> -----Original Message----- > From: Peter B. West [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: April 23, 2002 8:18 AM > To: fop-dev > Subject: Aids to distributed design > [ SNIP ] > While I am not suggesting that anything much is likely to change in the > current situation, I think that one of the lessons here is the > importance of chat. This is particularly difficult with wide > geographical distribution, but I have done it on occasions with a group > spread from California through New York and London to Tokyo and > Brisbane. The major hurdle is finding any times when everyone can be > available. Even when not everyone could be there, logs of the > conversation could be very valuable. > > The other critical component is drawings. If I had the choice of > unlimited text or drawings with minimal annotations for communicating > design ideas, I would take the drawings every time. I'm not talking > here about formal techniques like UML, which are design documentation > tools, but the informal scribblings which are universal when programmers > - sorry, engineers - get together to talk design, and which are the > basic tool of all of my design thinking. > > What would be good is to combine the two. I.e., to chat on the one > hand, and on the other to be able to use a vector drawing tool with a > distributed canvas, which others could annotate or modify in real time, > during the chat session. Does anything like that exist?
There is apparently some stuff out there, based on a simple Google search (all hail Google). There is http://hem.fyristorg.com/matben/, which looks pretty good but it all depends on how well it works; there is also a Mozilla spin-off (http://jabberzilla.mozdev.org/releases/). These mostly seem to be based on Jabber. It wouldn't take much to do up a JMS solution using an open-source JMS broker and some applets (I have a colleague who knocked out something pretty similar as an inhouse experiment in a couple of days). Arved --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
