6 ms·

Wax: The Word Processor for the Web

113 points by p4bl0 3y ago

hdaz0017 3y ago
they must be working on the demo as its down... This site can’t be reachedwax-demo.coko.foundation refused to connect.
spankalee 3y ago
This source for this project has almost no comments at all. I don't understand how projects like this ever get new contributors, or how the current maintainers manage to remember everything about why the code is the way it is.
imiric 3y ago
Seems interesting, we definitely need more advanced open source editors. However, this gives off very unpolished vibes. The demo renders poorly on mobile, with the textarea on the first page squished horizontally. The "Basic Editors" demo has the opposite problem, and there is horizontal scrolling with elements out of view. It's not clear if this is a fault of wax.js or of the demo page, but it's a bad first impression. There is also a typo on the Features page: > Select text and add a comment or particpate [...]
lewisjoe 3y ago
I see this is built on top of the amazing Prosemirror richtext toolkit. I'm a huge fan of Prosemirror's architecture which powers extremely customizable editors like this one. But to call this component a word-processor - is a bit overkill. Why? To call an editor a word-processor it should support pagination & page layouts - as in Google Docs & Zoho Writer. Given the limited graphics capabilties of DOM, it is near impossible to build a paginated editor on top of the DOM. Both Gdocs and Zoho Writer, do a tremendous amount of plumbing and keeps rendering logic out of browser's control to achieve a proper word processing experience on the web. Something like that can never be built upon contenteditable augumented frameworks like Prosemirror. There are other players in this category that are building extensible editors without pagination - like Tiptap, Froala, CKEditor, etc. Except CKeditor, every other project is built on top of Prosemirror too!
- ipsum2 3y ago
  Lexical (https://lexical.dev/ https://lexical.dev/) is really nice to use and doesn't use Prosemirror or CKEditor.
  - conaclos 3y ago
    Did you try both Prosemirror and Lexical? I am curious to read some comparisons between these two editors.
    - ipsum2 3y ago
      Yes I did, but it was 3+ years ago and I don't recall the details, but the data representation was elegant for Lexical.
- p4bl0 3y ago
  > Given the limited graphics capabilties of DOM, it is near impossible to build a paginated editor on top of the DOM. This is developed by the some of the same people who work on paged.js [1], which enables exactly that and is actually used to create printed materials, including books. [1] https://pagedjs.org/ https://pagedjs.org/
  - creshal 3y ago
    I love paged, but the performance really shows why other word processors keep their rendering out of the DOM: 150 page documents with footnotes and forward+backward page references, which instantly load in a desktop app or take a few seconds in GDocs or Word Online, take several minutes to fully render in pagedjs in my experience.
- wolverine876 3y ago
  > Both Gdocs and Zoho Writer, do a tremendous amount of plumbing and keeps rendering logic out of browser's control How do these in-browser applications keep rendering logic out of browser's control? They do it server-side?
ivraatiems 3y ago
It's nicely done, if not super fast in my browser. One minor nit: The demo is not served over HTTPS. That should be adjusted, it feels unprofessional.
wormius 3y ago
Quick edit recommend on the about page: "Publishers are professsional text workers"
tevon 3y ago
Strangely also the site linked in the gitlab is not a live site. One other question: why gitlab instead of github? I think this is the first OS library I've seen using gitlab instead of github or a self-hosted site
- bigfishrunning 3y ago
  Gitlab is self hostable for free, hosting GitHub is very expensive. I'm happy to see anyone breaking github's monopoly, and gitlab has been around longer then the other open source code forges afaik
- vallode 3y ago
  Many[1][2][3] open-source projects use GitLab over GitHub in no small part due to the the fact you can host your own instance :) [1]: https://gitlab.winehq.org https://gitlab.winehq.org [2]: https://invent.kde.org https://invent.kde.org [3]: https://code.videolan.org https://code.videolan.org
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ofrzeta 3y ago
Wax - a project of the Coko Foundation. Unfortunately the link in the footer is broken because it has a "www" in the domain name. https://coko.foundation/ https://coko.foundation/ They have actually quite a lot of open source projects, among others "paged.js", a "Typesetting Engine for Creating PDF from HTML" and "CokoDocs", an "open source, collaborative, web-based Word Processor."
tzarko 3y ago
You might consider merging the landing page with the "features" page - it takes a second or two to realize there's nothing to really see when you first get to the page, and you have to look around to kind of get a feel for what the thing really is. Pretty cool otherwise.
al_borland 3y ago
I tried opening it on an iPhone and it seemed completely broken.

