Think of the following scenario:
You attend a lecture and take notes using your Computer. Others are doing the same. Wouldn’t it be great if you all could edit the same text document at the same time? And everybody has his/her own cursor? I think that would be a mind blowing experience! You could actually see on your screen what the lecturer is talking about – the notes will show up in realtime, magically. And everybody can edit the other’s notes as well.
Realtime collaborative note-taking
There is a solution for Apple-Computers, I admit. It is called SubEthaEdit and it seems to work fine. But it’s only available for mac. 🙁
So I searched the web and found some alternatives to SubEthaEdit. They are not exactly clones, but at least the first one is worth a look.
Here’s what I found:
- MoonEdit (for Windows 98/XP/2000, Linux, FreeBSD):
Collaborative text editing is fun: MoonEdit
Cooperative multi-user text editing over the Internet. This software is completely free for non-commercial use.
MoonEdit’s history is older than SubethaEdit and has been developed independently. So I can’t really speak of a clone.
I needed to open a port in the configuration of my router hardware (that’s not newbie-friendly). But apart from that, it’s really easy to use. Watch the demonstration movie to get a first impression.
If you want to try it out, E-Mail me and we’ll have a chat over there! 😉
I did not test the others because they seemed to complicated for my purpose. They may become simpler in future versions, so I list them here:
- Fuse (needs Python):
The fuse project’s goal is to create an open-source, cross-platform multi-user collaborative editor in Python, using Cocoa, wx, and other bindings for the User Interface.
- LeoN: Leo over Network (needs Python, Leo, TwistedMatrix):
Here are some infos about LeoN, a plug in for Leo to enable collaborative editing over the network.
Collaborative editing means that more than one person can edit the same document at the same time, without forking different versions. Everyone see the others one modifications at near to realtime. LeoN is released under the GNU GPL.
- SubPathetaEdit (needs Python):
SubPathetaEdit is like SubEthaEdit, only much less so. SubPathetaEdit is a program you use so that lots of people can edit the same document more or less at the same time.
Furthermore, somebody seems to work on a realtime collaboration mode for Microsoft Word and Powerpoint. I found a link to an online demo in an article about collaborative computing, but they didn’t seem to work.
I can’t wait for all those things to be developed!