<story><title>Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative</title><url>https://anytype.io/?hn</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>smokel</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s an interesting take on things.  Would you want your operating system to provide a web browser, pdf viewer, and spreadsheet as well?&lt;p&gt;To me it makes no sense that software does not interoperate very well.  I think most of this is due to the historical evolution of computers and software.  A spell checker used to take up an insane amount of memory, a browser is a competitive product, and interfaces for proper interaction have to be standardized worldwide, for which we still lack some kind of governmental body.</text></item><item><author>whywhywhywhy</author><text>Operating systems should be providing spellcheck to textboxes everywhere anyway.&lt;p&gt;Makes no sense every app rolling their own and not using my operating system dictionary with my own corrections.&lt;p&gt;Extremely frustrating every Electron app just rolls their own rubbish spellcheck, or doesn&amp;#x27;t have it at all.</text></item><item><author>lewisjoe</author><text>Google Docs have somehow solved E2E encryption with safe sharing and collaboration. They haven&amp;#x27;t advertised it much, just a mention here and there as an enterprise requirement or something, it&amp;#x27;s good how they&amp;#x27;ve implemented it on top of an existing web-first collaboration product.&lt;p&gt;They do have technical challenges implementing add-on services on top of content - For example, the grammar checker or any content assistance is disabled in E2E encrypted docs, which makes sense.&lt;p&gt;Surprisingly they support spellcheck: I guess they are shipping dictionaries to browsers and use a local lookup. (Google Docs doesn&amp;#x27;t rely on browser&amp;#x27;s dictionary because their editor is not based on `contenteditable`)</text></item><item><author>jitl</author><text>(I work at Notion)&lt;p&gt;The Anytype model is really cool - in a way, they’ve rebuilt Lotus Notes with 21st century E2E encrypted protocols and technology. They’ve built a really solid personal knowledge app with many of Notion’s features - and some clear improvements over Notion.&lt;p&gt;However they also demonstrate the complexity and tradeoffs of the E2E approach. Anytype has been a work-in-progress since at least 2019. Their docs still state:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Future versions will allow you to share your work and safely collaborate with others&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; There&amp;#x27;s no browser version of the app. Anytype is a stand-alone software, that works on desktop or mobile devices. There are many points of vulnerability in-browser apps that would compromise our commitment to data security and encryption.&lt;p&gt;Without these features Anytype is in a much smaller market (PKM) with less distribution than Notion&amp;#x2F;Coda&amp;#x2F;Dropbox Paper&amp;#x2F;Quip&amp;#x2F;Confluence&amp;#x2F;…</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>johnnyworker</author><text>I wouldn&amp;#x27;t want the OS to do spell checking, but the OS having a config setting for which spell checker library and settings to use by default and for specific apps would be sweet, would it not?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; A spell checker used to take up an insane amount of memory&lt;p&gt;IMO they still do. At least anecdotally, with free software shipping with spell check that often makes up a hefty chunk of the file size.&lt;p&gt;And even ignoring that, for every program with its own spell check, you have all of the redundant spell check data, and then your corrections&amp;#x2F;additions aren&amp;#x27;t even shared. Nevermind importing them on a freshly installed OS, syncing them between devices, futuristic things like that :)</text></comment>
<story><title>Anytype – local-first, P2P Notion alternative</title><url>https://anytype.io/?hn</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>smokel</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s an interesting take on things.  Would you want your operating system to provide a web browser, pdf viewer, and spreadsheet as well?&lt;p&gt;To me it makes no sense that software does not interoperate very well.  I think most of this is due to the historical evolution of computers and software.  A spell checker used to take up an insane amount of memory, a browser is a competitive product, and interfaces for proper interaction have to be standardized worldwide, for which we still lack some kind of governmental body.</text></item><item><author>whywhywhywhy</author><text>Operating systems should be providing spellcheck to textboxes everywhere anyway.&lt;p&gt;Makes no sense every app rolling their own and not using my operating system dictionary with my own corrections.&lt;p&gt;Extremely frustrating every Electron app just rolls their own rubbish spellcheck, or doesn&amp;#x27;t have it at all.</text></item><item><author>lewisjoe</author><text>Google Docs have somehow solved E2E encryption with safe sharing and collaboration. They haven&amp;#x27;t advertised it much, just a mention here and there as an enterprise requirement or something, it&amp;#x27;s good how they&amp;#x27;ve implemented it on top of an existing web-first collaboration product.&lt;p&gt;They do have technical challenges implementing add-on services on top of content - For example, the grammar checker or any content assistance is disabled in E2E encrypted docs, which makes sense.&lt;p&gt;Surprisingly they support spellcheck: I guess they are shipping dictionaries to browsers and use a local lookup. (Google Docs doesn&amp;#x27;t rely on browser&amp;#x27;s dictionary because their editor is not based on `contenteditable`)</text></item><item><author>jitl</author><text>(I work at Notion)&lt;p&gt;The Anytype model is really cool - in a way, they’ve rebuilt Lotus Notes with 21st century E2E encrypted protocols and technology. They’ve built a really solid personal knowledge app with many of Notion’s features - and some clear improvements over Notion.&lt;p&gt;However they also demonstrate the complexity and tradeoffs of the E2E approach. Anytype has been a work-in-progress since at least 2019. Their docs still state:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Future versions will allow you to share your work and safely collaborate with others&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; There&amp;#x27;s no browser version of the app. Anytype is a stand-alone software, that works on desktop or mobile devices. There are many points of vulnerability in-browser apps that would compromise our commitment to data security and encryption.&lt;p&gt;Without these features Anytype is in a much smaller market (PKM) with less distribution than Notion&amp;#x2F;Coda&amp;#x2F;Dropbox Paper&amp;#x2F;Quip&amp;#x2F;Confluence&amp;#x2F;…</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>picometer</author><text>Yeah, I suspect the grandparent comment meant that spellcheck (and perhaps other tools, like you listed) should be standardized. And thanks to the big cos (Apple and Microsoft) doing full vertical integration of their stack and calling it their “operating system”, that term is increasingly getting used for something more than just “the thing that operates your computational resources and safely exposes their APIs for developer use”.&lt;p&gt;That said, it would be interesting to see more actual OS development that innovated on supporting&amp;#x2F;encouraging more standards, without getting too proprietary or centralized.</text></comment>