Writer
A word processor in the browser, where several people write in the same document live.
Writer opens a document shared with the whole organization: you see who is present, and everyone writes in turn (one editing turn at a time, which you take and hand back with a button), without ever stepping on each other; the others can comment in the meantime. Rich formatting, comments on a passage with their reply threads, and the resolving and reopening of comments are all there, and saving is automatic.
An organization's documents can be listed, created, renamed and deleted (by their author or an administrator), and downloaded as HTML. A document's link is valid for the members of the organization. A subscriber without write rights follows the others live, in read-only mode.
The editor is served by the website itself: no resource is loaded from an external service. Writer is not yet offered; it exists only as a web version; its desktop version remains to be written, and the tracking of changes from the original mock-up has not been carried over.
Writer is in preparation. It will join the Etrebil subscription catalogue when it is released.
Every feature of Writer
42 features in 8 areas
Live writing together
- Opens a document shared with the whole organization, in the browser.
- Shows who is present in the document.
- Lets one person write at a time: you take the editing turn with one button and hand it back with another, without ever stepping on each other.
- Takes the editing turn back automatically after two minutes without typing; the server also takes it back if the person stops showing signs of life.
- Shows live who is writing, and displays their text for the others as it comes.
- Lets the other participants comment while one person writes.
Formatting
- Offers rich editing: headings, font size, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, text and background color.
- Aligns left, center, right or justified, with indents.
- Creates bulleted and numbered lists.
- Inserts links, tables, page breaks, special characters, the date and the time.
- Finds and replaces in the text, counts words, switches to full screen.
- Undoes and redoes, clears the formatting of a passage, and pastes images into the text.
- Corrects spelling with the browser's spell checker.
- Offers the editor interface in French.
Comments
- Comments on a selected passage of the document.
- Replies in a discussion thread under each comment.
- Marks a comment as resolved, and reopens it if needed.
- Sees comments appear live for all participants.
- Counts the open comments of each document in the list.
Organization documents
- Lists the organization's documents with their author, their modification date and their open comments.
- Creates a document by giving it a title.
- Renames a document, and the new title is broadcast to the participants.
- Deletes a document, restricted to its author and to administrators.
- Shares a document by giving its address: it is valid for the members of the organization.
- Keeps each organization separate: you can neither see nor open another's documents.
Saving and export
- Saves automatically a few moments after the last keystroke.
- Also saves with a button, when the editing turn is handed back and when the person who was writing disconnects.
- Downloads a document in HTML format, from the list or from the document.
Rights and license
- Signs in with the Etrebil account, with the organization's license.
- A person without write rights follows the others live, in read-only mode.
- A person without a license cannot create a document.
- Restricts deletion to the author and to administrators.
Security and operation
- Cleans the content on the server side: scripts and dangerous attributes are removed before broadcast.
- Serves the editor from the website itself: no resource is loaded from an external service.
- Refuses live connections coming from another site or without a valid session.
- Delivers the HTML download as an attachment, in an isolated frame.
- Works with several instances of the server at once: presence and pending text shared, the editing turn held in the database.
Good to know
- Writer is not yet offered for subscription; it exists only as a web version, and its desktop version remains to be written.
- Tracking of changes from the original mock-up has not been carried over.
- Pasted images are stored in the text: an illustrated document grows quickly, with a default maximum size of 8 MiB; separate storage of images has not been done.
- Very large documents have not been proven.
- The real sign-in to the Etrebil account and the deployment on the server have not been verified.