New Web and Mobile Strategy for LibreOffice - TDF Community Blog

Develop an online and mobile version of the suite.

All I can say is: “The best thing that could happen.”
This will propel LibreOffice a huge step forward. :+1:t2:

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I have a mixed opinion about the request.

Indeed having viewer for handheld devices would be a plus. I kind of remember having installed a non-official LO viewer on an Android tablet. This is nice and would be even nicer if some product was endorsed by TDF.

However, handheld devices are not office tools. But this I mean their screen size is rather small and they are not really fit for bulk data entry. So, projected usage has to be carefully thought over.

I am rather cautious about a “web version”. If the request is to develop a viewer for integration in a browser (just like you can display a PDF), I fully support the request. But if the goal is to enhance LO to produce HTML output (or similar), I am not at all convinced by the project.

I’ll talk about Writer I practice most. Writer is intended to create document split into pages with a fixed clearly specified size. This is opposite the dynamic nature of HTML where contents adapts to current size of display “tool” (generally a viewport in a window). Author’s layout is no longer relevant, as are many features like footnotes (where to display them with a vertically unlimited HTML flow (aka. a webpage). Style formatting and CSS have no one-to-one mapping and their behaviour are somewhat different.

If creating a new offspring to the suite should break what presently exists, I’ll disagree.

And development resources are limited. I’d like to see the backlog of pending bugs addressed and cleared before embarking into a time-consuming project.

I’m doing 90% of my work on my smartphones. My sister does not even boot her laptop at all. My father should simply attach his mobile by usbc to the screen to get the stuff simplyfied. I see no reason to not do work on tables, smartphones or whatever device based on android using mouse, keyboard and screen or simple tasks on the road…

I haven’t heard anyone proposing such in this context. LibreOffice does support exporting to HTML, so we should maintain that existing feature. I have always been against advertising LibreOffice as a WYSIWYG HTML editor.

I very much appreciate the desktop version of LibreOffice as it suits the work I do.
It would be useful to have a web version in which I could collaborate with others on those documents where consensus is needed and colleagues use different office suites.
I have Collabora Office on my mobile phone but due to screen space and compromises needed, I can use it only for the simplest of tasks. Even then for simple note taking, I prefer to use an email page as I can use the phone’s spell check and autocorrect. In short, please don’t put effort into a mobile version at the expense of the desktop or online programs. Cheers, Al

Indeed having viewer for handheld devices would be a plus. I kind of remember having installed a non-official LO viewer on an Android tablet. This is nice and would be even nicer if some product was endorsed by TDF.

For your interest, there is currently LibreOffice Viewer for Android, published in F-Droid and Google Play, but (as the name says) that’s mostly a viewer and only for Android (and derivatives or other systems supporting Android apps), not e.g. for iOS/Apple devices.

Would I be wrong in assuming that Base would not form part of either the mobile or web developments?

I ask because the only mobile development that integrated any form of database support that I know about is AOO (on Android).

Before discussing the merits of the strategy, let us note the following:

  • The Board of Directors adopting this strategy is unelected, 6 months pasty when the elections should have been held, and clinging onto power through a technicality
  • The current board is also animated by a vendetta against contributors from Allotropia and Collabora, which has gone as far as throwing them out of our foundation. They are no longer even in the Engineering Steering Committe.
  • … and speaking of the ESC - this strategy was not adopted by an open procedure in the ESC but by a non-technical and closed forum, containing, other than unelected BoD members, only TDF employees (who are subject to the authority of the ED and the BoD).

So, no less than a strategy regarding mobile and web, I worry we are seeing here the new custom of how the project will be governed from now on: Not only intra-organizational matters will be decided in an exclusionary manner, but so will technical ones.

And now, to the matter at hand.


1. LibreOffice does not need a mobile version beyond a viewer

This is perhaps the most significant point. An office suite is for use with a desktop/laptop device, sporting a keyboard, a mouse and a middle-to-large display. It will not see any significant use on smartphones, and very little, if any, on tablets. Of course, that is not to say we should without resources from the LO viewer, but that’s not the same thing.

1.1 People are not asking us for a mobile version

The blog post claims:

we have constant requests for web and mobile versions

but - we do not receive constant requests for a mobile version. To my knowledge, we have very little indication of interest in this. Specifically:

  • Ask.LO: Last post asking about a mobile version was in 2021.
  • r/libreoffice: Last post asking about a mobile version was in 2020.
  • Project mailing lists: No such requests that I can remember
  • This discourse forum: I’ve not seen discussions opened about this (other than this one), or people saying how they edit documents on their mobile phones. However, see comment by @dennisroczek and my reply below.

Caveat:

  • We have limited editing capability, marked ‘experimental’ in our viewer app. Michael Weghorn notes we get some Google-App-Store user reviews asking us to flesh that out and fix it.
  • Mike Saunders claims that this is “very common question that comes up” on social media; I rather doubt that.

