Ready for a new Google Docs alternative? Meet open source OX Documents - khangwartan

A the free trial period for Microsoft Office 2022 draws to a close together, information technology's a bad safe bet that more users than ever are mentation long and hard about whether or non to buy up operating theater subscribe.

There's without doubt competitors so much as the open source LibreOffice and the browser-based Google Docs extend persuasive alternatives, but soon there will be yet another contender to consider.

Unveiled on Wednesday by Unenclosed-Xchange, OX Documents will exist a productivity suite that's both open source and browser-based, thus combining a spot of apiece of those leading alternatives.

'Non-blasting' support

OX Documents will eventually be a cloud-based berth productivity suite, and it's repayable to be fully complete and full-featured later this year. For straight off, though, Open-Xchange is focusing first on OX Text, its in-web browser word processing component.

OX Text offers direct editing capabilities for some Microsoft Tidings .docx files and OpenOffice OR LibreOffice .odt files, but there's also viewing support for altogether John R. Major file formats. Billed by Open-Xchange as a "pioneering feature" of OX Text edition is what it calls the software's "non-destructive" support of Microsoft Office and OpenOffice Beaver State LibreOffice charge formats.

"XML-based documents can be seamlessly take, edited, and saved back to the freehand arrange at A level of quality and fidelity antecedently unavailable with browser-based text editors," the group explains.

Manifold users can likewise view and edit the same document in real fourth dimension using OX Text, allowing for integrated collaboration.

'Formatted as in the beginning attached'

OX Text was actually developed by members of the innovational OpenOffice development team, Open-Xchange says, with the end of creating a cloud over-based billet cortege from scratch using state-of-the-graphics HTML5 and JavaScript technology.

"A crucial factor in the growing of OX Text was not to introduce yet some other branded single file format to further lend to the productiveness compatibility jungle," explained Open-Xchange Chief operating officer Rafael Laguna. "Existing cloud-based tools importune that you adopt their formatting in front you can begin the edit mental process that creates ugly conversion artifacts, putting a brake on fast acceptance of collaboration in the cloud."

The software system as wel keeps germinal document formats by "not attempting to neuter operating theater convert non-compatible native formatting features," Laguna added. Soh, when you reopen a written document in Microsoft Word, "it is formatted as originally intended, without any alterations."

Roughly 80 percent of a Word written document's elements can be altered by OX Textual matter, according to a NetworkWorld report, only 100 percent of the document survives with its format maintained.

A preview version now uncommitted

OX Text testament be available in early Apr under a GNU General Public License 2 and Creative Commons Ascription-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Permit, American Samoa recovered as under commercial licenses that offer backup-based subscriptions to telecom and transportable carriers, hosting companies, cloud over providers, and others, Open-Xchange says.

It will be available some separately and American Samoa an extension of Unconcealed-Xchange's existing OX App Suite. Later o in 2022 we'll see the arrival of presentation and spreadsheet components. In the in the meantime, you can check out a preview reading of OX Text online.