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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.

12 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Mmm... by jornak · · Score: 5, Funny

    Finally, a cross-platform version of Mulitplayer Notepad!

    1. Re:Mmm... by Skinkie · · Score: 4, Informative

      http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/ seems very cross-platform to me too. Who needs ctrl-z anyway if not using bash?

      --
      Support Eachother, Copy Dutch Property!
    2. Re:Mmm... by abigor · · Score: 3, Funny

      Those darned youngsters you speak of simply lack vim! Not to mention vigour.

  2. Looks great! by XTrollX · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!

  3. Handy for telecommuters and the like by Beyond+Opinion · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. 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.

  4. There's also the Eclipse Communication Framework by toby · · Score: 4, Informative

    ECF home, articles at IBM DeveloperWorks, InfoQ.

    From the latter: ECF is...

    • Real-time communication and collaboration features for teams using Eclipse such as peer-to-peer file sharing, remote opening of Eclipse views, screen capture sharing, and real-time shared editing.
    • A set of communications APIs and frameworks built upon existing protocols (like Google Talk, XMPP, SSH, HTTP/HTTPS, Rendevous, IRC, and others) for developers to add communications and messaging to their own Equinox-based plugins, or customize and extend the ECF applications.
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    you had me at #!
  5. Gobby by kwalker · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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    ... And so it comes to this.
  6. Limiting Participation by stoolpigeon · · Score: 4, 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.

    --
    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?
  7. 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.

  8. online + publishers == be careful by forevermore · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  9. CollabEdit by Maexxus · · Score: 4, Informative

    This has been done before, http://collabedit.com/ :)