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Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

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Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#1

Post by jeff18 »

EtherPad was probably the most useful web app I have ever used. The main use case of EtherPad for me was that I embedded it into my startup's blog, so that we could seamlessly collaborate on blog posts together and it would auto-save, etc.

Now that EtherPad has been killed, what are some alternatives? Is there any other embeddable, collaborative text editor out there?

It looks like old EtherPads are still active for the next couple months, so until March, I will probably be abusing the crap out of a poor, used EtherPad. It would be great to migrate onto a more permanent solution though.

Re: Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#2

Post by Alex3917 »

SubEthaEdit: http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/

This is what EtherPad was based on. The only problem is that it only works on OS X. I remember using it to take notes with a bunch of other people at the first couple Startup School events. I haven't really ever used it since, but I can say that it held up extremely well even with a dozen people typing as fast as they could all at once.

Re: Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#4

Post by jeff18 »

Alex3917 wrote: post #2

SubEthaEdit: http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/ This is what EtherPad was based on. The only problem is that it only works on OS X. I remember using it to take notes with a bunch of other people at the first couple Startup School events. I haven't really ever used it since, but I can say that it held up extremely well even with a dozen people typing as fast as they could all at once.

SubEthaEdit is awesome, and I bought a copy for ~$45 back in the day. However, because it is expensive and a Mac OS X only desktop application, I have only had opportunity to use it maybe once or twice. :(

Re: Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#5

Post by jeff18 »

aditya wrote: post #3

If you're looking for collaborative code editors, Mozilla's bespin is (going to be) epic: https://bespin.mozilla.com/

This looks like the most promising successor. Unfortunately it does not look like you can embed a collaborative pad or share it via a link. You need to register an account, go through Mozilla's website, and actually use the command line to join up. Why a website has a command line is a little beyond me!

Re: Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#9

Post by jeff18 »

spolsky wrote: post #6

http://squadedit.com is a pretty similar service. The free version has too many flashing ads for my taste... hopefully they'll fix that!

This is pretty epic -- the only problems are that it doesn't have an API to retrieve text from it or create a new pad. Also, it is not suitable for embedding. However, as a standalone editor this is the best alternative I've seen.

UPDATE: I take it all back. This product is junk. Only one person can edit the entire document at once. If someone is typing, it literally locks the entire screen. This is worse than Google Docs.

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