Comments on: Open up Google Docs?

By: Kevin Donovan

Kevin Donovan — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 06:22:37 +0000

IDKWITA — I think that should definitely become more popular.

By: Yule Heibel

Yule Heibel — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:19:03 +0000

I used to use Google docs much more, back when it was still called Writely (I guess before Google bought it?), but lately I find I can’t use it for some things because of all the stuff that’s embedded or something, if that’s what it is. (I like your acronym: IDKWITA, thx!)

For example, I have to send the articles I publish in a local monthly mag to the editor using a .doc file. If I first write my article in Google docs and then try to save it as a Word file, it does all sorts of weird stuff — and vice versa. The formatting is inconsistent.

It has also become useless if I want to scan a print article and then save it as a PDF. Not sure why. Drives me up the wall. I just use OpenOffice instead.

It’s almost as if Google has added more bells & whistles, and somehow in the process made it *more* difficult to move whatever you’ve created from one format to another.

Not sure if making it open would help, but at this point it couldn’t hurt, methinks.

By: Tim Jarrett

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:19:10 +0000

The plug-in thing could be very easy to do. Wikipedia, for instance, allows custom javascripts for each authenticated user that only they see in their sessions. The page can be edited just like any other Wikipedia page, and you can include JavaScript that other users have written. These typically add functionality like leaving quick messages or validating the citations on a page.

Presumably you could use the Google Docs data API to do this. It would require Google to permit a certain amount of user session customization, but the major back end piece, the JavaScript data API, is there.