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Writing Fiction Using SubEthaEdit
Phil Shapiro writes "The recent blizzard on the East Coast makes for some great collaborative creativity opportunities of various sorts, including group fiction writing using SubEthaEdit. Did you know you can write fiction about collaborative fiction writing using collaborative fiction writing tools? We didn't either." Man, the best fiction I've ever produced is some of the project plans created using SubEtha.
"national teaching award from Radio Shack" What an honor to win such a thing. What's next? Best movie award from /. ?
...this is SubEthaEdit. It's a rendezvous and network-aware text editor designed for collaborative coding that seems to be finding more use. Meanwhile, it's also just a damn nice text editor for general use, and is free (yes, I know that TextWrangler is also free now).
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Man, the best fiction I've ever produced is some of the project plans created using SubEtha.
The greatest lasagne recipe I ever wrote was crafted in MS Word 6.0.
OK, OK, Courier 12 point, if you must know.
An excellent example can be found here.
The formula is as follows.
1.) Write article based entirely on misrepresented sensational claims about the end of the world.
2.) Get slashdotted
3.) Sell more ads for website based on high traffic volumes (use only averages when representing numbers to ad buying customers.)
4.) Profit!
Its a shame there's not a windows/*nix version, or a similar thing using AIM or MSN Messenger. Do similar tools exist and I've never seen them maybe? I'd like to do some online collaborations.
*NIX and MS-Windows users can forget about it...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I was stuck using a half-functional BBEdit Lite that BareBones software refused to update at all. Including major, major bug fixes. SubEthaEdit is the text editor I needed all along, and I may even throw them a few bucks in the future, just because their program is free for noncommercial use.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Sure, there are projects suited to live collaboration. Screenplays, songs, even blog fiction (self plug). But prose narrative is one of the least likely. Name one good novel that was written by committee.
you know what is also tasty? Open office with 11.5pt helvetica. hmmmm....that makes for some delicious food. And if i were you i would stay away from anything notepad font size 14 -- i think they are too salty or something.
best fiction ever!!!
Each new post describing a choice. How geeky...
/me ill-it-errr-it [enter]
You come up to the entrance to a crumbling dungeon, where the fabled ruby of souls resides. Rummaging around in your pockets, you fish out your trusty dagger. Well...dagger..ish. Ok, it's a butter knife. hopefully you can find something better. Looking up at the cavernesque mouth of the dungeon, a chill runs down your spine, and a small spider crawls up your leg. Ick! you quickly swat it, then ponder the situation at hand. a set of vines snakes all over the sides of the tower that overlooks the dungeon courtyard. you could probably get a good view from there. then again, it looks reaaaaaly high up, and you've been known to get dizzy on a stepladder. maybe it's best to just not know what's ahead...
Will you:
A: try to climb up to the tower?
B: press on into the dungeon?
C: Go home and have tea?
B: press on into the dungeon.
Being scared of heights, you choose to press on into the dank dungeon, smelling the foul nastiness that is this thing. You find a copper sword on the ground, bending it as you smash it dirt wall of the dungeon. "Eh, my knife is better than this piece of pooh." You open a nearby door, and watch a dog eating some gecko thing on the floor. You hear a message echoing throughout the dungeon: "Dog has killed a gecko." Upon approaching the dog, you notice some writing on the ground.
"I$ #ou c$n r!@ t#i@ &u% m$*t be sm@r$."
Do you:
A: north [enter]
B: write with knife [enter]
C:
A: Enter the area
You suddenly realize that you are in the middle of a NetHack game, and that the little dog is at least 5 times stronger than you. Frantically searching your pockets, you find something squishy. Aha! tripe, your favorite midnight snack. with a mighty heave, you lob the ball of smelly meat at the dog, which greedily devours it, then looks at you lovingly. Aww, how sweet, you made a friend. Now that you have a chance to search the room, which reveals a well-hidden, and very sturdy looking door.
Will you:
A: Open the door carefully?
B: Kick the door down?
C: Kick the dog?
C: Kick the dog
With a mighty hoof you poot the dog in the side of it's belly. For a moment it does nothing, before letting out a strange welp noise, then making a bolt for the door. It smashes it down, whining as it goes. You look on through the now defunct doorway to see a band of Half-Clay Superorc beyond, flattened by your pooch's charge. In the distance you can hear the mutt whining, surely far into the dungeon and out of audible reach. Walking into the corridor, you notice three exits. Which will you take?
A: North
B: South
C: Dennis
etc...
The word "fiction" was used only five times in that article summary... in contrast to another word that was used some 21 times recently.
As an open source developer I colaberate with many other developers on text files using ... cvs. The nicest part being that I have full revision and can back out and we all don't have to be awake at the same time. And when we are all awake together we have been known to use irc for that instant communication. Anyway, nice to see a tool try to put all these ideas into one.
-Benjamin Meyer
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
My internal English parser barfed on this sentence. WTF is the parent talking about???
