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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Collaborative editing / Versionning for koffice
From:       "Robert Knight" <robertknight () gmail ! com>
Date:       2006-05-30 11:30:09
Message-ID: 13ed09c00605300430we6d480ci5abfee9c924af4b () mail ! gmail ! com
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The GNOME Journal article is very interesting.  It seems like AbiWordalready had a \
rather nifty structure under the bonnet for handlingchanges to the document.  Every \
change to the document is internallyexpressed as an instance of a "ChangeRecord" \
class.  For collaborativeediting purposes, all that needs to happen is for the \
ChangeRecord tobe serialised over a network to other users working on the document \
-solving the diff problem. A similar framework was introduced in KSpread in the 1.5 \
release (byStefan IIRC), although it isn't used everywhere yet. On 30/05/06, Børre \
Gaup <boerre@skolelinux.no> wrote:> Maŋ, miessemánu 30. b. 2006 08.20, Boudewijn \
Rempt čálii:> > On Tuesday 30 May 2006 01:43, Robert Knight wrote:> > > Whatever we \
do, I think we should aim to keep it fairly simple, and> > > make sure that it gets \
used.> >> > Let's see... From my personal experience, there are two levels of> > \
collaborative editing that are interesting:> >> > * change management _in_ the \
document, where it's possible to discover who> > did what. For instance, I once wrote \
an article for oreilly.net together> > with a co-author. We used OO (version 1) and \
the editor used Word. Changes> > were visible in the document and could be attributed \
to the responsible> > party. This is very useful in many circumstances. It's also \
part of> > Fredrik's SoC project for KWord. We just need to make sure that Fredrik's> \
> design is applicable to the other KOffice apps.> >> > * real-time collaborative \
> editing. When Sander and me are working on> > Krita's manual, it would be very \
> useful if he in Delft and me in Deventer> > could see the document, in a split \
> window, me seeing him edit and he seeing> > me edit. We would need a (preferably \
> voice-based) chat channel next to it> > to coordinate. Another example is something \
> that happened yesterday:> > Cyrille and me were hunting bugs in the duplicate tool. \
> We should have used> > mateedit to see what we were doing, instead of throwing line \
> numbers and> > changes over irc.> >> This would indeed be a very good feature. In \
> our project> (http://divvun.no/english.html) we write our meeting minutes> \
> (http://divvun.no/doc/admin/meetings.html) in realtime using SubEthaEdit (we> use \
> Mac OS X).> The same feature would be very useful when writing letters, articles,> \
> applications and so on, with word processor features.> > I have never needed \
> collaborative editing outside wordprocessing or coding,> > although I can imagine \
> it would be useful for creating presentations, too,> > and for diagramming.> >> > > \
> It is worth noting that since only a small number of people use KWord,> > > it \
> would be very helpful if any collaborative features didn't require> > > all parties \
> to be using KOffice - that is the typical problem I would> > > expect to run into \
> using a Microsoft application.    If any part of> > > your workflow relies on a \
> non-Microsoft app then it all falls apart.> >> > I think we shouldn't care about \
> that. It's entirely unrealistic to expect> > it to be possible to build a real-time \
> collaboration feature that supports> > MS applications. We'd need to find how & why \
> sharepoint works, get it up &> > running and then dodge all legal obstacles. I'm \
> all for going it alone> > here: let's first get it working, and then use the \
> experience to build a> > protocol.> >> > Oh, and since Abiword already has \
> collaborative editing, we should look at> > their implementation & protocol before \
> designing our own.> Yeah, being able to do this would be a showcase for open source \
> and open> protocols.>> Here is a link to their work:> \
> http://www.abisource.com/twiki/bin/view/Abiword/AbiCollab> And an intro here:> \
> http://gnomejournal.org/article/31/gocollab----peer-to-peer-document-collaboration> \
> I also saw a movie on the net showcasing this work.>> --> Børre Gaup> \
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