Pitfalls in the clouds, or a failed test of online editors on a docx file

Not so long ago came across on Habré an article under the heading "How to make friends MS Office with Libre Office" . The problem caught me, because the incorrect opening of files from one editor in another, which had been forced in my teeth, already tormented me a little. With all this inconvenience, to pay for the fare, when you have a travel card, I have never seen the point. Therefore, in the question - what to choose - paid editor or free, the answer was clear. But what to do with docx?




The practical use of the above article, by and large, turned out to be quite limited, since it ultimately boils down to two things:

  • Using the pdf format of saved files (which, of course, solves the problem of saving / opening, but creates new ones, such as editing and converting).
  • The use of certain file formatting, which a) will be correctly read by another editor b) will not include complex elements such as inserting pictures and tables into a text format document (meanwhile, I personally need this and I did not see any reason to limit myself - from words at all).

In principle, it is possible for documents of the same type (for example, references or statements) to create templates with variable fields or to give permission to edit only certain cells in Excel tables. Problems are not excluded here, since the human factor has not yet been canceled. The user, having seen the prohibitions incomprehensible to him, an uninitiated person, will bypass them by simply copying the data into a new document and there will no longer follow any formatting and editing rules for cells , because the gladiolus . And again, we will return to frustration due to the opening, or rather, not opening, of the file. I'm not talking about the doubtfulness of such actions in general and the controversial "exhaust" from them.

But since there is still a need for such, why not just move away from the idea of ​​using Libre Office (well, or Open Office, which is one and the same thing)? Maybe it’s easier to completely remove the desktop and take the cloud, fortunately, access to the Internet is not a problem now? It is more convenient, IMHO.

Thinking about it, I climbed into Google and found several free services for online editing of documents, but, as it turned out later, there are more pitfalls than I expected.

A list of what I have google:

Google Drive - Writely-based application for editing text files on Ajax) and Google Spreadsheets application for online editing documents from a search engine, which is a long time ago non-search engine. In general, this editor was a notorious leader even before the start of the tests, simply because Googol;

Dropbox + Office Online - At first it was planned to use the beta version of the editors from the Dropbox, Paper team. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, I was still on the waitlist for it. Therefore, Office Online from Microsoft was used. In principle, there is no silver lining.



Zoho - a well-known cloud office for organizing workflow with built-in editors;

IBM Office - An IBM essay on the topic “How we wrote software and scored it”, at least the impression they make is the poor software forgotten in the rain;

OnlyOffice Online Editors- part of the product for organizing collaboration OnlyOffice, bribed by the availability of a server-side Open Source version of document editors, in addition to SaaS, with almost the same functionality. Prior to working with him, considered him an outsider of the list. In vain;

Cloud Mail.ru - does not need an introduction, everyone heard about it, mail from mail is now like a search engine from Google, only its axis has not yet been written, perhaps;

OwnCloud is the open source counterpart to Dropbox ... and that’s probably it.

I don’t take into account such guys like QuickOffice or Documents to Go - I need access not from the mobile, but from the computer. Also left ThinkFree Office. When I tried to create a document from Chrome, a window appeared with the inscription "Download Java Runtime Enviroment", which the chrome from version 42 stopped supporting. Cool implemented, in general, but for some reason I did not want to roll back to the old version for the sake of document editors or recommend other users of chromium to switch to ogelis.



Also, the once-popular Apple iWork project is not included in the review, primarily because it requires an apple account, and not everyone has it.

In general, only one thing can be said about these online editing services. They look similar, and their differences are built on trifles (well, for example, GDocs and OnlyOffice have a difference in support for footnotes, and even in a number of not very important functions, such as the presence / absence of not very popular fonts owned by Microsoft).

Armed with a small docx document with pictures and tables created in MS Office, let's start testing.

You can find an example file here and check the correctness of my assessment. So:

Original from MS Office :



As you can see, there is nothing special in the file. Picture, text, unordered list, a pair of hyperlinks and a table. So I thought before trying to open it in Libre Office :



Immediately - oh. The picture is not displayed, formatting is a mixture of something very indecent, and the top of the table has broken. What is it about - the XML format is read with errors by the libra.

Ooh, I think. To do this, I do so that there is no such thing anymore. I open Dropboxand choose to edit. The file goes to Office Online. And such a miracle opens: The



picture went to the left edge of the sheet, the table too. Text wrapping around objects is incorrect. The upper part of the table became lower due to the fact that it was written in a line with the heading of an unordered list. That is - Word Online itself broke the document that was created in his offline brother. Cool.