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Collaborative text editors were a hot research topic about 8-10 years ago, and it turns out to be quite hard to get them right.
The only mostly-finished one I could find that runs on Windows (and Linux!) is MoonEdit. Anyone want to put a server up and try it?
Its a shame there's not a windows/*nix version, or a similar thing using AIM or MSN Messenger. Do similar tools exist and I've never seen them maybe? I'd like to do some online collaborations.
Well, there's NetMeeting, which comes with Win2K and XP (and as an install on earlier versions). Text, audio/video conf, whiteboard, app sharing. Not the greatest but it's already installed and it's free.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
moonedit is what I've been using instead of subethaedit when I've wanted to do collaborative editing with those poor souls who have Macs. It's closed-source, Windows/Linux x86 only, is a terrible editor, the UI is horrible and it's generally a pain to use in comparison to subetha which Just Works, but it's a lot better than nothing.
I assume another possible alternative is to try using the crazy emacs mode where it can connect to multiple displays.
isn't wiki designed for this collaberation? unlike sub ertha edit, it is not fixed to an operating system, just a web browser, allowing everyone to participate.
Yes, try the software behind story5000.org, dubbed the collabotron. I hear tell there is going to be a free software version released within a few weeks. You can see examples:
A simple collaboration
A reconfigured area
The software has enough hooks to be rebuilt into anything - I am working on an ABC-tune converter at abc.story5000.org right now both as a convenience to me and mine (the fiddle community) and as a favor to the programmer to help suss out bugs.
Lightweights! Real men use vi with LaTeX to write their lasagna recipes. Donald Knuth would be so proud.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
On a whim, I installed SubEthaEdit for a recent collaborative project for use on a P'book and a friend's iBook. Both of us were editing (wirelessly) the same document within five minutes -- w/o reading a line from TFM . Nothing scientific to back it up, but we agreed that it saved us a good amount of total project time (and it completely changed our workflow on all projects from that time forward).
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
I somehow selected and deleted this:
Everything I can set up with the site is done through a web page admin panel; I don't have ssh or ftp access to the server at all. Without going into programming there's a ton of tweaking that can be done, but there are hooks into events in the system to do things at different points, which is how I'm able to grab the post-comments hook and use it to process the ABC tunes into grahpics instead of just going in as a regular comment.
It's hard to find a well designed collaborative chat program.
OpenCanvas was completely changed in later versions. The early betas that can network are riddled with bugs, particularly in multiple monitor support. The later versions don't network.
Paintchat is built around a message board concept, which isn't my cup of tea for the same reason I prefer an IM program to a Java chat applet badly translated from Japanese.
Unfortunately, the IM program drawing functions are primitive at best. MSN's whiteboard is pathetic and Yahoo's shared drawing is fun, but has a tiny canvas and a limited UI.
Finally, googling for programs involves wading through the enormous amounts of information on OpenCanvas, Paintchat, and "collaborative art education initiatives" at elementary schools. I've been looking for months, and it seems like word of mouth is the way to go.
So.... any suggestions?
Um, there is a *nix version, its for OS X. How soon we forget OS X is a flavor of BSD.
But, then, there's always the Lexicon Game or Sample Lexicon Game
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Actually I was thinking this concept could be extended to be code context sensitive so that it could be used for group coding.
Even as it is, it could be used in that way though.
(Thinking to self...)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Mac users don't want their writing tainted by non-Mac users. And I agree.
Hi, is there any project trying to bring an alternative to SubEthaEdit on non-mac computers? To be more precise: I am looking for a similar thing I can use on Linux and Windows.. Any Ideas?
SubEthaEdit allows *everyone* to edit the same file at the same time. So, the editing is live and concurrent: while I'm making my changes, I see you making your changes. Wiki allows everyone to edit the same file, but you can't see what everyone else is typing at the same time.
So that emacs can write fiction about collaborative fiction writing using collaborative fiction writing tools on its own?
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
-x40sw0n
The greatest lasagne recipe I ever wrote was crafted in MS Word 6.0.
Did you mean conjured?
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
Man, the best fiction I've ever produced is(sic) some of the project plans created using SubEtha
With grammar like that, it would definitely be a privledge and an honour NOT to read your works.
I think, therefore I am an Atheist.
And linking to the article is so effective in discouraging such behavior! I'm sure the Independent has been thoroughly chastized now that they know you dissapprove of their tactics. I shall be sure to post many such criticisms with links to the site also. That will show them!
SubEthaEdit sports quite a few different editing modes, including for the Inform language for writing interactive fiction.
Collaborative Interactive Fiction, anyone?
It looks like you're trying to write a recipe. Would you like to:
* Add garlic?
* Add salt?
* Order a wine from gourmet.microsoft.com?
[insert witty sig here]
A wiki can be set up for this, but then one would have to at least password it so only authorized persons can edit.
...for applications like these? Thanks.
The thing about global warming is it doesn't result in temperatures being uniformly warmer all year round. If that was all that happened, it might not be such a bad thing.