113 points by p4bl0 3y ago

they must be working on the demo as its down... This site can’t be reachedwax-demo.coko.foundation refused to connect.

This source for this project has almost no comments at all. I don't understand how projects like this ever get new contributors, or how the current maintainers manage to remember everything about why the code is the way it is.

imiric 3y ago

Seems interesting, we definitely need more advanced open source editors. However, this gives off very unpolished vibes. The demo renders poorly on mobile, with the textarea on the first page squished horizontally. The "Basic Editors" demo has the opposite problem, and there is horizontal scrolling with elements out of view. It's not clear if this is a fault of wax.js or of the demo page, but it's a bad first impression. There is also a typo on the Features page: > Select text and add a comment or particpate [...]

lewisjoe 3y ago

I see this is built on top of the amazing Prosemirror richtext toolkit. I'm a huge fan of Prosemirror's architecture which powers extremely customizable editors like this one. But to call this component a word-processor - is a bit overkill. Why? To call an editor a word-processor it should support pagination & page layouts - as in Google Docs & Zoho Writer. Given the limited graphics capabilties of DOM, it is near impossible to build a paginated editor on top of the DOM. Both Gdocs and Zoho Writer, do a tremendous amount of plumbing and keeps rendering logic out of browser's control to achieve a proper word processing experience on the web. Something like that can never be built upon contenteditable augumented frameworks like Prosemirror. There are other players in this category that are building extensible editors without pagination - like Tiptap, Froala, CKEditor, etc. Except CKeditor, every other project is built on top of Prosemirror too!

ipsum2 3y ago
Lexical (https://lexical.dev/ https://lexical.dev/) is really nice to use and doesn't use Prosemirror or CKEditor.
- conaclos 3y ago
  Did you try both Prosemirror and Lexical? I am curious to read some comparisons between these two editors.
  - ipsum2 3y ago
    Yes I did, but it was 3+ years ago and I don't recall the details, but the data representation was elegant for Lexical.
p4bl0 3y ago
> Given the limited graphics capabilties of DOM, it is near impossible to build a paginated editor on top of the DOM. This is developed by the some of the same people who work on paged.js [1], which enables exactly that and is actually used to create printed materials, including books. [1] https://pagedjs.org/ https://pagedjs.org/
- creshal 3y ago
  I love paged, but the performance really shows why other word processors keep their rendering out of the DOM: 150 page documents with footnotes and forward+backward page references, which instantly load in a desktop app or take a few seconds in GDocs or Word Online, take several minutes to fully render in pagedjs in my experience.
wolverine876 3y ago
> Both Gdocs and Zoho Writer, do a tremendous amount of plumbing and keeps rendering logic out of browser's control How do these in-browser applications keep rendering logic out of browser's control? They do it server-side?

ivraatiems 3y ago

It's nicely done, if not super fast in my browser. One minor nit: The demo is not served over HTTPS. That should be adjusted, it feels unprofessional.

wormius 3y ago

Quick edit recommend on the about page: "Publishers are professsional text workers"

tevon 3y ago

Strangely also the site linked in the gitlab is not a live site. One other question: why gitlab instead of github? I think this is the first OS library I've seen using gitlab instead of github or a self-hosted site

bigfishrunning 3y ago
Gitlab is self hostable for free, hosting GitHub is very expensive. I'm happy to see anyone breaking github's monopoly, and gitlab has been around longer then the other open source code forges afaik
vallode 3y ago
Many[1][2][3] open-source projects use GitLab over GitHub in no small part due to the the fact you can host your own instance :) [1]: https://gitlab.winehq.org https://gitlab.winehq.org [2]: https://invent.kde.org https://invent.kde.org [3]: https://code.videolan.org https://code.videolan.org

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ofrzeta 3y ago

Wax - a project of the Coko Foundation. Unfortunately the link in the footer is broken because it has a "www" in the domain name. https://coko.foundation/ https://coko.foundation/ They have actually quite a lot of open source projects, among others "paged.js", a "Typesetting Engine for Creating PDF from HTML" and "CokoDocs", an "open source, collaborative, web-based Word Processor."

tzarko 3y ago

You might consider merging the landing page with the "features" page - it takes a second or two to realize there's nothing to really see when you first get to the page, and you have to look around to kind of get a feel for what the thing really is. Pretty cool otherwise.

al_borland 3y ago

I tried opening it on an iPhone and it seemed completely broken.