Also, and as far as I can tell, people generally do not use other office suites to author documents on their mobile phones. I don’t know many tablet users, but I doubt it is all that different for them as well.


2. ‘Online’ LibreOffice

2.1 Let’s choose P2P, not a centralized server

Only a few years ago, on this very discussion board, it was proposed to take an alternative path to supporting remote collaboration with LibreOffice: P2P collaboration, as proposed by @webmink . There was even support from many important community members for initial funding for the initiative. And even though the phrase P2P is mentioned in a bullet point - it seems to be a token rhetorical concession, as the first bullet point says clearly that:

online … version of the suite. The challenge is to select the technology that fulfill both end-user and server side management

and we don’t have to go that far - just look at the title: It is not “Remote Collaboration Strategy for LibreOffice”, but rather “Web Strategy for LibreOffice”.

I say: No. That is the wrong challenge. We should not have server-side management. Microsoft likes to manage things server-side; Google likes to manage things server-side. Even Collabora likes to manage things server side for some reason. But we should not encourage the disempowering custom of having remote parties hold your files, and you being reliant on them to store your stuff and run (part of) your apps.

2.1.1 Corollary: No need for web-based LibreOffice

If LibreOffice collaboration is not based on some central server - that server does not need to expose the LO UI to the users. And the collaborator is not a person with a browser, but a person with LibreOffice installed on their system. There is therefore no need to reimplement or port LO’s user interface, nore its backend code, to Javascript, or WebAssembly, or anything of the sort running on a browser.

We have the experience of webification in MS Office and in Collabora; the result: Inferior user experience and more of a toll on computing resources. Let’s not go there.

2.2 No intrication of remote collaboration with a mobile/android version

It is concerning that this document is called a “Web and mobile strategy”. Collaborating over the network is one thing; an android / smartphone version is another thing. They are barely related, and we should not tie one of these up with the other.

3. We must not ignore nor understate serious quality problems

One point of the strategy reads:

Keep the quality … the office suite

Certainly, Writer can be considered an app of quality. Far from perfect, but we can say that with a straight face. Calc - perhaps also, but it is already seriously lacking vis-a-vis Excel regarding some more advanced features. But those aside - our Impress and Draw module are not quality products at all. They are still ridden with a large number of very visible bugs; and lack important capabilities or resources available in PowerPoint or Visio. In fact, Impress still feels like a beta product, not an application with decades after its release. (I assume Base needs a lot of work as well, although that is being addressed through a dedicated developer.) And a final aspect to mention regarding quality is the quality as an editor of the popular MSO formats, or “quality of interoperability” if you will. There too, we are still quite far from being able to claim to be a “quality editor” of DOCX, PPTX or XSLX.

This point is not intended as a nitpick or a snipe. The consequence is, that we cannot simply treat LO as high-quality finished product, and based on that, focus much of our resources and efforts in collaboration features or a mobile version. No, we need to be focused still on addressing shortcomings in LO on the desktop (and especially in Impress and Draw), with collaboration features being given at most equal emphasis, if not less so than desktop LO work. And, like I wrote above, we should absolutely not waste precious resources, effort, time, on the wild goose chase after a mobile office app suite.

4. Fully supporting ODF is a conflicting goal with a focus on web/mobile/collaboration

The strategy says:

Full support of the Open Document Format (ODF)

But - we don’t fully support the ODF format. Not v1.4, not v1.3, nor v1.2 nor even full support for v1.0. See this bug dependency tree for unsupported ODF features. And - we have not put an emphasis on reaching support completeness. We could do so; but that stands in contradiction to dedicating resources to online collaboration or to a mobile version. A strategy which says “let’s do everything” or “let’s eat our cake and have it” is not much of a strategy, and sounds more like a wish list.

5. No to support for (European & other) nationalism

In recent years, we are witnessing increasing use of nationalist rhetoric from the TDF as motivation for using or adopting LibreOffice: The talk of “sovereignty”. Despite the excuses about how “sovereignty should really be thought of as individual autonomy” and the like, we do seem to be pushing LibreOffice and ODF use as measure for nation-states to consolidate their power.

In this vein, we read the following in the strategy document:

Be an active participant of … government initiatives for …FOSS and nations’ sovereignty

A strategy regarding collaboration features, or a web version, or even a mobile version is obviously no place to stick a commitment to fostering sovereignty. For a cosmpolitan and multi-lingual FOSS project, it is not just out-of-place, but rather offensive.

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but the Membership Committee will certainly provide more details about that …
hum, or maybe not …
Election Update Please
Arrangements for Board Election?

probably just a coincidence, seems Membership Committee Meeting minutes are just optional now …
Membership Committee Discuss - The Document Foundation Community

details are sometimes in silences : Category:Month of LibO - The Document Foundation Wiki :wink:

I am not aware of any removals from the ESC. In fact, our website (https://www.documentfoundation.org/engineering-sc/) lists several companies represented there.

