/docx-reader

Open and view .docx files fast

Primary LanguageSvelte

Docx Reader v0.0.0

This is desktop app built with Tauri and Svelte. You can open .docx files in it. Although many features are missing, like font, color, editing, etc, it opens documents much faster than word (~3x in dev server, ~28x faster after build). This means it can open a 4 MB Kritique Masterfile in ~1 second.

Features

  • Bold, underline, highlight, font size
  • Outline
  • Blazingly fast startup
  • Zoom
  • Search
  • Multi-window support

Unfeatures

Features it doesn't have

  • Ability to edit
  • Pages
  • Font, color, highlight color

Download

MacOS

  1. Click here to download the dmg
  2. Double click the dmg
  3. Drag the app into Applications folder
  4. Right click and click open (it won't let you open otherwise)

Windows & Linux

Not supported right now (even though Tauri is literally cross platform)

Or build from source

This will work for Macos, Windows and Linux

  1. Set up Tauri dependencies
  2. Clone this repository and install packages
git clone https://github.com/Ashwagandhae/docx-reader
cd docx-reader
npm install
  1. Start the development server (will be slow the first time because of rust packages)
npm run tauri dev
  1. Or actually build the app (will be slow all the time)
npm run tauri build

Dependencies explained

Why Tauri?

Tauri is basically a newer Electron, but with much better performance. The fact that it uses Rust in the backend allows it to parse the docx files fast.

Why Svelte?

My Vue is that Svelte is more Reactive, and it's easier to Express my ideas. I can see the Angle of it being a pretty new framework, but I think it's the Next big thing, and will probably become the Backbone of web development.

Why quick_xml?

quick_xml is the fastest rust XML parsing library I could find. Instead of making a struct representation of the XML, it streams them as events. Docx files are actually just zipped up folders of XML files, you can read more here.

Why zip?

zip is the first unzipping library I found. Docx files are actually just zipped up folders of XML files, so I needed to unzip them.