A Web App For Real-Time Collaborative Writing 157
adamengst writes in with good news for anyone who needs to collaborate remotely on a writing or editing project — coding too. It's especially good news for those using Windows and Linux. Mac users have had SubEthaEdit for a few years now. With EtherPad, two or more people can edit a document and see all the edits simultaneously. EtherPad's main differences from SubEthaEdit: it's a Web application that de facto supports many platforms without the need for a central Mac OS X host; and it's free. Here is a comparison of EtherPad and SubEthaEdit.
Mmm... (Score:5, Funny)
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Wikipedia is the largest Massively Multiplayer Online Notepad installation in the world!
(I just forwarded a link to the app to wikien-l.)
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but it's not real time, it's turn based :)
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It was a dark and stormy night.
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Just then, his eye caught the movement of a curtain. Turning, he could see the buxom blonde looking out at the night.
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He hadn't seen the house earlier, but it's hard to see when you are skydiving on dark rainy night. He hadn't even seen the tree coming at him as he crashed.
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He hadn't seen the house earlier, but it's hard to see when you are skydiving on dark rainy night. He hadn't even seen the tree coming at him as he crashed.
Nor had the bowl of petunias as it muttered 'Oh no, not again'
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He wondered to himself if the blonde had seen him land on his ass. No time for social graces, the yellow eyes were following him. In the darkness he thought he could make out the shape of raccoon, but something was wrong, very wrong. In the failing light it appeared almost like the raccoon had a laser on it's head.
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Suddenly, Godzilla appeared over the horizon.
See, this is the problem with collaborative writing, people.
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As he caught his breath, hundreds of raccoon began appearing at the edge of the forest. Each of them was armed with a laser. As Godzilla approached, they began to encircle him.
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The raccoons then realized that Godzilla was really a raccoon powersuit, crafted to assist their race to world domination. It is theirs, if not for the opposition of the dread squirrels.
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The squirrels being crafty as they are, had lain a trap for the raccoons, and Godzilla-coon was overcome by skydiving squirrels when he stopped to rummage in the very large garbage pails the squirrels left at the edge of the forrest, next to the large man-made lake filled with poisoned Gatorade. The carnage of war erupted all around the squirrels trap. Fangs and claws slashing and tearing flesh.
Not to be hindered by small problems, the raccoons regrouped and continued their march, leaving charred and burnin
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Bit didn't worry too much, since the lake wasn't actually poisoned, it had electrolytes, and thus what the plants needed recover from the mammalian warfare. Pat, the ecologist postman, continued on his founds, mindful of the small package of cheese under his arms. The cheese that would rule them all...
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Re:Mmm... (Score:5, Informative)
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Um, is this a trick question? Everyone using job control. (Which, IME, are the people not using bash.)
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Ah. You youngsters use the CTRL keys differently. :-)
CTRL-C: Terminate (SIGTERM)
CTRL-Z: Suspend (SIGSTOP) (resume with "fg")
Undo? "u" does that. Followed by "." to undo again, or another "u" to undo the undo (redo).
And yes, it also allows multiple people to work on the same document.
(Ten points to anyone who can identify my editor).
Re:Mmm... (Score:4, Funny)
Those darned youngsters you speak of simply lack vim! Not to mention vigour.
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No, "vim" is for the youngsters. Pressing "u" twice in vim doesn't undo the undo. And it doesn't allow multiple people to work on the same document either.
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No, "vim" is for the youngsters. Pressing "u" twice in vim doesn't undo the undo.
It does in vim-tiny ;)
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You mean like... I could implement a complete... editor in it?
On a more serious note: I dislike emacs because it's a prime example of the "inner-platform effect [wikipedia.org]". It's nearly as wrong as implementing an e-mail application in HTTP+HTML+CSS+JS. ;)
This does not mean that I dislike the (default) UI of emacs, or the freedom to customize (in fact I love that freedom). Just please stop adding another useless but fat layer to it.
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Nice buzzword ("inner-platform effect"), but I fail to see how emacs is an example of it. Emacs is not about re-implementing the operating system inside the editor. Maybe you're thinking it's odd that emacs has a windowing system of it's own when you already have a windowing system (e.g. X windows), but you've got your history backwards: Emacs preceded X windows.
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There are some parallels, but webmail sucks and takes control away from the user. Emacs doesn't lock you in.
Fat layers? Those odd emacs things aren
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Well, if you care, I use X largely just to run Firefox, and mostly live inside of emacs (MH-E for mail, ESC-x shell, sometimes gnus for usenet).
