Questions reading and writing office documents.
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Hi all,
very happy to see that QT has several classes to handle text/office documents.
I'm working on a construction to work on an office document which is (and stays) on the server, while I (and possibly others) are working/editing it at the same time, using a secure connection between client and server.
I am also happy to see the class QTextDocumentWriter. which supports ODF. I'm not targetting that in the beginning, first to get a server running which can handle simultanious access to a text doucment, than mre complicated formats. One of the ideas is to give every connected client/user a window to the document, which will be something like a page (and maybe some more lines I don't know yet). The client can edit this region, and no other user can edit this part of the document at the same time. (allowed is read what the other user is writing). Important are here ACL, which give the server info what a user is allowed to do like (read, modify, append, remove text, add/delete documents etc). A lot todo.
I have some questions I hope you can answer.
First, the class QTextDocumentWriter is only about saving, not reading. Is there another class for that. If not, is there a reason not to? Maybe is it because when reading, you also jave to support in QT everything what ODF documents do, which can be a big (too big) task?
Second, since I want to edit the documents over a (secure) network I need a "Open Document Network Protocol" or something like that: a protocol between client and server to make the server do what the client/user wants.
Thanks in advance,
Stef Bon
The NetherlandsSee about Open Secure Network Services:
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Hi,
Do you mean you want to implement something like Google docs ?
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Yes it looks a lot like Google Docs. There are some important differences:
- Google Docs is from within a browser, using HTTP(S). My software offers a "Open Document Network Protocol" over SSH (well that's the purpose) any client can work with.
- Google Docs is build within a Google Internet Framework, where Google rules. In my setup the developers together with input from users/clients are buidling it together. It will be a set of software (OSNS SSH server, a document server with a backend (ODF?), a set of ACL's, a setup for managing user and host keys (a CA?), integration with backup, chat (video/text), a common shared clipboard, a shared yellow post it board, etc)
- Google Docs is offering services in the cloud. OSNS works from a server in the local network, your own server, not a anonymous server somewhere in the cloud. I want to work on a special FUSE fs to offer the user the ability to browse, select and open documents which are available to him/her by your organisation, It will look like this:
/run/network/sbon/docfs/Open Secure Documents/bononline.nl/development/{home,public,cteam}
Names are arbritrary chosen. The root is "/run/network/sbon/docfs", the FUSE fs is the rest of the path. When a document is selected and the user wants to open it, in stead of providing a handle, offering read and write ops, the construction will start a local client (or a new tab if already open) offering a window (default: first page) to the document on the server.
So yes, it looks a lot like Google Docs, but there are some important differences.
Stef Bon
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There used to be Kobby from KDE that provided something like that.
