Hacker News Reader

Comment by mkr-hn | Hacker News Reader

A relevant point of concern: Google Drive isn't actually downloading documents.

Maybe someone's already brought this up, but I just tried Google Drive's desktop application for the first time. It downloads what amounts to a shortcut that's a text document with a link to the file on Google Docs.

The benefit of syncing is lost--you don't have a copy of a usable file you can open in another program or save somewhere. Even Microsoft's SkyDrive downloads real documents made in the web version of Office.

View on HN

I can't figure out what you mean about the benefits of syncing being lost, because the data is clearly synced. However, I can explain the "shortcuts" you're referring to. Those are for native Google Docs, which don't have a universal representation in other applications (they're tied to remote or locally stored web state) unless you explicitly chose to export to another format. Whereas Microsoft's SkyDrive is just raw MS Office Documents.

The tradeoff between the two is that with Docs you get real-time editing and collaboration, but if you want a real local copy you'll need to target a specific export format. Whereas SkyDrive always keeps a local copy, but it requires you to explicitly save and resolve conflicts if you want to collaborate with another user.

Of course, if you want to you can just use Google Drive as a dumb file syncing mechanism without real-time collaboration or online editing. You just don't use Google Docs and tell Drive not to convert files to Docs on upload.

I opened a .odt file in Docs, but Docs cloned it into a new document and created a [filename].gdoc file in the local Drive folder. I don't see a way to work with the original file. It's nice that I can choose formats when exporting, and even export in bulk, but I want to decide which formats I work in. And it relies on this feature always being there.

It won't even let me just open a .odt. It opens in some kind of previewer when I click the file. Opening it takes clicking in a menu to select "Open in Docs." Then it clones to that magic format that's ethereal until exported.

Unfortunately, this is the same pain every application has with managing external and native formats. In the case of Docs, the state for online editing and collaboration is deeply integrated with the browser, and doesn't have an analog in external formats. So, those features just aren't supported if you're not using native Google Docs, because the underlying support doesn't exist in other formats. And if you are using native Google docs, then the only way to get the document in another format is to export it.

Accepting all that, I still don't understand the claim that the document isn't synced.

A .g[doc,sheet,...] file isn't a document. I want to open, edit, and save in .odt within Google Docs. There's no reason they can't make this possible. It was possible before Drive.

I get that the collaboration features need the native format. I don't need collaboration features most of the time.

> A .g[doc,sheet,...] file isn't a document. I want to open, edit, and save in .odt within Google Docs.

so, open it, edit, and then download as -> .odt and name it the same as the original file?

I don't really understand. You want its internal representation to be in odt? What does it matter as long as it's not observable except by an icon and a filename extension?

You don't understand why I don't want to depend on there always being an export option? I don't understand what you don't understand. I don't want to have to export to .odt every time I make an edit just to maintain portability.

I want Docs to work like its desktop predecessors work. Even Office's web applications do this. There's no reason Docs can't. I can make an edit in Word and instantly open to see the changes in LibreOffice, or run some kind of cross-cloud sync.

Maybe we're talking about different things? Here's the workflow I envision:

1: Create an outline for a book in Docs

2: Open it in LibreOffice from the GDrive folder

I can do this in 2/3 word processors.

This is what I keep trying to explain to you. Google Docs do have their own native format, it's absolutely not ODT, and if you want to edit files online they must be in the native format. It's as simple as that.

No, I get that. As I said, several times. I get that Google does that. But I don't understand why Google makes it only work that way. I need to be able to have it work the way all other office suites work because I want to be able to open it in them without exporting.

It can be an option off in the periphery. The interface can politely warn me with a little pop-out at the edge that I can't use collaboration features if I enable the "works like all other office suites" function for a document. Call it compatibility mode. Word's web application does this if I edit an ODT in it. LibreOffice does this if I edit a .docx in it. I don't mind.

edit: I just noticed your bio. Maybe you can have someone from the Docs team come over and look at this? They might understand what I'm saying.

I'll try to explain one last time. Docs is built from the ground up to support real-time collaborative editing, because that's how the Web works. I don't speak for anyone involved with Docs, but I wouldn't expect it to be rearchitected to support the use case you're asking for because it's a major change that introduces tremendous complexity such as: manual saves, document locking, whole document collisions, etc.

So, to sum all this up, "Docs fundamentally can't work the way you need it to work."

I'll stick to LibreOffice and Word.

The files on my Google drive are actual files, which I proved to myself by disconnecting from the internet and viewing them. Maybe there is a problem with a specific Google app?

I assumed that was for using Google's web apps offline. Did you verify the files on your hard drive contain something more than a link?

Yes, I have contents saved locally and in the cloud. But I'm not using Google Docs, just a my own files. Edit: yes, I tried a spread sheet and won't work offline since there is no offline spread sheet app. There may be a way to make it work offline as a packaged app.

I'm talking about files made in Google Docs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5428762

Reply on news.ycombinator.com