LibreOffice Merges Initial Support For Compiling To WebAssembly

[caligula]

So... basically no one has an idea what wasm support is for.

It provides platform independence. The app will look the same (not native) on every platform. Also a bit slower than native, and larger memory usage.

[arQon]

So... basically no one has an idea what wasm support is for.

It's for Buzzword Bingo.

Office app suites are boring, so every few years you have to trash them with either braindead UI changes (MS's ribbons etc), or bandwagon-jumping to include whatever the current technology fad is, regardless of how stupid or inappropriate it is.

TBH, I'm surprised it's not "blockchain"...

[jacob]

Seriously, this mania of turning absolutely everything into a web app must die NOW. I really can't imagine how running LO in a browser could make it more user friendly, more capable, better integrated into the desktop, more privacy-friendly and generally more useful than a native app.

[cueball]

Things dont always need to be black and white - having options is great. Just select the answer thats appropriate to your question. If you are doing heavy document work, you probably want a high spec machine, fast storage, and local install. If its logging on to your corporate web portal so you can do more lightweight document editing/viewing, using a web based editor is probably fine. Or maybe you dont have a computer right now, but need to do something real quick and borrow your mates computer...

[Quackdoc]

This is such a goos thing, this will allow things like chromebooks, android devices in general reliable desktop Libre Office.

(Collabora office is good for mobile, but when using Desktop mode/dex or even screencast to a big TV, Desktop mode will be great.

[SWY1985]

I'm not familiar with WASM enough, though it's been in the news a lot recently. Can someone tell me, is it really only limited to browsers or would it be possible to, say, write a WASM interpreter outside the browser that would work on (for example) Haiku? That way, it would be like a 'universal binary' thing. That might be valuable.

[jacob]

I'm not familiar with WASM enough, though it's been in the news a lot recently. Can someone tell me, is it really only limited to browsers or would it be possible to, say, write a WASM interpreter outside the browser that would work on (for example) Haiku? That way, it would be like a 'universal binary' thing. That might be valuable.

In theory WASM is just a particular bytecode. In practice it's 100% oriented towards the web/cloud. It can run on everything including Haiku provided that a JITter is implemented on it, but don't hold your breath for any kind of universal binaries. That doesn't really work (remember Java's promises?) and when it does, it's badly integrated and inferior. The most valuable solution for Haiku is native Haiku apps, not another rube-goldberg "cross platform" contraption.

[miskol]

I'm not familiar with WASM enough, though it's been in the news a lot recently. Can someone tell me, is it really only limited to browsers or would it be possible to, say, write a WASM interpreter outside the browser that would work on (for example) Haiku? That way, it would be like a 'universal binary' thing. That might be valuable.

For now you can run any Qt app in browser. But it still depened on APIs that you really need to run app

[zoomblab]

Based on my research on wasm, a promising technology, it is best suited as an standard based integration layer for modules written in different languages but compiled into a common target. For example integrating modules of C/C++ or (god forbid) Rust code in the browser. Or integrating C/C++ code into Nodejs. So far at least it doesn't seem fitting as a target for first class full fledged applications, because it still misses important features such as threads, simd and exceptions. Also, the specification, does not include standard means for using and interacting with the apis of the platform that hosts wasm, e.g. browser and posix; though people are working on that issue and until now emscripten is used as an alternative.

With all that I want to conclude that maybe it would be more useful if they used wasm as a way to glue 3d party code into LO than porting the whole thing to it. But I could be wrong of course.

[Mario Junior]

It provides platform independence. The app will look the same (not native) on every platform. Also a bit slower than native, and larger memory usage.

So they need to remove the "Assembly" for the name and use "bloat mess shi*" instead.