Zoho



Here everything is somewhat better, but also not without problems. The table also leaves for the left edge, and the upper part has shifted down. Moreover, text flowing around an image is again imperfect - the text runs under it, and some lines merge into one word due to lack of space. The design of the borders of the table does not match the original, but these are trifles.

Owncloud

Here from whom I did not expect such a loss of formatting, it is from them. There have always been enough problems with this system, but somehow I was always used to looking at them through my fingers out of respect for the creator. And the result meanwhile speaks for itself:



In general, formatting has flown somewhere in the country of Oz. I think everything is clearly visible. I must say right away that this is the worst option for losing formatting from all tested products.

Cloud Mail.ru

I would not pay special attention to these editors if it were not for the popularity of Mail services on their own. The functionality in the editors is extremely stripped down and is only suitable for creating simple documents. In this document, he could not even recognize that he was working with the table, because there was no means to work with it. Well, I think this is a "feature." But, no matter how unexpected, the result was pleasantly surprised:



Almost one-on-one with Zoho, but paragraph formatting did not fly off and the wrap was copied quite correctly. With the table, I did not expect anything.

IBM Docs

I don’t know why the IBM service gives the impression of being raw and forgotten. It was not very habitual for me to work with him personally, it was expected a little different.

Well, okay, from my personal experiences we turn to dry facts.



The picture did not load on three attempts, otherwise everything is just like on other services, that is, incorrectly.

OnlyOffice Online Editors

Here it is necessary to make a reservation that I did not have high hopes for him (I repent, sinful). If the rest of the online editing services are well-known and fairly well-known (because of the development of eminent people and / or companies), then I came across this by accident, and I tried it only because I was also looking for the Project Management system for my server, and Bitrix’s price, for example, impressed me so much that the jaw still rests on the floor. As it turned out, I tried for a reason.



As you can see, it’s almost perfect, with the exception of the borders of the table and the location of the picture, which moved up a bit and the lines of the paragraph, one line below.

Comparison (original left):



Opening the file caused a pleasant surprise. Therefore, I decided to try a larger and more complex document - a diploma with an application, footnotes and a large number of tables. They didn’t let me down here either, the diploma opened, however, the loss of footnotes was offensive (apparently, such functionality in OnlyOffice simply does not exist), but on the other hand, the entire document completely retained the formatting and the tables with the application did not look passed through the meat grinder.

But I was distracted. At the finals, the tastiest and most expected was left to rejoice.

Google Docs

If the previous candidate was pleasantly surprised, then with Google it turned out much worse - the file opened, but it opened almost the same way as in Zoho and Mail.ru Editors:



As you can see, the “problematic” row of the table was recognized by Google as a cell and brought down as part of the table. The table moved to the left, as in all (almost) other editors. The picture is framed, as in the original, the flow around is correct. But the table was in trouble.

Then I thought about the question - why so? Why didn't Google's editor cope with a small docx document? And why did another editor handle it?

The fact is that, despite the elements of Canvas and SVG, which almost completely make up the editor from Google Docs, he still was and remains an editor in HTML4. OnlyOffice, in the presence of the same Canvas, consists entirely of HTML5, therefore, by the way, having opened the file in Google on Mozilla, I got a different version of the file, albeit in differences only with line



breaks: In OnlyOffice:



As you can see, it’s absolutely identical. HTML5 is basically multi-browser, web pages with its support will be the same in any browser.

Such pies. As you can see, the conclusions are rather unexpected. Only one cloud editor correctly displayed the file, and, for the sake of fairness, the desktop Open Source editors also failed here. So if you can go to the cloud, you should seriously consider the choice of an editor. So far, the conclusions are as follows:

1. Online editors do not support the XML format weakly, with rare exceptions.

2. Desktop editors with open source code also cannot cope with it, nevertheless, the format for them is “non-native”.

3. If you assume that for some reason you cannot use editors from Microsoft and want to use cloud editors (for example, for the convenience of collaborative editing), then:
- Look at your files. If they do not have complex formatting, then Google or Zoho will do;
- If you need a document in its original form, then OnlyOffice will be the best choice.

4. The same applies to functionality, if you need a large number of functions - work in the desktop. If your documents are typical and simple enough, and their creation does not require special artsy functionality, then cloud editors, in my opinion, are more convenient.

Thanks for attention!

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