No, the problem of global warming is it results in climate disruption, i.e. the weather being a lot more freakish and extreme.
Then again, you probably know that and are just trying desperately to remain in denial.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
A wiki can be set up for this, but then one would have to at least password it so only authorized persons can edit
I'm going to guess that you have not used SubEtha. It lets multiple people collaborate on a document at the same time. For example, when I am typing on line 10, I can see one of my collaborators typing 5 lines up, and another one highlighting and deleting the paragraph below. Its all realtime. Each person has their own color.
And yes, you can password protect your document so that the public cannot collaborate. This is far more efficiant than a Wiki for many collaborative purposes.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
Maybe it's time to get a Mac. They're fun! (Most of) your linux software will work on it. :-)
the closest free/opensource software i could find with google is pablodraw (for doing ascii art)
pablodraw
From the well-known (on the Internet) "too much time on their hands" category. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Ah, seems interesting, but since they are looking for a working Windows solution, Wiki seems to be a decent workaround, at least temporarily.
01010100011010000110010100100000011000100110010101 110011011101000010000001001100
01100001011100110110000101100111011011100110010100 100000011100100110010101100011
01101001011100000110100101100101011100110010000001 100011011000010110111000100000
01101111011011100110110001111001001000000110001001 100101001000000111011101110010
01101001011101000111010001100101011011100010000001 101001011011100010000001100010
0110100101101110011000010111001001111001
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
We started using it to work on playwriitng. One child does one person's dialog, another takes another character's dialog, while another will do descriptions, and another will edit and correct.
What makes it work is rendezvous. The kids don't need to know ip addresses or hostnames - only usernames. We can setup several groups at once without making it into a major project.
Aside from the obvious benefits, it creates a transparent opportunity for the kids learn about group dynamics and working together in a way not many classroom activities do. Because the program works so simply, the kids focus on the work without thinking about the process of making it work together. There are other ways of accomplishing this, but nothing that's anywhere as simple as Subethaedit. I'm glad to see people are starting to see the usefulness of this approach. I'm amazed it's taken so long.
I don't know about you, but I generate my lasagna recipes from sauce files. The output is something like this:
Layer6 Shredded mozzarella + shredded parmesan
Pasta6
Layer5 Tomato-mushroom sauce + sliced parmesan
Pasta5
Layer4 Peanut-coconut sauce
Pasta4
Layer3 Spinach + shredded parmesan
Pasta3
Layer2 Peanut-coconut sauce
Pasta2
Layer1 Tomato-mushroom sauce + sliced parmesan
Pasta1
Layer0 Cooking spray
The individual sauce recipes are stored in other text files with filename format sau.000, sau.001 etc, with an index file listing what number is what sauce (ordered both by number and by name of sauce). The lasagna recipes were combinatorially generated from the available sauces and bzipped. I currently don't use more than four sauces in my lasagna, and the total number of sauces I have is also fairly low. I may expand both in future if I need to, and re-generate the lasagna recipes.
In general, this is a pretty clean method to use when you have a wide choice of ingredients all undergoing the same process. Pasta sauces are suitable, as are pancake batters, bread doughs and omelette fillings.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
A friend and I sometimes co-author short stories and we pass a document back and forth and just type the new stuff in red. Something like this would be cool for us, though. Word sucks.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
I'm not actually joking--I've written a very nice cookbook attractively typeset with LaTeX. It's a wonderful tool. While far from perfect, it is still better than anything else out there, and has an excellent community built up around itself.
MoonEdit looks pretty cool. I'm gunna give it a spin with a few friends and see how it behaves. Thanks for that one.
I recently found a cross-platform (Win, Mac and Linux) editor called MoonEdit which seems to do SEE's live-collaboration thing okay, although I don't think it uses Zeroconf to do so. I wouldn't recommend it as a code editor, as it has a number of interface conventions that... well... let's just say that the thing feels aptly named. But for joint note-taking or the kind of fiction described here, I bet it'd work fine.
If you don't pretend to be anyone, are you?
Well I went to the trouble of registering wiction.org and wiction.com for a new collaborative fiction website. But then I realized wow I'm not the first! Anyways I'm sure this hapans with anybody.
Offtopic slightly: Could someone tell me the best tools for this type of job? What about a standard wiki (twiki)? I've never tried to set one up and I'm actually looking for a partner to help with the coding portion of the site in exchange for free hosting etc.
beermonster1984@gmail.com
If you and I were working on a document in SubEthaEdit you could revert any changes I make as I make them, and I yours.
I'm a sci-fi vegan: I don't want the aliens to think we have as much right to live as the fried chickens we eat.
Man I love lasagna, send me the receipe.
Show me your's and I'll show you mine.
Wal-Mart Offers $498 Linux Notebook
= 9J =
No, you're feeding a pedant, which is entirely different - because OS X *is* UNIX in every sense, while Linux still is (officially) not.
± 29 dB
I finally found that the free/open nte is clearly the ancestor of those programs !
It's in Debian sarge/sid too.