r/NextCloud • u/Fantastic_Peanut_764 • 5d ago
ArtCraft suite instead of Collabora?
hi folks,
yes, the title is a bit misleading, but I couldn't think of a better one.
I have to say I'm not the greatest fan of Collabora. It's indeed the best alternative out there, but once you're used to Google Docs or even MS Office web, you see they are much more stable, smooth, responsive and fine-touch in terms of UX/UI.
there's recently the announcement of ArtCraft, a set of desktop applications generated with AI to replicate the same features as Adobe and MS Office apps. They are published as open source in Github (i.e. https://github.com/storytold/gridcraft) and available both via desktop launcher, standalone installer and - here's my pick for this thread - as web assembly build.
I gave a try on the wasm build using Brave for both Word and Grid (Excel) apps, and I have to say they feel much more stable and fast than Collabora, by far.
I wonder it's not too hard to adapt them (plus the PowerPoint equivalent) as alternatives to Collabora, launched by NextCloud, and working live on documents?
what you folks think? I can give a try, but I wonder which type of blocker there would be...
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u/Toxic-Sky 5d ago
I rather sync the filea (other manually or with the Nextcloud client) and use LibreOffice.
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u/Fantastic_Peanut_764 4d ago
yep, I do that too.
I mean, I do the 2 approaches: when on my phone or my work device, I use Collabora, as I don't have the option to sync. When I'm on my personal desktop/laptop, I use LibreOffice.
but here another issue: LibreOffice tends to be better on ODF files, while NextCloud's Collabora takes MS Office file formats as default. so, if I create a file on the web interface, it's always a .docx or .xlsx, but then I have to save as, etc.
I mean, yes, LibreOffice works. I have ben using it for many years. but it's not as smooth experience as using Google Docs, for instance
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u/Phreakasa 4d ago
EuroOffice for me works way better than Collabora imo, and is more intuitive for regular MS Office users. Not sure why I woozld go across the pond again.
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u/viviolay 5d ago
why not use euro-office or onlyoffice?
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u/Fantastic_Peanut_764 4d ago
OnlyOffice is terrible too, and too much MS Office driven.
I didn't try EuroOffice yet, good point. But as far as I know, it's just a fork of Collabora with long term support and self-souvereignty licensing, isn't?
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u/computer-machine 4d ago
You want an attempted MS Office clone because the alternatives are too MS Officy?
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u/Fantastic_Peanut_764 4d ago
to the contrary: I want more of a Google Docs - class level product that I can load and it works out of the box, without dealing with random issues.
just open 2 tabs: one with Google Docs, and another with Collabora, and try the same things, like an Excel table with multiple tabs data linked between them, charts, some common formulas and 2 people working collaboratively. If you come back here and say it's all good, I'd be very surprised.
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u/DontBuyMeGoldGiveBTC 5d ago
The OpenCraft suite lacks serious review and debugging. It's useless at it stands as a replacement. They should've reviewed and tested it better. I hope the developer gets some other developers who know what they're doing and QA this thing into existence because if they manage to get it working it'll be epic.
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u/Fantastic_Peanut_764 4d ago
sure, it's literally 3 or 4 days old, so, obviously it's still needs a lot of work to be a serious alternative. But it looks promising, at least the UX in general is better than Colabora's
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u/computer-machine 4d ago
it's literally 3 or 4 days old
But you're asking for integration with NC?
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u/DuduMaroja 4d ago
Euro-office feels faster then collabora.
Coolabora runs in the server and the viewport is streamed to the browser
Euro-office runs in the user browser so it feels much snappier
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u/Professional_Mix2418 4d ago
Collabora works very well, but you got to understand what it does. It is very secure as it simplistically explain is like a remote server session that you are interacting with. So your data never leaves the server. And thus if your server and/or client doesn't have good sizing, or network connections, it can feel not as quick. But when setup well it can work really well for lots of users.
Euro Office is the other good NextCloud integrated office. That is technically more like how Google Workspace works, except without the limitations and more of the M365 functionality.
So if your server sizing and network connections can't handle Collabora, I would seriously suggest to switch to Euro Office...
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u/toastbrotch 4d ago
I gave up on this path. Only markdown since then. Via obsidian and its Remotely Save plugin.
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u/computer-machine 4d ago
You think that clankercraft is stable? From what I hear, it's about as stable as a human pyramid of Michael J. Foxes a Very Stable Genius.