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nvi it is. :-)
nvi has multi-user support in that you can set or unset lock, and use the -F option at start-up to choose whether to load the entire file or not. If used correctly, and with care, multiple people can vi the same file.
This can be useful, especially on a system with many administrators. /etc/passwd open, and is out to lunch? No problem, user2 can still edit it, and save the changes.
Example:
user1 has a named zone file or
Depending on what user1 does when he comes back, the end result might not b
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Emacs under X can do it as well:
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Multiple-Displays.html [gnu.org]
Looks great! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Have you tried using a version control system such as Subversion or Mercurial? You don't all see the same screen in real time, but it automatically coordinates changes that need to be merged in.
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99% of the population would have no idea where to set up a Subversion or Mercurial. Even in engineering this would have saved us a ton of time. My girlfriend (med student) often has to write reports with a partner. This would allow her to be on the computer anywhere and on AIM or even in the same room and start knocking out the same report instantly.
This is how 'merging' usually goes. Everyone works on their Word / Powerpoint presentation separately. Then you set up a group meeting and merge it together in
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I think perhaps you give people too much credit.
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With a margin of error of 1%, yes.
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perosnally I used writely (before it became the google app). And there's some even better ones now like Zoho, which is a ms word look-alike for collaborative writing.
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Yes, it works with text files. (You can store binary files but they can't be merged automatically.) So that does make it unsuitable for documents saved from a word processor, unless you save in text format and add the formatting as the last step.
Well, you can use all sorts of tools to show you the diffs. On Windows I use TortoiseSVN, which shows the two versions of a file with d
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So that does make it unsuitable for documents saved from a word processor, unless you save in text format and add the formatting as the last step.
No, actually, line-based diff is almost entirely useless with written documents. You either have "soft" or "dynamic" word wrap (one line per paragraph), or "static" word wrap (newline on the end of each line). In the first case, a single change in a paragraph marks the *whole* paragraph as changed, and in the second case, a single change causes the paragraph to need to be re-wrapped and again the whole thing is marked as a change.
For written text (latex, html, or plain text), you probably need to use someth
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This is a good point. Strangely, in practice I have never found this to be a
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Those of us who demand version control put that differently: "So that makes word processors unsuitable for documents under version control".
As soon as you choose to use one instead of LaTeX, troff, H
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This looks like a very promising App. As a student, we are assigned group assignments which often involve a partner and an essay. It's always stressful to try and edit our assignments together because it involves emailing it every time we make a correction. This would completely eliminate that frustration, can't wait until this comes out!
I'm surprised no one's mentioned Google Documents [google.com] yet. I've been using it for group assignments since late 2005, when it was called Writely and hadn't been bought out by Google yet.
The first thing I thought when I saw this article was, "This is new?"
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This looks like a very promising App. As a student, we are assigned group assignments which often involve a partner and an essay. It's always stressful to try and edit our assignments together because it involves emailing it every time we make a correction. This would completely eliminate that frustration, can't wait until this comes out!
We use Google docs for this.
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who edits/revises this way in the real world? seriously.
Maybe towards the final drafts this might work, when the revisions are semantic, grammatic or subjective word choice.
IMHO, research papers seem unlikely to benefit from something like this.
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I've been using Google Docs to revise like this in the real world for over a year to do the show notes for my podcast, Volcanicast. 3-4 people need to edit and I need it to output (piss-poor, in Google Docs' case) html for the resultant rss feed for the show.
I love that Google Docs does all this pretty seamlessly. I wish, however, that the html was better and a few bugs with formatting would get fixed. If I could find something that output html and allowed simultaneous editing, and was easy to use (one of o
Handy for telecommuters and the like (Score:3, Interesting)
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Keep in mind that you expose the documents to people not in your company. A careless remark about something that might affect future stock prices could very well be exploited by someone with access to the servers. Not to mention trade secrets.
Keep communication in-house if you can.
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Re:Handy for telecommuters and the like (Score:5, Insightful)
With phones, you have a contract with the phone company, who accept responsibility for keeping your transmissions private. It's even mandated by law. If someone at the phone company listens in on your talks and acts on the proprietary information, or by negligence allows others to do so, you have a legal claim to redress.
With a web server, no such protection is in place. In fact, most public web servers require that you abide by their EULA, which further reduces your legal status.
You don't have to be paranoid to use common sense. You just need to avoid unnecessary risks. And this is one.