Regarding the elections, members have received communication from the membership committee some days ago.

The strategy paper is explicitly titled as „proposal“ and we started discussion here. However, entering a discussion with accusations is not helpful…

Regarding Online and mobile, on events this is the number one question we repeatedly get asked, there certainly is a demand.

Lastly, on the proposal, I also received very positive feedback from longstanding, non-board/MC/team TDF contributors.

@EyalRozenberg,
"your ongoing campaign of disinformation and targeted hostility on the The Document Foundation (TDF) mailing lists and forums has crossed the line from aggressive advocacy into actionable defamation. Week after week, you flood these public community spaces with demonstrably false narratives, twisting internal governance procedures and standard administrative decisions into malicious conspiracies. You are intentionally misrepresenting facts, distorting reality, and inventing bad-faith motives for community members, volunteers, and engineering staff who are simply trying to advance the project.

This behavior is completely unacceptable, highly damaging to the community ecosystem, and a direct violation of TDF’s Code of Conduct. Healthy critique and rigorous debate are foundational to open-source governance, but weaponizing public channels to assassinate character and spread absolute falsehoods is not debate—it is harassment. You have been repeatedly corrected with hard documentation, yet you choose to ignore the facts in order to perpetuate a toxic, alternative reality that serves only to disrupt and divide the project.

Consider this a direct and final demand to immediately cease and desist from making false, misleading, or defamatory statements regarding TDF personnel, board decisions, and operational processes. The community will no longer tolerate the weaponization of its own communication infrastructure to host malicious fabrications. If you cannot engage honestly, adhere to objective reality, and respect the boundaries of professional conduct, you must step away from these forums entirely before further formal escalation becomes necessary."

I’ve asked an LLM to “write a few paragraphs in the style of EyalRozenberg telling him to stop making false and defamatory statements on TDF forums” and it seems like it collected enough information to address some of the points I wanted to cover as an answer to your constant hammering with statements you know of being false.

That LLM failed to fully use your style as it didn’t mention once the “ruling clique” as a term you like to use but the level of aggressiveness is nearly there.

The LLM would also fail, like you do, to report correctly on past events and legal issues as while some hints have been provided publicly for years, and clearly ignored by both you and the LLMs, many of the legal documents and email threads are still confidential, or unreachable as they are only in the members or directors mailing lists, due to ongoing legal processes that hopefully will be sorted with a settlement in the planned mediation.

I tested a few cases with these LLMs and the responses received are as expected fully or partially incorrect due to the fact that evidence showing a very different situation hasn’t been made public and also due to the fact that a few people, including you Eyal, keep posting false and/or misleading statements.

That’s quite problematic and we’ll have to evaluate at some point how to address the issue but in the meantime if would help if you, Eyal, and others got the message and stopped coming up with statements you know very well to be false and/or misleading.

Ciao

Paolo

with an esitimate date for the elections ?

which is ? :thinking:

which is ? :expressionless:

which is ???

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See the e-mail sent to your TDF member address, I don’t have any other details than these myself.

This is completely incorrect (unsurprisingly). I am handling LibreOffice’s social media channels and “Where is the full Android/iOS version?” is a very common question that comes up, almost every day. I also attend events on behalf of the LibreOffice project and the question comes up time and time again.

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I showed how we we get no such requests on Ask.LO and on Reddit. We don’t see such requests here on our discussion forums, nor on the various mailing lists I’m on (I’m not on all of them of course). When LibreOffice gets online press reviews, we are often criticized for not offering online collaboration; but rarely (hardly ever IIANM) on not offering a mobile editor. You write we get such requests on other media - well, that’s possible, although peculiar we would only get them on few platforms.

So, please show us these requests:

  • No need for a huge number of requests, just give us a sample.
  • Let’s take, say, the month ending today (or yesterday).
  • Please post the links to the requests we’ve gotten during that period

and I will amend my reply and drop that claim.

Just one.

But Dennis, that is a reply on this thread to the suggested strategy, that is not a stream of users requesting that we provide LO on mobile.

Still, that is an interesting example that that you bring up, which may be educational in general. Can I ask for a little more detail?

My sister does not even boot her laptop at all.

So, how does she author documents (not read documents)? Using her smartphone screen and on-screen keyboard? If so, which app does she use? Or perhaps it’s something like Google Docs?

My father should simply attach his mobile by usbc to the screen to get the stuff simplyfied.

Same question about your father as about your sister: Does he, today, author documents using his smartphone, or do you mean he could do that if we offered the possibility?

Also, if he were to attach his smartphone to peripherals - then, he would not need a special mobile version; he would just need the regular version to run on Android like on a laptop or desktop.

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I would like to get a little bit into the details of the example with your sister and father - if you’re willing of course. But first:

Indeed having viewer for handheld devices would be a plus.

We have a LibreOffice viewer for Android devices, already today :slight_smile: (link is to the F-Droid page).