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How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

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Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#41

Post by smtddr »

character0 wrote: post #6

The creation story for this is really neat. This could be an amazing tool in the school setting, especially for people that teach in university writing centers. This isn't just asking an author for a peek behind the curtain, asking a few questions about what they were thinking at the time of writing, this is Breaking the Magician's Code level stuff! I am curious to see who is (brave enough?) to show their writing pro…

This sounds similar to Kevin Rose's TinyBlog prototype http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6UW0JY5PUs

Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#43

Post by fny »

mattnewport wrote: post #17

When can we get an IDE that can do this, and track copy / paste across source files :)

There's a neat little Node.js IDE called Nide (http://coreh.github.io/nide/) that was built during one of the early Node.js Knockout hackathons.

Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#44

Post by drivingmenuts »

skywhopper wrote: post #24

Interesting perspective by the author and most of the commenters here. My first thought when I read the headline and the article was "privacy breach!". This is certainly interesting data. But it can also be dangerous if the owner of the document isn't aware of the implications of the storage format.

Well, I'm aware now.

I had no idea they stored the edit history.

Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#45

Post by 6stringmerc »

Clever, very clever.

As somebody who has worked full-time, over-time, and essentially in my sleep with Word files, PowerPoints, and highly sensitive bid documentation...yeah, I have to agree working in the cloud for this kind of stuff strikes me as career suicide. Maybe not in your turf, re: software development, but with respect to management, operations and marketing people, there should only be one person with the key to the kingdom. I'm not kidding about this, even if just talking internal development.

Also, this is why everything went out as a locked down PDF, unless explicitly mandated otherwise by RFP/etc specifications...and even then, Track Changes > Accept All Changes is gospel. Anybody in my line of work saw what the .GOV did with converting PDFs and simply redacting with a graphic over the text...yeah, that's why I'm a first-class proposal developer, because I've seen carnage yo.

Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#46

Post by scott_karana »

michaelx386 wrote: post #26

I broke out in to a cold sweat watching this as I remembered all the times I've inadvertently pasted sensitive stuff in to a document. It's still very cool though, I'll just need to remember to be careful when sharing documents.

I've tried to use a clipboard manager for years to help obviate this sort of issue.

I'm currently using ClipMenu on OSX, which hits all the right needs for me. Anyone have a suggestion for Windows?

Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#48

Post by sunir »

6stringmerc wrote: post #45

Clever, very clever. As somebody who has worked full-time, over-time, and essentially in my sleep with Word files, PowerPoints, and highly sensitive bid documentation...yeah, I have to agree working in the cloud for this kind of stuff strikes me as career suicide. Maybe not in your turf, re: software development, but with respect to management, operations and marketing people, there should only be one person with the…

Or you could "Keep Calm and File > Make a copy..." of the Google Doc and share that instead of the original draft. The copy doesn't copy the version history.

Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#49

Post by bjoe_lewis »

For more information about the grammer/schema for document operations, which is actually what is transmitted in the /save call of gdocs,

[1] http://wave-protocol.googlecode.com/hg/spec/federation/waves...

[2] http://code.google.com/p/wave-protocol/ - wave protocol project (initiated by google, now maitained by apache) is the root from where gdocs adopted OT.

Re: How I reverse-engineered Google Docs to play back any document's keystrokes

#50

Post by 6stringmerc »

character0 wrote: post #6

The creation story for this is really neat. This could be an amazing tool in the school setting, especially for people that teach in university writing centers. This isn't just asking an author for a peek behind the curtain, asking a few questions about what they were thinking at the time of writing, this is Breaking the Magician's Code level stuff! I am curious to see who is (brave enough?) to show their writing pro…

I'd be happy to upload scans of one of my more recent short stories, "Pink Paint Rain," simply to show how much true effort goes into massaging lines and language a la code.

Finished version: http://www.scribd.com/doc/156040925/Pink-Paint-Rain-Vernon-W...

I have about 7-10 print outs of the story with mark ups. Before switching to English & Creative Writing I was in Computer Science and pretty skilled with C++ at the time, so I can come up with a decent correlative:

Every version I printed was like running it through a compiler - this is to evidence that even if a piece of code or a line of text is functional, is it efficient, and, if at all possible, an excellent construction? These are subjective concepts that are innate in language. There may be several writers who can put words to paper directly from their head with no revision process - hell, it's what I do when I'm "practicing" on my IBM Selectric III to commit to writing in permanence (think before I type) - but for the greats, it has always been an iterative process.

To keep this from being all about me, allow me to provide a link to something that may be to your liking:

http://www.amazon.com/James-Micheners-Writers-Handbook-Explo...

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