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All true enough. So is there a (preferably free :) alternative that, say, I could run on my own PC, or on my own web host, and would work by my directly inviting others? (I'm wondering if some aspect of the bittorrent protocol might be useful here.) The idea is to avoid using any system that we don't have complete access control of.
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[Citation needed] I just took a look at the fine print on my (land-line) phone bill and couldn't find the part that you mentioned. Could this only be something that applies to cell phone plans?
Perhaps that means there should be a deluge
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There's also the Eclipse Communication Framework (Score:5, Informative)
ECF home [eclipse.org], articles at IBM DeveloperWorks [ibm.com], InfoQ [infoq.com].
From the latter: ECF is...
Interesting (Score:2)
and pretty well-implemented. It doesn't handle deletions, though - something like Word's Track Changes for deletions might be nice.
There's a test room here: http://etherpad.com/as9F1Jh5cu [etherpad.com]
try it out (Score:1, Funny)
First!
join me here: http://etherpad.com/Azkob99ZYK
Killer app for lecture notetaking (Score:1)
Always thought something like this would work amazingly for collectively taking notes on a lecture.
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We use SubEthaEdit for taking notes during Steve Jobs keynotes. It's brilliant for that. Alas, EtherPad won't work there because Apple always blocks Internet access in the keynote room.
screen -x (Score:2, Informative)
I use `screen -x` for collaborating on anything.
And, to add to this flamebait, I use a good editor (i.e. vi or vim).
Gobby (Score:5, Informative)
Linux and Windows users (And I think there's an OS X port too) can use Gobby [slashdot.org], which is like SubEthaEdit, but free, written in GTK+, includes a free server for collaboration over the net, and zeroconf support for finding users on the local network. Since it's based on GTK+, it has things like syntax highlighting, spellcheck, etc. already available. It should also be in most popular distros' repos already.
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In fact, the Gobby authors might want to take a close look at this Etherpad thing.
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I don't know what kinda busted-ass network you run, but I have used Gobby over a local network and over the Internet to work on everything from documentation to source code to HTML and CSS files. It works like a champ. Several other admins and developers have started using it at my company for collaboration, both "extreme programming" type and "can you help me figure out the problem with X?" things.
The ONLY thing I want from Gobby at this point is an easy way to see who is where within the document.
No Internet? (Score:2)
In the 2 minutes I played with etherpad it blows Gobby out of the water
But which one works over a LAN that is not connected to the Internet, such as an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network or a Wi-Fi network whose access point/router has no ISP uplink? Not everybody can afford a 3G card and a tetherable data plan.
Google Docs, Abiword Collaboration,IRC, SVN etc. (Score:1, Informative)
I've seen it written that IRC is just multiplayer notepad before...
But anyway, Google Writer does this, Abiword is a non-web app freely available on all major platforms, and has a Collaboration plugin (never used it personally).
Oh, and this one still requires you to use their server... That rules it out for most use cases I can think of in a commercial setting.
Interestingly, they say on their FAQ
"One thing that Google Docs does not do is real-time collaborative text editing." Actually, yes it does...
"Google
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And while it is true they need a "google docs" account, you can do that with any e-mail address, not just a gmail address...
Google Docs seems just as good, already in place, and better integrated with things like OpenOffice/MS Office, already has spreadsheet/powerpoint capability, etc. I fail to see the point or the hype.
And Google Docs allows you to have collaborators and just viewers...
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Google Docs is great, but it doesn't update in real time. There's always a lag that gets in the way for quick collaboration.
Re:Google Docs, Abiword Collaboration,IRC, SVN etc (Score:2)
> Give us the code, let us host it locally, force user accounts if desired.
In addition, please come mow my lawn, give me some of your famous home-made myrtleberry pie, and a copy of your house keys.
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I'm trying to share a google docs document by just sending the link, and no, it requires you to log in with a google account.
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Ah, so it's like Google Spreadsheets, but applied to documents?
Limiting Participation (Score:5, Interesting)
I've gone through and I haven't seen how one keeps anyone with the url from participating. If there is no mechanism to do this, how long before someone has a script out there that generates random urls and looks for matching documents? I can see how this could become somewhat entertaining or infuriating depending on ones point of view.
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Couldn't this be gotten around by requiring a login password along with the URL that you're about to send to your collaborators? It's unlikely that such an attack could find BOTH the URL and the password at the same time.
The application could generate the password along with the URL, to ensure that it's both random and not readily guessable.
