LibreOffice as JavaScript idiomatic WebWidget + Library

Making LibreOffice a native part of the web, using FOSS for highly customizable office document handling in the browser, based on WASM.

16:4015 mins08/11/2024

LibreOffice can be highly integrated into desktop and server applications and we wanted to make this also possible for web apps. Running fully client side with Web Assembly, LibreOffice can now be used and customized by a JavaScript idiomatic API, becoming an easy usable component for web development. With this Free Software opens the door to a completely different approach for bringing office document handling into the browser, then from what’s known from Google Docs and Co.. Use cases may be the integration of widgets with rich text documents, including classic desktop macros, into browser based applications or enabling JavaScript to interact live with values in spreadsheets. But LibreOffice can also work as background WASM library, converting documents from and to all supported formats like ODF (ODT, …), MS formats (DocX, XlsX, Doc, …), PDF or HTML, while applying custom conversion filters for things like macro sanitization.