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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Collaborative editing / Versionning for koffice
From:       Cyrille Berger <cberger () cberger ! net>
Date:       2006-05-29 20:46:30
Message-ID: 200605292246.30861.cberger () cberger ! net
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Hi all,

I want to start a discution about adding collaborative editing/versionning in 
KOffice 2.x (note that x might be x >=1, but I had rather have x=0 even if 
it's not feature complete and supported by all apps). As those two features 
are closely related, I do think that we can provide support for both of them 
at the same time. (And with the design about which I am thinking we might 
even get some sort of ressource server for free ;) )

** Versionning
Versionning is part of proposed google soc, so I will let the student take 
care of it, but there is a lot in common between versionning and 
collaborative.

** Collaborative editing
The collaborative edition will need a small server, and I see at least two use 
case, one involving working on a single document, and the other one need 
collaboration between all koffice applications.

 - server
It needs to be gui independent (relying on QtNetworks but on nothing that 
would bring an X dependency) and really easy to use, minimal configuration 
should be required, a directory for where to save files and a port number 
(something working like verse of the blender project 
http://verse.blender.org/cms/Overview.573.0.html, possibly using it if I 
understand how it is supposed to work)

 - work on a single document
there are two approaches, one involve looking (automaticaly or not) and the 
other one use a powerfull algorithm to merge changes (like describe in An 
Integrating, Transformation-Oriented Approach to Concurrency Control and Undo 
in Group Editors by Ressel, Nitsche-Ruhland and Gunzenhäuser), I dislike the 
second possibility, and there for I will let Casper defend it.

So for the first method, I will use the example of a document, for instance a 
yearly report from a commercial team. The document is devided in chapter, 
section, paragraph... Each one of them can be locked either because the 
manager has given someone the responsability to work on that part or because 
someone else is working on it and hasn't yet commit the changes.

 - multi-document work and sharing
The scenerio I have selected to demonstrate how it should work is the edition 
of a newspaper, I think it would allow to demonstrate how I think we should 
design collaborative work in koffice.
At the center of the creation of a newspaper is someone in charge of the 
layout, he will need to receive the collaboration of everybody.
kword would be used by journalists to write articles. 
Krita by people retouching pictures. Karbon/Kivio by people creating the nice 
graphics we see on newspaper to explain a complex situation. And so on.

The contribution from everybody is shared through the server which will warn 
the clients of the availability of an update. And the layout guy will have 
the ability to see differences and agree to apply them, automaticaly updating 
the newspaper.

-- 
--- Cyrille Berger ---
PS we might want a cool code name too ;P so that no one would understand about 
what we are speaking ;)
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