Etherpad 2.7.0: Collaborative web editor without cloud dependency

With version 2.7.0 of the open-source real-time editor Etherpad, the developers are replacing the aging Abiword with LibreOffice as the converter for importing and exporting DOCX, ODT, and PDF files. As a side effect, Etherpad now supports DOCX export out-of-the-box without additional tools. Users migrating from an older version must mandatorily enter the path to LibreOffice's soffice binary in settings.json – otherwise, the conversion will get stuck. In addition, the release brings convenience features for the timeslider, more control for pad creators, hardening in the software supply chain, and a long list of bug fixes.

Etherpad is a self-hostable web editor written in Node.js for real-time collaborative writing – functionally comparable to Google Docs, but under an Apache 2.0 license and without cloud dependency. Etherpad can be extended with authentication, additional export formats, or editor functions via a plugin system.

Timeslider and Pad Defaults

The timeslider, which allows the editing history of a pad to be played back as a replay, now displays line numbers and allows the playback speed to be changed – faster or slower than real-time. Also new is that the creator of a pad can specify its default settings, thus gaining more control over the initial configuration. Users operating multiple Etherpad instances under the same domain can avoid collisions between session cookies in the future via a configurable cookie prefix.

For plugin developers, there is the new hook aceRegisterLineAttributes, which allows custom line attributes to be preserved across enter and line break operations. This means that plugins that mark paragraphs as quotes or tasks, for example, will no longer lose their marking when the Enter key is pressed. For quick initial installations, the project provides a one-line installer. The Docker images are now available in the GitHub Container Registry (GHCR) in addition to Docker Hub. The npm publishing of core and plugins now runs via OIDC Trusted Publishing – long-lived API tokens are thus eliminated, increasing supply chain security.

Bugfixes from Database to Input

The update includes numerous bug fixes: Etherpad now ships with database drivers for Postgres, MySQL & Co. again; fresh installations recently often failed due to database connection issues. After a reconnect, Etherpad now writes pending changesets immediately instead of silently discarding them. Sporadic "mismatched apply" errors are also said to be a thing of the past on heavily frequented pads.

The maximum message size in Socket.IO is increased to 10 MByte, so that even large pastes no longer fail at the limit. In addition, the release fixes numerous detail issues related to numbered lists, copy-paste formatting, input via dead keys, and ESM/CJS interop in the settings module, which had recently disrupted plugin compatibility. The team has also worked on accessibility, for example with better screen reader support and aria-live messages. The complete release notes are available in the project's GitHub repository.

(fo)