Collaborative Editing
Even though there are many collaboration software out there, not all of them provide the ability to edit a document collaboratively. This limitation exists in Collaber & Groove to some extent.
Recently I have read a post about one software that does it in a simple way.
Even though this functionality looks simple, it is much complex than we think. Let us analyse more.
In Collaber any member in the workspace can create a Note in Notepad Tool. This note can be edited by any other member. Every time changes are saved, a new revision will be created. In case of conflicts which is very common in a loosely couple architecture like Collaber & Groove software will take side of one member depending on the role and who got into the workspace first.
With in the Note there is no indication of which member changed what.
Now, lets think about the problems we have in implementing the solution like the one mentioned in that link. In that solution every user will choose a color. And what ever he does will be presented in that color as a background.
- When we need to show the colors chosen by user, we must disable the ability to change the background color of the text. Other wise it may confuse the readers.
- So when we disable this ability of changing the background color as a part of editing, we must also disable ability to copy paste the text from some other place. (EX: Websites, Other Documents) Because they may consist some other color background.
- Data should be treated as INSERT, DELETE and UPDATE with in the specified positions of document.
If we consider major word processors like MS Word and, Open Office they already provide support for revisions, tracking changes and comments.
As of now we are looking for way to prevent reinventing the wheel. Because no mater how much functionality we add to the Text Editing features of Collaber or any other software, we will never reach the functionality of MS Word & Open Office. So user will always in looking for more text features which are already existing in those software.
I personally think that we need to find a way to integrate OpenOffice or MS Word into Collaber desktop version. Even then there will be an issue of Collaber On Web. We can not have all the functionality of OpenOffice or MS Word in a webbased application. What solutions we have there? It is still a open question.