[Pdx-pm] collaborative editor demo
Michael G Schwern
schwern at pobox.com
Wed Mar 28 16:17:46 PDT 2007
Austin Schutz wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 28, 2007 at 01:50:51AM -0700, Michael G Schwern wrote:
>> I have one question: am I stuck using your editor?
>> I have this complaint about SubEthaEdit. Collaborative editing, great idea!
>> Oh, I have to use your shitty editor that's playing feature catch-up with
>> everyone else. Bye now.
>> Why oh why can't we have the collaborative part without the editor part?
> How do you propose that would work?
I propose it and somebody makes it work. :)
Initially I was waving my hands in the general direction of Unix sockets on
the thinking that then any editor can treat the Unix socket like a file thus
encapsulating the collaborative magic so that you don't have to write a
plug-in for each editor. That probably won't work because I doubt Unix
sockets are truly file like. I'd imagine things like rewind and seek aren't
going to work so well. But that's hand waving.
If you must go the plugin route, some sort of published protocol is the start
so other editors can join in the fun. As Randall pointed out, SubEthaEdit is
particularly odious because its protocol is closed and/or patented.
It seems gobby has at least broken the collaboration part out into obby.
obby is the foundation of Gobby, providing the whole framework to synchronise
changes within a text document to other participants of a session. New clients
and plugins for existing applications could be written using it. It is written
in C++ and C wrappers have yet to be created.
Which is a good start.
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