[HN Gopher] Hermes: An open-source document management system ___________________________________________________________________ Hermes: An open-source document management system Author : shcheklein Score : 164 points Date : 2023-01-31 19:06 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.hashicorp.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.hashicorp.com) | tnolet wrote: | Sounds like Mitchel got distracted. I get it, internal company | wiki entropy is a hard problem. | eatonphil wrote: | > I don't work directly on most of those projects anymore. I | was CEO for ~4 years, CTO for ~5 years, and then transitioned | to being an individual contributor. | | I think it's his job now to get distracted. :) Though I see no | reason from this post to think Hermes is one of Mitchell's | projects. | | https://mitchellh.com/ | frostysocks wrote: | The single, killer feature I'm looking for in a document | management system (besides collaborative environment that we're | used to from gdocs) is a way to stamp versions and have those be | reviewed independently, with git like diffs across them. | | Think gerrit for docs. | revskill wrote: | Then a webui over git itself is better solution ? | schmichael wrote: | Google Docs actually has this and hides it behind terrible | UI/UX. You can "Name this version" of a doc, and there's a | separate page to view versions (from which you can name | versions as well). | | The diffing isn't there, or at least not to the degree that | code review tools offer. | | I'm not sure the feature has evolved in years either. | Definitely feels like one of those things a Google engineer | threw into production one day, and it's never been considered | again. | locustmostest wrote: | Do you mean document control, or diff on text contents? | | For plain text, diff is do-able, but I don't know if comparing | two PDFs can involve a detailed "diff" vs. a checksum, since | the text could be the same but there's a change in layout, an | image, etc. | jve wrote: | Word/docx with SharePoint/OneDrive has pretty nice comparison | feature https://www.officetooltips.com/word_365/tips/compare_ | two_doc... | znpy wrote: | Os it just me or there's another document management system and | authoring suite called Hermes? | | Maybe by Unisys? I've worked in the publishing industry and that | name sounds familiar... | revskill wrote: | The hardest part is configuration among the mess of Google | console UI. Ah wait, i need to earn a real certification in order | to master the web ui ! | krater23 wrote: | Maybee not the best name. Everyone here in Germany knows that | Hermes is the name of the parcel shipping service thats notorious | lose your goods. ;) | LargoLasskhyfv wrote: | That's only because the scrooges don't have a stack of 5EUR | bills at hand. | | Sacrificing one such bill with every delivery magically makes | Hermes minions much more reliable. | | Same applies to all the others. | pledg wrote: | In the UK their reputation got so bad they renamed the company. | solidr53 wrote: | For me it's a JS engine for React Natve - | https://hermesengine.dev/ | corytheboyd wrote: | I don't know what it is about the name Hermes for software folk, | it's apparently irresistible. I've heard the name used by three | different companies for internal projects just in my own circle | in the last year. This concludes my useless comment. | | This is just a joke, that you learn what Hermes means at one | company and have to unlearn that when the next Hermes enters your | life :p | vajrabum wrote: | Hermes was among other things, the messenger of the gods in the | Greek pantheon. I'd guess they were thinking of that as the | context for the name. Of course, he also the psychopomp, the | god who guided dead souls to the underworld. That might also be | appropriate for documents many of which are dead from day 1. | odiroot wrote: | Having lived in Germany, and now in the UK, this name gives me | shivers. Nothing is scarier than getting an email from Hermes: | we got your package! | kderbyma wrote: | Symbols and names have meanings which resonate with people when | they value their origins. | cstuder wrote: | It's also the name of the official project management | procedures of the Swiss Government. Follow it to the letter and | nobody can blame you for sinking a project. | ilc wrote: | It is a name connected with speed, and few negative | connotations. | | I used it for a trending system I worked on long ago. | capableweb wrote: | Take any random Greek deity and search GitHub for it, you'll | find tons of projects for each one, guaranteed. It's just a | common source of naming for developers (how that relates to | god-complex being common with developers, is left as an | exercise to the reader). | mattbee wrote: | To me it's the University of Cambridge's email server (RIP | 1993-2021). I see a few alums keep use their hermes ID as they | a username outside of Cambridge (like mjg59). | [deleted] | meitros wrote: | This reminds me a lot of the NY Times' Library project: | https://github.com/nytimes/library. You use an editing | environment that people are familiar with (google docs), and you | build organizational and workflow stuff around it. Library | rendered the document content itself with a link to edit | (favoring the reader use case), whereas Hermes embeds the google | docs UI. | | The lack of code blocks in google docs makes it tough for a | centralized document repository for an engineering org. For | companies using Quip it could work really well...except that I | don't think quip lets you embed the editor like that. | | Everything that's been built so far for Hermes looks cool. My | personal opinion is that it'll need more UX iteration for it to | really take off. | chedabob wrote: | GDocs is rolling out code blocks now, albeit with a limited | number of supported languages | | https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2022/12/format-displ... | claytonjy wrote: | Is it possible to write markdown in Google docs? This is what | often pushed me back to Confluence for various docs, the markdown | plugin works as expected, so I can write naturally or copy-paste | from obsidian. | | Markdown is so ubiquitous as a dev that I strongly resist writing | anything else these days. | sphars wrote: | Yes, Google added limited support for Markdown last year, | though I'm not sure if it's rolled out to all accounts yet. | | Support documentation: | https://support.google.com/docs/answer/12014036?hl=en | | Wired article going in a little more depth: | https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-use-markdown-google-docs/ | jmacd wrote: | Google Docs supports Markdown just enough to frustrate the life | out of you. | evancordell wrote: | I saw your comment, enabled Markdown in a Google Doc, tried | to write a code block, became immediately frustrated. | | Looks like it only supports bold/italic, links, and headers. | throwawaaarrgh wrote: | > Hermes uses Golang for the backend and Ember.js for the front | end. It uses a PostgreSQL database for storage and Algolia to | power its search capabilities. It also leverages several Google | Workspace services for creating and modifying documents, sending | email, etc. | | Great. 