Pages: Lightweight Collaborative Document Editing (Think Notion.so or Confluence)

[tbsbdr]

What is it?

TL;DR:

A lightweight collaborative editor combining the best of e.g. Etherpad, CryptPad, Notion or Confluence but unlike them it’s plaintext-based so you can edit it with any other editor you want giving you full freedom.

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Pages is document system like notion.so or confluence. In Contrast, it is a higly portable, simple and file-based collaborative document system built to free teams from the constraints of lock-in formats like Microsoft Word or Confluence.

We believe in the right tool for the right problem. Paper, like DIN A4, will always have its place for print, legal forms or offline workflows and we don’t aim to replace that. But when Office documents are emailed back and forth as attachments just to collect feedback, that’s a broken collaboration model. Pages exists to solve that problem.

With Pages, content is clean, shareable, accessible, version-controlled and yours. It’s structured collaboration without bloat: A modern tool for a digital-first world, free from vendor lock-in and as simple a text-file.

Why Use Pages?

Thoughts are free so your writing should be too!
You shouldn’t need a subscription or a proprietary system to write, organize, and share high-quality documents.

Key Advantages

File-Based Simplicity

Edit content as plain text, Markdown, or rich text files, stored directly in your folder structure. No database required to ensure simple protability.

Import Paper-Simulating Formats: docx, odt

Import docx and odt documents and auto-convert them on best effort to markdown so that you get independedent from heavy-weight editors and bring your documents to a digital-first world. (sure, docx and odt have more options than md, but having just a subset of formatting options in Pages is totally fine)

Editor-Agnostic

Write and edit with any text editor, IDE, or tool. It’s just files.

Folder Hierarchy is your Structure

Your documents mirrors your folder hierarchy making it easy to understand, version, reorganize, or back up.

Share & Transfer Easily

Since everything is stored as files, documents can be zipped, synced, or committed to Git. Ideal for collaborative and distributed workflows.

No Vendor Lock-In

Avoid the limitations, costs, and friction of cloud-based platforms. Your documents stays open and portable.

Acceptance Criteria

• Editor supports slash commands and has an awesome ux
• new the view mode in the files list "Pages" (in addition to the view mode list and thumbnail) shows folders and files as documents, ordered by folders.
• plaintext files are rendered as nice looking pages (sharing etc. of these pages is possible in the same way as sharing files)
• The file format of the plaintext must be readable & editable via a simple text editor (eg. .md, .mdx)
• Editing is possible collaboratively (live editing)
• Click on "New Page" opens the editor. The page name will be used as the filename (autosave)
• The page structure on the left is the same as the folderstructure
  • underscores _ are rendered as spaces Hello_World --> Hello World
  • The ordering of the Folder structure is alphanumeric

Formatting Options

(draft)

Text Formatting Options

• Headings (H1–H6)

• Bold

• Italic

• Strikethrough

• Underline (limited support)

• Monospaced / Code font

• Text color (foreground and background)

• Highlighting

• Bullet lists

• Numbered lists

• Indented paragraphs

• Blockquotes

• Horizontal rule

• Emojis

• Superscript / Subscript

• Media & Content Embedding

• Images (inline or block; upload or from URLs)

• GIFs

• Audio files

• PDFs and Office documents (inline preview)

Tables

• Basic table creation
• Sortable columns
• Merge cells (horizontal and vertical)
• Header row/column styling
• Background color per cell/row

Components

Content Display

• Expand / Collapse sections
• Table of Contents
• Code Block (with language-specific syntax highlighting)
• Info Panels (info, note, warning, error styles)
• Layout sections and columns
• Task Lists (checklist-style)

Collaboration

• Page Comments
• Inline Comments
• Mentions (@username)

External Content & Embeds

• YouTube / Vimeo

Templates & Page Tools

• Built-in Templates (Meeting Notes, How-To)
• Custom Templates
• Blueprint Templates
• Version History and Page Diff
• Comment Threads and Inline Feedback

[2b2bff]

Isn't "Pages" the Word equivalent from Apple?

[Stephan-P]

I don't understand. One could know Pages as the Word equivalent from Apple, but I don't think that's meant here.
Is Pages an existing app (in OpenCloud) or is this an idea/suggestion for a new app to be developed? If the latter, isn't this a huge task to take up?

[2b2bff]

Yeah, what I was trying to say: If you invent a new program/app/whatever, you want to make sure Apple won't sue you...

[tbsbdr]

It's an idea that needs to be concepted and implemented and before we would do that, I'd like to discuss it here.

I added a tl;dr on top to make the idea more concise:

A lightweight collaborative editor combining the best of e.g. Etherpad, CryptPad, Notion or Confluence but unlike them it’s plaintext-based so you can edit it with any other editor you want giving you full freedom.

Naming is hard, yes 😆 @Stephan-P @2b2bff any ideas other than Pages™, Word™, Notepad™, Notes™, Editor™ ? I'd love to have something that's as self-explanatory as possible and short.

[Stephan-P]

I don't know if it fits, but I'm contemplating the replacement of my notes in OneNote.
I have been looking at other (self hosted) note taking apps with all their capabilities and limitations, but I've been also thinking "do I really need my notes to be on a dedicated app? Why can't I just create a dedicated folder structure with small files in some format and just utilise the search capabilities of the file system?" Files could range from .txt, .md to .odt and do nicely, not?

So, maybe the app you're describing could be a new Notes app within OC, taking full advantage of the information about files within OC. I guess that capabilities for structuring one's notes, as well as finding that one note that's gotta be somewhere, will be paramount.
But maybe I've described nothing new and all off this can be achieved already today with the standard features of OC + Collabora online?

(I may have pushed the Dutch translation of OC to 100% these last days, but that is all just in the prestudy phase before setting up my new NAS with OMV and OC on it. 😉)

Just my two cents