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I'm sure it is an easy problem to fix - if it is a problem. What I've seen on this so far seemed to hype the whole "All you need is a url" deal. I'm not a particularly devious person - but the problem with that approach jumped out at me immediately.
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Another thought you just gave me: how to prevent a keylogger from getting into the action?
Possible solution: instead of displaying the password to the initiator, have the server email it separately to the invitees, maybe as a unique hash in the URL sent to each. That way only invited guests could show up. Only downside is that you'd have to provide email addys to the server, and if someone is that set on snooping, they probably could intervene and send their own emails. But if the hash doesn't match, the se
Chat Logs (Score:1)
Though I have not used this or SubEthaEdit, I wonder how distracting it is while typing to see the text change due to others...
Drawing version? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anybody know of a collaborative drawing tool in the same vein? This would be great for a play-by-IM roleplaying game, so I could draw a battle map for my players. I could draw the map and they would be able to move their characters when it was their turn. I could even use different background textures to give the maps more character.
Cross platform would be ideal so that I don't have to use Windows...
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Does anybody know of a collaborative drawing tool in the same vein?
You could start your research at Wikipedia: Oekaki [wikipedia.org] and Paint chat [wikipedia.org]
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Does anybody know of a collaborative drawing tool in the same vein? This would be great for a play-by-IM roleplaying game, so I could draw a battle map for my players. I could draw the map and they would be able to move their characters when it was their turn. I could even use different background textures to give the maps more character.
Cross platform would be ideal so that I don't have to use Windows...
I use MapTool from rptools.net. It's free, and it has ever feature that I need for running a weekly Shadowrun and Castle Falkenstein campaign, including drawing, maps, minis, chat, dicerolling, etc.
Slashdot EtherPad (Score:2)
Slashdot Etherpad [etherpad.com].
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So, we're having a Slashdot discussion there. Full of "your mom" jokes and other mindless crap. And all of a sudden - BAM!
We're hit by an ASCII goatsex.
Ah, thank you internet for inventing another way to make me want to gouge my eyes out.
EtherPad is dead to me, as of 11:52 AM, CST. lolz.
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Seems like they locked it down, at least the multi-user aspect. Or can other people get in to it?
emacs (Score:2)
You can do real-time simultaneous editing with multi-tty mode in Emacs 23. I don't know how useful it is though.
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Google Docs (Score:2)
Google Docs does this really well with shared version control. I've used it several times to do this sort of thing.
Already done....old news (Score:1)
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QNX is the most under appreciated operating system ever.
Google Docs (Score:3)
I love sub-etha edit and used it for a long time.
But for almost all the same functionality and the ability to do presos, documents and spreadsheet collaboratively and simultaneously Google Docs is pretty awesome.
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Hehe, I've been using SubEtha Edit for years because of its coding friendly features and have never collaborated with anyone.
If I need to create a word-processing document I use Google Docs too.
What could possibly go wrong (Score:2)
Boy, I hope some suckers use this for ultra secret stuff. I will be firing up my script soon enough to figure out those "non-gues
It needs password protection (Score:1)
at the very LEAST! maybe SSL + password protection. Right now anyone with the URL can hop on in and see/edit the document.
Thoughtslinger (Score:2)
How do these compare with Thoughtslinger?
http://www.thoughtslinger.com/ [thoughtslinger.com]
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The description reminds me of Wildcat BBS chat mode -- it's all realtime too. The only downside is that it's logged in realtime as well, rather than what's on the screen, so the BBS's stored document is as messy as your typing. No reason you can't screencap it with some scrollit type tool, tho...
Ah, hell, scrollit is for DOS; is there a similar capture tool for Windows??
online + publishers == be careful (Score:4, Interesting)
Drawball ! (Score:2)
CollabEdit (Score:4, Informative)
This has been done before, http://collabedit.com/ [collabedit.com] :)
Buzzword! (Score:2)
http://www.buzzword.com/ [buzzword.com]
Windows, OSX, Linux (including 64 bit with Player 10).
Share a document, allow multiple co-authors, change history...what more could you ask for?
better choices (Score:2)
The reason why something like this hasn't caught on before on UNIX (Emacs had this in the mid 90's and it wasn't the first) is because there are better ways of doing it: UNIX users use concurrent version control and wikis for collaborative editing. For pair programming, shared screen sessions via VNC are good (during pair programming, only one person should edit at a time, the other person should watch). In those few cases where real-time collaboration on within the same buffer is needed, Google Docs is a