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A Web App For Real-Time Collaborative Writing
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.
Finally, a cross-platform version of Mulitplayer Notepad!
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 work for a web design company which has most of the employees working in one office, and a few employees (including myself) in a separate office in a different state. This could be very useful for making edits, teaching interns, etc. I'm definitely going to show this to the other team.
ECF home, articles at IBM DeveloperWorks, InfoQ.
From the latter: ECF is...
you had me at #!
I use `screen -x` for collaborating on anything.
And, to add to this flamebait, I use a good editor (i.e. vi or vim).
Linux and Windows users (And I think there's an OS X port too) can use Gobby, 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.
... And so it comes to this.
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.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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...
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...
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.
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.
For those of you intending to actually publish your work (but not having actually sold it yet), be very careful about what you do online. Many publishers will not even glance at a manuscript if it has been published in any part before, and online forums (even private ones) and document sharing services are still a very grey area.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
Na, Google Docs does not do this. This is REAL-TIME collaboration, updating on the screen as you type.
This has been done before, http://collabedit.com/ :)