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Show HN: Firepad, an open source collaborative text editor

firepad.io

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Re: Show HN: Firepad, an open source collaborative text editor

#6
post #3

Aside from collaborative editors and chat clients - what other valuable use cases could firebase help solve?

I'm biased, since I'm a Firebase dev, but honestly, Firebase is great for solving /all kinds/ of use cases. :-)

We've had people build everything from emergency response simulations synchronized across multiple devices to iOS apps for grandparents to read books with their grandkids over long distances.

Firebase is great any time you need real-time updates, collaboration, or you just want to get something up and running without having to spin up your own servers.

Re: Show HN: Firepad, an open source collaborative text editor

#9
post #3

Aside from collaborative editors and chat clients - what other valuable use cases could firebase help solve?

I'm biased, since I'm a Firebase dev, but honestly, Firebase is great for solving /all kinds/ of use cases. :-) We've had people build everything from emergency response simulations synchronized across multiple devices to iOS apps for grandparents to read books with their grandkids over long distances. Firebase is great any time you need real-time updates, collaboration, or you just want to get something up and runni…

Those sounds really interesting, thanks. Looking forward to seeing more of the real-time web evolve.

Re: Show HN: Firepad, an open source collaborative text editor

#10
post #4

Haven't looked into the code/docs deeply, yet, but would love to know if it can be customized to send data to one's own backend service for private implementations. Love the editor. Also had a few great laughs trying to use it alongside so many other people.

We built it as a Firebase app, but we're releasing it as open source and are looking forward to seeing what the community does with it. :-) All of the OT work happens client-side, so it's certainly possible to adapt it to other backends.

Additionally, a lot of the OT code is based on ot.js[1], a fantastic open source OT implementation by Tim Baumann. He has a node.js backend as well as Haskell and Python. Of course then you have to run the server code somewhere and figure out how to persist the documents, etc. :-) Definitely worth checking out though.

1. https://github.com/Operational-Transformation/ot.js/

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