Hi all,
What fast but functional document editor do you recommend? I would like to add custom fonts and do some page layout work, but otherwise nothing too fancy.
Suggestions?
i don’t know much about custom fonts, but there are two main options for self-hosted “word” replacements:
- Collabora CODE - LibreOffice wrapped up as a web application
- OnlyOffice
I use Collabora with Nextcloud (hence the link).
you could have a look at etherpad. seems pretty cool and is extensible with plugins. i don’t know about resource consumption and security aspects, tho, because i don’t personally use it. there are also a few publicly usable instances to test it out (see their github). keep in mind, however, that those come with plugins and do not reflect the vanilla state of the tool.
There’s cryptpad though I don’t have a clue how complicated it is to manage. But it’s a decent user experience.
Cryptpad is basically a frontend to ONLYOFFICE web. It’s nice, but ONLYOFFICE requires quite a bit of system resources because its java based. As an alternative, I highly recommend WPS Office instead. Significantly more lightweight. It’s an application for Portainer-EE, too. So it’s basically a 1 click install.
This is like that other recommendation of a linuxserver/kasmvnc docker image as well. It doesn’t allow for collaborative editing like cryptpad or google docs does.
Moving this to a top-level comment.
Overleaf is fantastic, as long as you are okay with non-WYSIWYG document editing and learning some LaTeX.
Typst is also worth looking at, as a similar concept. It uses a very different language than LaTeX, but feels more in touch with modern sensibilities.
OnlyOffice is probably going to be your best bet.
As long as you’re okay with an interface that slavishly clones the terrible MS-Word ribbon bar.
Okay, what would be your alternative?
I’m not a huge fan of Google as a company, but Google Docs seems to be the first and only one that actually put some new thought into how to organize their toolbar, so that’s my go-to.
Edit: thinking a little further, my other go-tos are Overleaf or Typst. Those do require that you be okay with a non-wysiwyg editor of course, but they are excellent.
