Which default document viewer in /e/?

/e/OS Smartphone Operating System Features & Applications
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At the moment, if you receive a document in OpenDocument format, or in DOC/XLS… format, you cannot read it unless you installed a document viewer.
We’re looking for the best document viewer, in open source.
At the moment, the two candidates are:

OpenDocument reader is quite fast and has good rendering, but:

  • it does not support doc/xls… formats
  • it seems it has some proprietary components (though it’s apparentely in GPLv3) and some ads

LibreOffice viewer has correct support for most common document formats, but it is quite slow to render documents, and sometimes even fails.

Do you know other alternatives we could consider as default document viewer in /e/?

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I suggest libreOffice Viewer.

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I find myself always installing LibreOfficeViewer (office formats), Document Viewer (pdf, dejavu) and Cool Reader (epub) from F-Droid store (which is the one I mainly use even if I have Play Store installed). So, I think LibreOffice Viewer, despite of the slowness (which can be fixed in some way from the devs part).

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I’m using LibreOfficeViewer and BookReader (epub/ pdf)

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If /e/ wants to go a step further and include mobile office editing functionality for files that are hosted on http://drive.ecloud.global, then it would be worth looking at the mobile Nextcloud client:

https://nextcloud.com/blog/mobile-app-integration-for-online-office-talk-in-the-file-sidebar-and-much-improved-sharing/
I have not tested it, because I don’t have a Nextcould 15 server installed yet, but this sounds like a viable option.
This solution is based on Collabora, which itself utilizes LibreOffice.

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I use LibreOffice Viewer, because I already use LibreOffice on my computer, and it can open MS-Office docs.
Would like more functionality for opening other text-files: it can’t open text-files in “Notes”, and it can’t make a new .odt document like in LibreOffice Writer.

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Same as @pjmbraet I also use LibreOffice on my PC so will go for the app as the default document viewer. If at a later stage we could work on optimizing the app … speeding the opening of files then it would be great.

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I use the 2 programs un my e phone.
It s difficult to make a choice.
Realy i don’t know

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Thank you for your participation. We will probably add LibreOffice Viewer.

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I also use LibreOffice Viewer, but I agree it has some issues. I’ve not had much cause to try the editing mode which is in beta atm but it looks promising.

My other doc apps are mupdf and book reader.

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As allready underlined, LibreOffice Viewer is part of Libreoffice, which is now supporting natively epub formats also.
If we encounter issue in using it, I will suggest to report them on LO bugzilla.
In line with choosing LO Viewer for /e/ we could consider the participation at the next LibreOffice Conference (will take place as usual between September and November 2019, with a preference for September, location must be choosen), to get in direct touch with developers/maintainers of the LO Viewer.

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Why not ONLYOFFICE? It seems to be open-souced and much more comprehensive solution. Perhaps I’m missing some problem with it, but ONLYOFFICE was never discussed on this forum. Сurious why. (Of course, all these analytic trackers need to be removed before use it.)

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Hi,

I have installed and tested OnlyOffice and Collabora on top of Nextcloud.
I give just my pov for that.
On nextcloud, I prefer onlyoffice to libreoffice (Collabora). More compatible with Microsoft formats. Ressource hungry client side (Collabora is server side) which makes it more scalable.

For android, I don’t know :stuck_out_tongue:

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I tried both on Android. ONLYOFFICE rendered a docx okay but didn’t show the comments therein. Plus the app has trackers and Facebook “integration”, etc.

Collabora, already installed, displayed the docx okay and also included the added comments (making overall display smallish though). No trackers or extra permissions either.

Either is overkill if one doesn’t plan to edit.

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