Comments on: EtherPad – cool collaboration tool!

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:43:45 +0000

1. it’s a totally bespoke user interface as far as I can see – does it follow any human-interaction guidelines?

2. it needs you to install/switch to IE 6+, Safari 3+ or FireFox 2+ according to its site; and

3. anyone can use it only if they’re using fairly plain, unsecured versions of those browsers, without assisted access software.

I wonder (but haven’t yet tested) how much battery and network it’s using. The software doesn’t seem to be auditable or customisable. Fine for casual use if you haven’t got one of the proper p2p editors installed, but not great. A system which could connect to existing p2p editors would be much more attractive.

I can appreciate that bending the stateless web into a multi-client editor is very very hard. Partly that’s because it’s a bad idea.

By: Evgeny

Evgeny — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:28:36 +0000

@MJ actually, using a web textarea for collab editing beats subethaedir, gobby and emacs – because 1. its extremely simple. 2. its extremely accessible (you don’t need to install anything). 3. anyone can use it – even your mom!

This is not a case of using a hammer. It’s a case of doing something that is really really really hard, and doing it well. Even though that etherpad.com looks like a child play to write – it is very hard to actually do.

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:37:23 +0000

Why keep trying to bend the stateless web into the peer-to-peer editing space? Aren’t there already multiple p2p editors out there? Off the top of my head, I can think of SubEthaEdit on Mac, gobby on several platforms (X, Windows and probably Mac by now) and even Emacs can do it (not so nicely for Windows users, though)…

This looks like a case of “if you only have a hammer, everything gets treated like a nail”.