Mark Holmquist wrote:
- everyone has their own copy of an action item list and supporting
documents
- updates are replicated via a peer-to-peer, asynchronous protocol
I can imagine a git-based system that creates a git repository with
some meta-files (something like .gitpeers) that keep track of other
users. Whenever you connect to a network, it checks for updates and
tries to apply them; if there are conflicts, it notifies you and backs
off. You could implement it as a pretty tiny daemon, probably. Any
language should be able to do it.
That's sort of the mental model, with a few nits:
- looking at Fossil - which incorporates distributed wiki and bug
tracking with a git-like distributed version control system
- looking at a publish-subscribe, multi-cast protocol - to avoid nodes
having to do peer-wise pushes or pulls (actually, NNTP would be perfect
- with crypto for access controls)
- looking at implementing the clients as pure JavaScript embedded within
the shared documents (an action item list is simply a piece of
HTML+JavaScript sent by email) - once received and opened in a browser
it can interact with its recipient, and communicate with the
publish-subscribe channel synchronize with other copies (biggest current
issue is how to do local storage, there are some serious issues
associated with JavaScript interacting with a local file system;
probably going to use some of the browser-based HTML5 storage functions)
- think "git as a JavaScript library, embedded in the replicated document"
For a lot of people, a Google Spreadsheet, or one of the new web-based
checklist sharing packages is just fine. This is for those of us who:
- like our own copies of things, and/or,
- need to work disconnected a lot of the time (on airplanes, responding
to disasters, and so forth)
....
- like to be free
This is a really funny conversation to be having on LP-discuss, guys.
"Google Docs/Atlassian/Lotus Notes might work, lol" <-- not
super-helpful to the Free Software people on this list who might be
interested in the topic.
:-)
By the way... since the link managed to get dropped:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1947703258/smart-notebooks-keeping-on-the-same-page-across-th
All support and visibility will be very much appreciated!
Miles
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
