The open source DOCX editor submitted to HN a few weeks ago has been deleted
80 pointsby gcanyon7 hours ago15 comments
  • whateveracct2 minutes ago
    I am a sad, dumb little AI driver with no real skills.
  • dijksterhuis4 hours ago
    i'd wager a guess that they gave up on their "experiment"

    the top comment on the show hn would seem quite apt if so https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46971202

    • whateveraccta minute ago
      I am a sad, dumb little AI driver with no real skills.
  • tekacs6 hours ago
    The original source (matching the latest published NPM version) is still at https://github.com/mhurhangee/patrick/tree/main/packages and Apache-2.0, so I imagine that someone who'd like a copy can pick it up from there.
  • anenefan7 hours ago
    This link should be enough to work out the relevant links. [1]

    I would guess that they have lost access to a resource lately ... I've read there's a lot of that going around atm.

    [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=thisisjedr

  • nathanstitt6 hours ago
    Also not affiliated but my open-source tinycld uses docx as the backend storage for its text package. Supports _most_ of the features (including comments and suggestions) but is still very young. It has a golang backend that reads/writes docx and translates to YJS that the editor reads for multi-user access. Has web/iOS/Android support.

    I found docx to be a very well documented format and a surprisingly good fit for this.

    https://tinycld.org has a live demo

    • coryrcan hour ago
      I went looking around, but I couldn't find why you're making tinycld, and whether I could expect it to keep going as a project in the future.

      I expect I could find whether you're using hardened server implementations or reimplementing, but if it's the former, you should advertise that, or if the latter, you shouldn't.

  • 6 hours ago
    undefined
  • gcanyon7 hours ago
    I can't include the links because HN filters dead links.
    • 7 hours ago
      undefined
  • bratao6 hours ago
    Not affiliated but I been using https://github.com/superdoc-dev/superdoc and it is very good and compatible with many docx features.
  • darkteflon7 hours ago
    Oh man, that’s disappointing. We implemented this in a test environment and have been hammering on it. Would love to know what’s going on as it solves a real pain point for us.
    • d3Xt3r7 hours ago
      There's plenty of open-source docx editors though? What makes eigenpal's editor so special?
      • darkteflon6 hours ago
        Could you recommend your picks in the space?

        Edit (since I can’t seem to reply directly) - to the commenter suggesting LibreOffice below: quite different things. This was a library for implementing reasonably high fidelity docx viewing / editing in the browser.

        • rjsw6 hours ago
          What is wrong with LibreOffice?
          • nosioptar5 hours ago
            The classic UI text is too damned small. You cannot easily increase it last time I checked.
          • jubilanti6 hours ago
            [flagged]
    • gcanyon5 hours ago
      I’m in exactly the same boat. I’ll have to look at some of the suggestions here
  • fsckboy6 hours ago
    what was that item from just a day or so ago where an opensource project had said they developed using AI, and a developer said "take it down, you copied it from us"

    I thought of it because this project said they used AI

    ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48085993 )

  • ResiDev5 hours ago
    [dead]
  • 6 hours ago
    undefined
  • archietect6 hours ago
    [dead]
    • msm_6 hours ago
      Github can just instantly take down all forks with a single click of a button.
      • mindcrime6 hours ago
        This is why you clone a copy to a machine you have full control of!
      • archietect6 hours ago
        Good to know. Downloaded.
  • hypercain7 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • mindcrime6 hours ago
      Nothing weird about it. The HN guidelines[1] make it clear, IMO, that while some self-promotion is fine, the intent here is NOT to use the site primarily (or exclusively) for self-promotion. The account that submitted the userplane.io link had only ever submitted two links, and both were to userplane.io. What do you expect to happen?

      Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.

      > After a few more experiences like that, I've mostly stopped posting because it doesn't feel like the effort is worth it

      Ironically this is exactly the wrong response. You should post more, but more stuff that's simply intellectually interesting, and not just to promote your own stuff. But if your only reason for being here is self-promotion, then you're right... not worth it. shrug

      [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

      • hypercain6 hours ago
        > had only ever submitted two links, and both were to userplane.io

        That doesn't appear to be correct. The account's public submission history shows multiple submissions beyond userplane.io. Here's the submission history for reference:

        https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=wizenheimer

        Edit: Looks like my original comment was flagged too, woah

        • mindcrime6 hours ago
          You're right, I was looking at submissions for userplane.io[1] and over-fixated on it only being submitted twice. My mistake. Nonetheless, the basic principle is the same. Looking at their submission history it appears to be almost all self-promotional and correspondingly many of the submissions are [dead]. As far as I can tell, that's what happens here. (aside: I'm just commenting based on observation of the years, I'm not anybody "official" here or anything).

          [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=userplane.io

    • altairprime6 hours ago
      Your account was created 5 hours ago, and you’ve already had two Show HNs flagged? That’s ‘email the site mods and ask for participation guidance’ territory. Perhaps you posted them under an account that wasn’t participating otherwise on the site and/or was named after a business rather than a person? In any case, bad form to re-promote your projects in an unrelated new post rather than reaching out to the mods. Adapt your behavior to be 95% contributions of posts and comments that are unrelated to your own projects/investments or else you’ll continue seeing hostility and flags to your work.
  • rolph7 hours ago
    it is forseeable that MS would be very interested in taking a security stance vs a very possible vector.
    • conartist66 hours ago
      I was going to guess that they accused the author of copying code from Office. Was AI used in the project? Perhaps a model regurgitated copyrighted code leading to a sternly worded notice from legal...?
      • conartist66 hours ago
        Ooooh yeah. Looking through the author's past posts: "got a lot of skepticism because we're developing heavily with AI"

        So AI was in use. Then the author says that following the spec alone wasn't enough to get it working, they got "active community feedback" and fed that feedback into the AI until it worked just like Word. I have to think that if there were ANY conditions under which a model might output code that Microsoft legal would threaten to sue you for, these would be them

      • ForOldHack5 hours ago
        Clearly, it was the fault of the AI, and it should be thrown in jail.
        • conartist65 hours ago
          I think this (if it is what happened) is a perfect demonstration of the dynamics. If you use AI to do things you couldn't have done on your own, you're copying off someone else's homework and the real risk is that you don't know who you're copying from, but they probably do.
      • sulam5 hours ago
        How do you copy code from Office? Is the source code public?
        • conartist64 hours ago
          I suspect the source code for at least some older versions of Office is absolutely in the training materials of some LLMs. There have been leaks before, and the early models were trained on the entire contents of the internet without regard to legality
        • slashdave5 hours ago
          Today's LLMs are perfectly capable of disassembling.
    • snowwrestler6 hours ago
      A vector against a standardized XML+ZIP document format?