080p on a 14" screen is really small. At “1” everything looks sharp in OnlyOffice.

Btw. if I share a link external users can still see the other nextcloud apps in the top menu (but when clicking on them are presented with a login view). Not a big issue, but it would be nicer if those where hidden in the OO public sharing view, similar to how NC does it in the sharing view itself.

45

Perfect. I’m glad you could fix it :slight_smile:

The top meny is in fact a question of Nexcloud sharing. We cannot change it on our side anyhow, unfortunately.

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46

Hi everyone,

Are both solution now allowing co-editing document ( document, spreedsheet, etc…) within nextcloud ?

Thank you

47

Yes, since quite a while already.

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48

Hello!

As many have asked, we have updated a comparison between ONLYOFFICE and Collabora, this time touching upon collaborative editing mechanics. For everyone interested in the topic, the piece is available in our Medium blog.

49

ONLYOFFICE editors 5.2 released with improvements in usability, layout and feature set. Briefly: we introduced bookmarks and internal links in text docs, added customization for Content Control for forms and templates, Layout tab in spreadsheet editor, more actions in text and presentation viewing.

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50

Probably a stupid question.
What happens if there is a document hosted on Nextcloud and which:

  • was synced locally by user 2 with the nextcloud app
  • is being modified online by user 1
  • is at the same time modified, saved and synced by user 1

?

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51

Most likely, the last save is overwriting the rest.

52

Hi Massimo!

Yes, the last save will overwrite the document.

By the way, our developers are now discussing the way to use Nextcloud ‘hooks’ to launch notifications in the editor that let you know if someone has updated/deleted the file while you are editing it. Not sure when to expect the feature, but we will let everyone know immediately.

Plus, the force save is also in progress :slight_smile:

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53

Well… that’s what collaborative editing is for. We usually tell our clients and colleagues to only use OnlyOffice to edit these files.

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54

You have better users then I have. Honestly, a locking mechanism is urgently needed to avoid data loss.

55

I know, that this is not satisfiying, but this is the way it is with all sync-solutions… - none of them provides this, as they’re not designed for that. It’s not even a fault of NC - you get reliable file-locking only with dedicated file servers. You might get lucky with WebDAV, but I haven’t tried that eiher, because no one can/will guarantee that locks will work reliably over WebDAV.

So yes, it’s that daunting thing of educating one’s users.

56

of all what was said, what is still applicable, what need to be update or extended by taking into accout
https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/2018/11/onlyoffice-and-nextcloud-ready-accomplishments-and-next-steps/
and

57

2019-07-01_OnlyOffice-menu-buttons

But in my current installation (i did it on Jun’28 2019, so 2 days ago) the icons look very good. Well, they are minimalist style, but they don’t look blurry. The screenshot is on Iridium Browser.

I think that “your” problem is with the ZOOM applied by browser. Let me explain: after write my above paragraph i visited the same Nextcloud-OnlyOffice document using Firefox browser, and eppp… the icons were blurry. Then i realized that in Firefox i’ve applied a DEFAULT zoom of 110% to my pages… so, when i have returned the zoom for that page to 100% then icons looked perfectly sharp.

Conclusion: i suspect that button-icons used by OnlyOffice are not SVG like in Nextcloud, but PNG/GIF.

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58

This last weekend i got to install OnlyOffice on a second VPS. I had an VPS on DreamCompute (a cloud service of Dreamhost, similar to Amazon EC, but more opensource lovers! :wink: ) with Nextcloud installed. And using the same DreamCompute account i installed a second VPS, both with ONLY 1Gb of RAM !!?? and Ubuntu 18.04 as OS.

I can assure to you that both runs perfectly. I pointed one subdomain to one VPS (nextcloud.mydomain.com) and another subdomain to the other one (onlyoffice.mydomain.com). Installed the APP of OnlyOffice in Nextcloud, and put the second subdomain on settings. VoilĂ !

I’ve being monitoring the resources consuming of both VPS while opening a couple of documents, and it is surprisingly encouraging: they usually don’t need more than 500Mb of RAM, and the CPU use is very low.

I wanted to share this info because if you go to official OnlyOffice documentation they say that you need at least 2Gb of RAM, ideally 4-6Gb. And it’s not true, at least for a Nextcloud instance FOR PERSONAL USE.

In my tests (i installed 4 times NC) i discovered that NC cannot run with only 500Mb, at least need 1Gb. But certainly i have not tested yet if both suites (NC and OO) could work on a same 1GB VPS. I think so, but i see on OO VPS that node.js consume permanently resources… so i think that it could interfere with NC normal run.

2019-06-30_HTOP_DreamObjects-VPS-Nextcloud%26OnlyOffice
2019-06-30_HTOP_DreamObjects-VPS-Nextcloud&OnlyOffice.png960×1019 200 KB

Said this, i was reading a lot when i had to choose between OnlyOffice and Collabora Online. I understood that Collabora Online is more near to NC project, but the main reason to choose OnlyOffice was this: Collabora Online suite do the hard work on the server side, meanwhile OO is the user’s browser what do the hard work, loading javascript components and using server only for load tasks or saving changes.

I know that both projects are continually and intensively changing each month, and maybe this is not true already. If you have new info about it, i will be happy to read it. Thanks.

Note: at DreamCompute it cost $6USD/month each VPS (not administrated!), and they include free 100Gb of cloud storage in your account for all of your VPS. Hehehe, sorry, i don’t work for Dreamhost, by sincerely this people has my respect. They are “little company” (now medium, probably) of students lovers of opensource, in fact, one of the founders is the main developer of CEPH filesystem, the best opensource cloud FS today. So they are a good travel partner for “nextclouders” :wink:

Let me share with you my refererred link to him: DreamHost webpage.

1 Like
59

Thanks for the stats, both improved greatly on usability and ressource consumption, so in my opinion it’s now more a personal preference, as the difference is reducing.

60

Hi,
could you please verify this ?

Collabora Online suite do the hard work on the server side, meanwhile OO is the user’s browser what do the hard work, loading javascript components and using server only for load tasks or saving changes.

Because when I look at screenshot, in ubuntu@office is CPU on 100%, and in ubuntu@nextcloud where is Collabora, is CPU idle.

Isn’t it vice versa ?

thx.

61

I want to make you aware of the fact that the developers of OnlyOffice seem to be removing existing features from the open source version after some time. (OnlyOffice removed Web/mobile editing from version 5.5.0 of Community Document Server)
Interestingly, I didn’t find any note or announcement about this from the devs. It just happened all of a sudden.

With this happening behind the scenes you’ll never know what they are going to cut next. I’ll consider if I want to rely on devs with such practices.

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