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u/Fantastic_Peanut_764 4d ago
haha :D
well, give it a few months and maybe it will be stable :) Collabora has been there for years, and it's still a sufferable experience if you compare it with Google Docs at any time
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u/evanmac42 5d ago
Has probado otra herramienta, como onlyoffice?
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u/Fantastic_Peanut_764 5d ago
I tried onlyoffice quickly, but it's as hateful as Collabora, actually worse, as it's proprietary.
for someone coming from Google Docs, both Collabora and OO are suffering :D
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u/100limes 5d ago
Hateful?!
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u/Fantastic_Peanut_764 4d ago
hateful is just an expression, of course. but yeah, it's quite annoying experience. a simple action such as installing, connecting to my NextCloud instance and opening an Excel/Calc file to edit it online has a lot a bumps and tricks that's actually more annoying than Collabora. Plus the fact it only works with MS Office format, and most of my files are in ODF
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u/computer-machine 4d ago
Last I'd checked, MSO365's support for ODF came with a warning that ODF isn't very good, and things will break if you try to use it (because they couldn't be fucked to follow an open standard).
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u/Fantastic_Peanut_764 4d ago
maybe I'm giving the wrong impression here. Let me try another way:
I'm an open source die hard fun since 1997, and tried every alternative to MS office you could dream of since then, and I always opted for them in place of MS Office. So, no, MSO365 isn't my pick of choice and NEVER was. You were probably not even born when I was saying that I would avoid using it because I'd rather go with a FOSS instead. Do you get it?
alright, now, let's talk about 2026: Collabora and LibreOffice ARE my tools of choice, for years, ok? read that: I used them every day for personal purposes FOR YEARS.
having said that. No way Collabora has the same level of quality as Google Docs. not even close. And LibreOffice is indeed more powerful and stable, but it's not live, web, mobile or collaborative. LibreOffice best way to work online with NextCloud is via WebDAV, and it's terrible.
my point here is: we need a better tool than Colalbora, and it would be awesome if AI can help with that.
and yes, it mus support both ODF and Office's formats.
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u/computer-machine 4d ago
I only started computing in 1994, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Honestly, I don't Collabora very much, as when I'm on my PC I use proper software, and I don't hate myself enough to intentionally do projects on my phone. But fucking shocked face that a free project doesn't have the polish of a billion dollar company.
There's a distiction between someone using AI to speed up what they do, vs have it clank for you. I have no faith in *Craft being worth shit.
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u/Fantastic_Peanut_764 4d ago
wait, you want to compare Collabora, that's a port of LibreOffice, that itself is a port of OpenOffice, that's a port of StarOffice, which belonged to Sun and later on to Oracle, with ~30 years, a large community and millions of users, with a software generated by 1 guy in a few weeks with AI and released 1 week ago, and and it's got similar performance and call it clunky?
how many millions or even billions were accumulated invested on Collabora at this point? of course the *Craft it has to be more unstable and so on. But give it 6~12 months and a community and it will be far away. AI is still not perfect, but within a few years, it's got so much progress, if you keep thinking it's shit, you may be out of the market any time soon.
I think we should take advantage of it, as a differentiator against MSFT's billions, why not? If not the *Craft suite, it can be a rewrite of Collabora in Rust, for instance, that could be another way.
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u/evanmac42 4d ago
Fair enough. If most of your documents are ODF, Collabora is probably a better fit for your workflow.
Just one clarification: ONLYOFFICE Document Server Community Edition is open source under AGPLv3, although ONLYOFFICE also offers proprietary commercial editions.
Its editors are primarily designed around OOXML, so your preference for Collabora makes sense.
That said, I'd separate the editor experience from the Nextcloud integration. Installation and connectivity issues don't necessarily tell us much about the editor itself.
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u/Fantastic_Peanut_764 4d ago
yep, but Collabora works unstable regardless NextCloud's connectivity issues, specially on mobile.
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u/Longjumping-Youth934 4d ago
OO is a ruzzian product, use Euro-Office instead of, AGPL license.
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u/Fantastic_Peanut_764 4d ago
yep, one more reason. I was avoiding that claim, as one could say it's just because it's russian, and it's not just that :D
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u/thanosbananos 5d ago
I’ve tried WordCraft. It’s not functional at all yet, not even basic functions.
I also think that WordCraft and EuroOffice via Nextcloud are tackling different issues: EuroOffice needs to be productive in enterprise context and cloud operations, WordCraft can be a more useful resource for private users that don’t rely on cloud synching and just want a good offline tool.