Re: Re: Editing Word Documents

The only way I see this can be done is simly let every user mount a share under the same letter, all you need to do then is <a href="file:///X:/directory/file.doc">file</a>, then locking files is up to samba or windows server. Marek Richard Lynch wrote:

I have an intranet, which provides access to, amongst others, Word Documents about policies, etc. What the guys are looking for is a way to do the following: 1. Show a list of files available for editing 2. If a file is clicked, then it is locked for other users (no access) 3. The file opens on the client's machine 4. The client edits it 5. The client then closes the file, it "auto-saves" and he goes about his business. Points 1 through 3 are relatively trivial. Point 4 and 5 (especially 5) have me lost. How do you get a file to be edited, and then automatically returned to the server by M$ Word in it's changed format. Is this possible? How would this change in a database-backended system (including the files as BLOBs)?

They'd have to be "uploaded" *SOMEHOW*... If the employees can't do that "by hand", then perhaps some kind of "scheduled" task on the Win boxes could be programmed to do it. Don't forget to *UNLOCK* after a successful upload, but not when, not if, when, the upload fails. There's simply NO WAY the server can reach out and suck in a file of its own volitoin... Major privacy/security problem there. You *COULD* also install Apache + PHP on every desktop, and have them serving up their edited Word files to the Intranet, and then PHP could use HTTP to suck them back in... But that's probably not gonna fly for non-technical reasons. Well, not counting really bad Security as a "technical" reason.