Hi :) I think it might be good to forward this to OASIS. THey already have collaboration between various projects to produce OpenDocument Format specifications. I think that is part of what is being called for here? A specification that can be shared by the various existing OpenSource office applications? Regards from Tom :)
--- On Fri, 14/10/11, timofonic timofonic <[email protected]> wrote: > From: timofonic timofonic <[email protected]> > Subject: [libreoffice-marketing] What about Real-time collaborative editing > (RTCE) in LibreOffice? A simple user POW proposal > To: [email protected] > Date: Friday, 14 October, 2011, 16:04 > Hello to everyone. > > I'm just an user of LibreOffice, no developer at all. But I > think > maybe this can be an interesting discussion with the more > skilled > people involved into the project. > > Since the apparition of SubEthaEdit for Macs, the > real-time > collaborative editing (from now on referred as RTCE) > started to rise > from these days. The Web 2.0 phonomenom made RTCE even more > known with > Writely and EtherPad, then Google bought both (but EhterPad > now > remains as a FOSS project) to integrate resources to the > Google Docs > online Office suite. > > There are editors that already support RTCE, like AbiWord > (by using > AbiCollab extension), ACE, Emacs (by extensions like Rudel > or others) > and Gobby. Unfortunately there aren't a strong open > standard protocol > shared among them, so interoperability is a big issue > there. > > RTCE is something thinked before in OpenOffice and seems > also taken in > account in LibreOffice as future ideas to develop, but the > approach > and ideas behind it were primitive or their importance is > still not > enough considered. > > http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Crazy_Ideas#Simple_server-based_collaborative_editing > > There's an open RTCE protocol named Infinote ( http://infinote.org ), > a redesign of the Obby protocol that is part of Gobby and > implemented > in libinfinity. There's a server implementation named > Infinoted and > the protocol is already user by some third party > applications but the > popularity is quite low at this moment. > > There's "jarn.xmpp.collaboration" > (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/jarn.xmpp.collaboration), a > XMPP protocol > extension targeted at RTCE. The protocol is still quite > young, but > still actively developed. > > The use of an open protocol standard would not just help > interoperability between different projects, but also > improve the > protocol for being more flexible and powerful over time in > the same > way of ODF. > > While interoperability with existing projects is very cool > and nice, > this isn't going to resolve the issue in the long term. > Those projects > will stay incompatible between them, and each new project > may choose a > new protocol that LibreOffice developers would need to > implement it. > > I understand an initiative like this isn't easy at all, > because it's > not only developing a powerful and well documented RTCE > protocol. Like > in the example of Infinote, that means nothing if the > protocol isn't > adopted and promoted widely by other related projects. > > This is a proposal from the user point of view, but I hope > to make > some people think about it. In my opinion this could be a > "killer app" > for LibreOffice and also gain popularity in > education/business/government environments too. > > I'm supossing this concept would require developer efforts, > lots of > PR, contacting with other organizations and such. Make > people agree on > standards seems not easy, but I think is possible if people > do the > necessary effort (as showed in ODF). > > With a bit of research from my illiterate perspective, I > already found > other theorical and practical proposals and experiments on > RTCE. So I > think more skilled people can investigate further on the > tecnical side > of this if there's enough interest on it. > > Please think about this proposal and give your opinions. > I hope my > thinking can be at least a bit useful to the community to > start an > interesting discussion about the topic. > > Regards. > > PS: I think this can be even more interesting to > investigate from now > on since the appearing of the LibreOffice Online project. > > -- > Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] > Problems? > http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ > Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette > List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ > All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived > and cannot be deleted > -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
