The open source DOCX editor submitted to HN a few weeks ago has been deleted

90 points by gcanyon 12 hours ago|38 comments

The github repo under eigenpal is gone. The web site at docx-editor is 503. No idea what's going on.

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tekacs 11 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.

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notRobot 10 hours ago

@mhurhangee also appears to have a mirror of the missing github repo here: https://github.com/mhurhangee/docx-editor

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dijksterhuis 9 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

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whateveracct 5 hours ago

I am a sad, dumb little AI driver with no real skills.

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anenefan 12 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

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refulgentis 11 hours ago

I clicked through and browsed the comments and clicked links. It does appear the links are not working as described. Is there something you’re throwing and I’m not catching? :)

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anenefan 10 hours ago

The relevant non functional links should be listed in the comments. The OP was complaining they were not able to include links directly. I'm not sure about [1] [2] [3] in the main post but the show hn [A] or [B] thread should afaik have not been an issue.

[A] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46947229

[B] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48228411

[1] https://docx-editor.dev/

[2] https://github.com/eigenpal/docx-js-editor

[3] https://github.com/eigenpal/docx-editor

Edit for additional show hn thread

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gcanyon 10 hours ago

Ah, good call, I should have included the threads, thanks! I tried several variants of the GitHub URL and the main web site and got errors until I cut it back to what I posted and rushed out of work to have dinner with my wife.

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nathanstitt 11 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

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coryrc 6 hours 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.

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gcanyon 12 hours ago

I can't include the links because HN filters dead links.

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bratao 11 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.

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whateveracct 5 hours ago

I am a sad, dumb little AI driver with no real skills.

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fsckboy 11 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 )

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darkteflon 12 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.

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d3Xt3r 12 hours ago

There's plenty of open-source docx editors though? What makes eigenpal's editor so special?

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darkteflon 12 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.

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rjsw 11 hours ago

What is wrong with LibreOffice?

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nosioptar 10 hours ago

The classic UI text is too damned small. You cannot easily increase it last time I checked.

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gcanyon 10 hours ago

I’m in exactly the same boat. I’ll have to look at some of the suggestions here

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rolph 12 hours ago

it is forseeable that MS would be very interested in taking a security stance vs a very possible vector.

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conartist6 12 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...?

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conartist6 11 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

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ForOldHack 11 hours ago

Clearly, it was the fault of the AI, and it should be thrown in jail.

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conartist6 10 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.

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sulam 10 hours ago

How do you copy code from Office? Is the source code public?

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conartist6 9 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

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slashdave 10 hours ago

Today's LLMs are perfectly capable of disassembling.

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snowwrestler 11 hours ago

A vector against a standardized XML+ZIP document format?

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dofm 11 hours ago

‘’ <—— li’l Dr Evil air quotes to put around ‘standardized’ ;-)

If anything it’s DOCX itself that was the vector!

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rolph 11 hours ago

IP is not the only issue. BTW this discussion is being chilled so now an exercise in abusive DV harvesting.

Understanding DOCX Malware and Hidden Threats

https://cloudmersive.com/article/Understanding-DOCX-Malware-...

Hackers using Weaponized Office Document to Exploit Windows Search RCE

https://cybersecuritynews.com/office-document-to-exploit-win...