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A Web App For Real-Time Collaborative Writing

Posted by kdawson on from the write-on dept.

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.

2 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Google Docs, Abiword Collaboration,IRC, SVN etc by adamengst · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  2. Re:Handy for telecommuters and the like by arth1 · · Score: 4, 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.