upload open document format files

[commentr]

Title
upload open document format files

Short, concise description of the idea
Be able to host open document format files

Full description of the idea
Search for opendocumentformat, e.g. libreoffice. The concept of non-proprietary "office" documents is similar to livejournal
An ordered list of benefits

• Greater usage of LJ otherwise, tempted to use

Comments

[siderea]

Are you kidding me? I would LOVE to be able to share documents with friends lists, securely. OMFG, I was passing around drafts of chapters of my master's thesis via email for betaing; it would have been awesome to simply upload it to LJ and embed a link for new versions in a post locked to the relevant custom friends group.

Also, is there a reason to limit it to ODF? I want full on MSWord so I can have annotations, and I want PDF so I can share sheet music. (Did I already submit this suggestion? I thought I did.)

[charliemc]

I love this idea, too.

+1

[siderea]

BTW, I found this comment rudely dismissive of commentr and their suggestion -- presumably much more than you meant to be. If there's something you don't understand about a suggestion, by all means ask for clarification or explanation. But maybe wait to make evaluatory statements about the benefit a proposal might bring until after you understand what's proposed?

Can we start by giving each other a little more credit, assuming that there's some merit to one another's suggestions if we could but understand where they were coming from, and working with them to elicit the best part of what they have to say? It certainly would help make a better LJ and a much more congenial and effective Suggestions.

[siderea]

I think I answered some of your question here. Before addressing more of them, I want to clarify some basic assumptions. You say,

that's a task which other services (like Dropbox, for instance) have already implemented rather nicely; I'm not certain why LJ would need to implement it

You do realize that LJ is a business, right? And that sending people to other sites to do tasks is contrary to LJ's business model? Which doesn't mean that LJ doesn't have to be strategic in what functionalities it decides to support, of course; LJ might well decide the constraints of its resources forces them to demure, and leave its users to take advantage of other free or freeish services. But acknowledging that LJ is forced to pick its battles doesn't for a moment mean that LJ wouldn't prefer to be winning all battles. From a simple keeping the lights on and the servers whirring standpoint, to maximize both paid account and ad revenues, the optimal situation is that no user ever leaves LJ for anything, and that everything they need and want is

[mokie]

I'm not involved, but I'd like to address why I think LJ should not do this: I would rather LJ do a few things well than a lot of things badly.

In the recent and not-so-recent past, there's been a lot of hubbub about LJ trying to do everything, flailing madly trying to appeal to everyone, and in the process screwing up badly at keeping its basic functions functional and appealing.

There are a slew of other companies out there doing cloud storage, and they're doing it really, really well. I doubt LJ could really compete with them, but I think LJ trying to compete with them could introduce a whole new layer of user discontent about where LJ is funneling its time, attention and resources.

(Edited for spelling, because it's 2:30am here...)

[charliemc]

Actually, this is a good point...

I might rethink my original answer...

[siderea]

[continued]

And the thing is, this would be so trivial to implement in light of scrapbook now, and add such obvious value, it's kind of mind blowing to me that LJ hasn't implemented it.

what does the OP expect LiveJournal to be able to do with the file? As it stands, the developers have made the decision to have ScrapBook only handle image files that LJ can display and provide "gallery" functionality for

Are you all freaked out by the question "but how would LJ represent the file in ScrapBook?" Cause the answer to that is "with the icon for the file type, and the file name". You know, just like in Windows and MacOS. If LJ wanted to be an overachiever, like MacOS, thumbnails of the document could be generated for recognized visual file types like .doc and .pdf.

Once uploaded, and with permissions set, one could then embed a link to the file in a post, just like one does for any other link. Heck, LJ could have a custom tag "

[siderea]

Within limits.

Yeah, I covered this in the comment I wrote to which you're replying.

to be embedded into web pages

Not even under discussion.

Look, you're clearly not engaging in this conversation -- with the OP or with me -- in good faith. Could you kindly just spit it out, whatever it is you hate about the whole idea of this feature? Because it's clearly driving you up a wall, and not for the reasons you're fielding. Whatever it is, I promise to listen. I can't promise to agree, of course, but I'll consider your thoughts seriously. I mean, maybe this is a terrible idea, and I'm just not seeing it, and you're seeing something important I'm not; I'm open to convincing. You just gotta give me something to work with. I'm listening, talk to me.

[mokie]

Are you all freaked out by the question "but how would LJ represent the file in ScrapBook?"

I believe the point was that Scrapbook serves an LJ-related function: it was specifically provided to store images for users to display in their journals. That users can use it as image storage and a gallery display in general, without also displaying images in their journal, is a bonus, but it's not a random perk, as document storage would seem to be.

Since documents can't be displayed by the browers and therefore can't be displayed in the journal, it does seem to be a random perk--just plain storage space, rather than journal-relevant storage space.