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AbiCollab Takes On Google Docs and Zoho Writer
msevior writes "Just released today, the free software AbiWord word processor, employed by the One Laptop Per Child project, tightly integrates with a new collaboration Web site to enable easy real-time collaborative editing of documents. AbiCollab.net also enables documents to be stored online, allows format conversion on the fly, stores the history of the docs in svn, provides direct links to HTML-ized docs that update as you save them, and allows easy sharing of docs amongst friends and groups. All in all, new competition for Google Docs and Zoho Writer, but featuring a real word processor rather than an app in a browser."
It means the person who wrote this is sick of web "applications", and prefers desktop applications. Like most sane people.
I'll tell you what my problems are with that statement:
1: If the suggested app is a desktop app, why compare it with Google docs or Zoho docs ?
2: The whole premise of 'taking on google docs' without having browser as a delivery mode doesn't make sense. Google docs is popular [if at all] NOT because it has more features - it is popular because it can work from within a browser. Get what I mean ? No downloads, no clients, no 'need to take my machine or harddrive with me' - get it ?
3: I'm assuming the features touted here are present in Microsoft Word through Sharepoint and/or Groove [never used both though]. So what's so innovative about this app ?
Seriously, anyone ?
Seriously, "collaborative whiteboards" and multi-user editing environments have been around since early Netscape Communicator days - but does anyone actually use or want them? Sure, a system for checking out documents so several people can make changes, but simultaneous editing of documents - what's the use case for them? Who's asking for this? Who's even using it?
This app only works as long as the abicollab.net website is functional, and they will get to see a copy of anything you do. This would only be a useful alternative
if there was a separate deployable web-service that could be INTERNALLY hosted.
The main reason for us not using google apps is that the documents would be vulnerable to privacy issues. This solution does not fix that problem.
If you have access to external web site, you might as well use a web based app.
In answer to your questions:
1. Because it allows collaborative editing for documents hosted on a website. Press "save" in abiword of a document loaded from the site and it is saved back to the site. Just like google docs and zoho.
2. Because some people do need to work together to create documents. Ever had a document emailed to you that requested changes? Now you just connect straight on the service.
3. Your assumption is incorrect. Sharepoint does not allow the deep, instant collaboration between arbitrarily sized collection of people provided by abiword+abiword. Certainly not at the price offered by abicollab.net ether ($0.00).
One of the most touted features of OLPC is the "Write" word processor which allows children to work on documents together. Now everyone with a Windows or Linux computer can do that in a fully fledged word processor.
Have you ever tried to write a document like an article with many co-authors, an interdisciplinary project report or proposal? Being able to simultaneously change the document saves a LOT of time. Over here, we go with LaTeX and SVN.
We are.
We've been having to use Gobby for collaborative writing because it's the only secure way for us to do writing sessions online. Sure, having some text formatting in a program like that would be nice, but we've been copying the Gobby sessions over to our Wiki and the formatting is done there anyway, so there isn't much of a need for that but it still would be nice for future projects.
Even down the road when we can afford to relocate and work in the same building instead of having all our studio members living in different states, we are still going to do our writing sessions with some kind of real-time collaborative writing software. You have no idea how much easier it is to make changes yourself instead of pointing at someone's screen telling them what to type, or how much faster you can both write when you can both be working on different parts of the script at the same time, or having someone edit your mistakes immediately. When you are actually discussing the story constantly with a co-writer, you really want software like this.
As for whiteboards, we'd really like to have the same real-time collaborative editing that we enjoy with Gobby for our design and art production as well. We've tried things like OpenCanvas or those online paint chat applications, and nothing really cuts it. So for that we are settling with VNC and uploading the files to each other when we need to do some serious red-lining.