50 million incompatible parts combined with duct tape that | is no better than Jira workflows with Google Docs, and less | flexible. I can't wait to staff a team to maintain this garbage | pile. | dang wrote: | " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other | people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._" | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | dewey wrote: | What's wrong with that stack and how are they incompatible? | capableweb wrote: | > Hermes: An open-source document management system | | > leverages several Google Workspace services for creating and | modifying documents | | Sooo, it's a UI over Google Workspace? Sounds a lot less | interesting than I was lead to believe. | croo wrote: | I read through the project as I worked with several document | storage solution before and still lookin for an ideal solution. | Filenet is horribly overpriced from IBM, Alfresco looks nice but | have serious performance issues (my experience is from 2020), | SharePoint is only nice if everything is Microsoft... Apache Oak | is an abandoned project with a lot of things that seems to be in | it but didnt get finished (e.g. CMIS protocol or usable | documentation). | | This Hermes seems nice and being open source is a great thing but | it's still in alpha, do not support custom file types and very | Google oriented. | | If anyone has a good mature alternative I'm all ears. | wazoox wrote: | ResourceSpace is fine, opensource and can be self-hosted. | | https://www.resourcespace.com/ | formkiqmike wrote: | If you're not adverse to cloud file storage, FormKiQ Core (I'm | a co-founder) is an open source document management system that | runs on AWS and is designed to allow custom integrations. | | https://github.com/formkiq/formkiq-core | bungle wrote: | Have you checked M-Files? (https://www.m-files.com/). Not OSS, | though. | [deleted] | MollyRealized wrote: | https://www.netdocuments.com ? | ab_testing wrote: | Document cloud is open source and you can host it yourself. | denysvitali wrote: | Not mature, but if you fancy contributing I've started DMS.rs a | couple of years ago: https://github.com/DMSrs/dmsrs | | It's written in Rust but I never managed to continue the | project sadly :( | deepsun wrote: | I can't help but notice the fact that language choice is put | first. For document-organizer almost any language would work | fine, there's no need for super-optimized memory management. | Much more important would be language+ecosystem security and | speed of safe development, IMHO. | jll29 wrote: | Would you be interested to re-activate this project? Are you | available for (open source) contract work to that effect? | macrolime wrote: | Nextcloud is mature and I think pretty decent. | _boffin_ wrote: | Check out https://www.nuxeo.com I'm running their open source | solution using docker on my nas. I'm truthfully not using it | too much, but it's an option | mnkypete wrote: | To be honest, I just went for a small business subscription of | Office 365 for personal use, which also gives you mail with a | custom domain. SharePoint is decent enough when accessed from | the mobile OneDrive App and offers out of the box indexing + | OCR of images and pdfs. Also their document scanner is good | enough to quickly get rid of all paper coming in... | satya71 wrote: | There's also Mayan EDMS [1]. I have no experience with it, but | looks sensible from the outside. | | [1] https://www.mayan-edms.com/ | EvanAnderson wrote: | I stood up a demo of Mayan a year ago and played around with | it. It was very nice. The Customer ended up going with a | commercial offering so I didn't spend any more time with it. | For a small environment where someone could fill the Mayan | subject matter expert role I think it would work well. | el_don_almighty wrote: | Hermes: Futurama? | tomaszsobota wrote: | I think this tool would be perfect if it allowed managing a self- | hosted markdown filebase. Hopefully one day :fingerscrossed: | pedrocr wrote: | That seems something in the ballpark of my favorite wiki | software: | | https://github.com/gollum/gollum | | Edit and view pages as a normal markdown wiki. But the backend | is just a git repository of markdown files so you can also just | use your text editor and git pull/push. Usable by any novice | but with the ideal power user interface. | kkoncevicius wrote: | Maybe a slow day for me, but from the homepage and video it isn't | clear - does it do anything that cannot be achieved with plain | Google Docs? | tremon wrote: | Run it on your own servers? | mrzool wrote: | I'm also baffled by that after skimming the page and watching | the demo video... seems like a Google Docs wrapper of some | sort. | imran-iq wrote: | It seems like it manages some metadata around google docs, but | google docs is doing all the heavy lifting | (creating/editing/sharing documents). Which begs the question, | why? | | By titling itself as a document management system I would | assume it would be something like paperless-ngx[0] or mayan | edms[1]. The latter of which has a built in workflow system[2]. | | But by being tied to google docs you can't really self host the | important parts | | --- | | 0: https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx | | 1: https://gitlab.com/mayan-edms/mayan-edms | | 2: https://docs.mayan-edms.com/chapters/workflows.html | PenguinCoder wrote: | Utterly misleading to call this self hosted document | management then, and defeats the purpose. Here's a front end | to Google docs you can host, but you still need access to the | internet, Google docs, and Google sees all your docs anyways. | | No thanks. | faitswulff wrote: | Full text search also provided by Algolia, so you'll likely | need an Algolia API key and account as well. | [deleted] | phphphphp wrote: | The hardest part of documents within a business is not | producing documents but rather creating a useful library. | Google Docs is a place where great documents go to die. | | Notion's success (for example) is more about it making it | possible to create a useable library of documents than it is | about being an editor with neat widgets. | | I don't know if Hermes is going to be particularly successful | given it's competing with things like Notion, but in principle, | a library for Google Docs is a great and valuable project for | teams using Google Docs. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-01-31 23:00 UTC)