Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#41

Post by jeff18 » Sat, Dec 05, 2009, 1:24 AM UTC

thesethings wrote: post #34

I sincerely dig the word processor in Google Docs. It's quite good at handling multiple concurrent editors, and you can post to other platforms like WordPress from there. The recently added Folders feature is killer, and my Google Docs "list view" has started to become like an Inbox for me in the beginning of my day, as it neatly displays newly edited, and newly added docs.

Google Docs was awesome at the time, however, it is not really a real-time collaborative text editor. You have to coordinate your edits so that you are not working on the same thing, otherwise you create conflicts which are a pain in the ass.

Once you use a real-time collaborative editor like EtherPad, you can never go back to something like Docs, it's too primitive.

Re: Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#42

Post by RedKnight » Sat, Dec 05, 2009, 1:24 AM UTC

beWeeVee Notepad is a techdemo but it works. It does more or less the same as Etherpad. It also have an SDK to develop applications on top of the Operational Transformation Technology.

The Url is: www.beweevee.com

Re: Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#43

Post by jeff18 » Sat, Dec 05, 2009, 1:27 AM UTC

byrneseyeview wrote: post #29

http://www.yourworldoftext.com/ Try, e.g., http://www.yourworldoftext.com/byebyeetherpad

This is sort of a neat tech-demo, but it is unusable for serious editing for obvious reasons.

Re: Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#44

Post by jeff18 » Sat, Dec 05, 2009, 1:33 AM UTC

RedKnight wrote: post #42

beWeeVee Notepad is a techdemo but it works. It does more or less the same as Etherpad. It also have an SDK to develop applications on top of the Operational Transformation Technology. The Url is: www.beweevee.com

This one is so close it hurts!

It is almost a perfect clone of EtherPad, but it's written in Silverlight. Therefore, it's painfully slow, takes forever to load, and doesn't act like a standard Mac OS X text editor (ctrl-t to twiddle characters, for example, or ctrl-d for fwd delete.)

I am so desperate, I may have to bite the bullet and use this in the meantime though.

Re: Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#45

Post by jeff18 » Sat, Dec 05, 2009, 1:35 AM UTC

Spreadsheet wrote: post #12

http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/ Gobby.

Looks kind of neat, but it's a desktop app. :(

Re: Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#46

Post by bnoland » Sat, Dec 05, 2009, 1:50 AM UTC

http://collabedit.com

Re: Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#47

Post by dangoor » Sat, Dec 05, 2009, 2:27 AM UTC

jeff18 wrote: post #5

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!

Bespin definitely does not have the same sort of "just start editing a shared document" user interface that etherpad does. That isn't really our primary goal.

As for the command line: I really wish TextMate had a command line. I truly think the command line is going to be one of Bespin's fantastic features (though I'll agree with anyone that it is not a replacement for other nice bits of UI).

(ObDisclaimer: I'm on the Bespin team.)

Re: Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#48

Post by dangoor » Sat, Dec 05, 2009, 2:30 AM UTC

al3x wrote: post #25

aditya wrote: post #3

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

The guys who were really pushing Bespin forward went to Palm several months ago. The project looks great, but it may not have the same velocity right now.

Ben and Dion left in September, just before we kicked off the "Bespin Reboot" project, which we had been planning since mid-summer. I believe we'll soon have much better velocity than we did previously, thanks to our work in the Reboot. (Reboot is not a rewrite, but a very significant rearrangement of the code.)

(I am on the Bespin team.)

Re: Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#49

Post by ilaksh » Sat, Dec 05, 2009, 3:23 AM UTC

lukifer wrote: post #18

swombat wrote: post #7

http://wave.google.com

Wave is a pretty good collaborative workspace in general. However, it currently lacks tools specific to programming: auto-indenting, code auto-complete, syntax highlighting, etc. I imagine such tools will exist as Gadgets or somesuch in the near future.

See syntaxy

Re: Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

#50

Post by thesethings » Sat, Dec 05, 2009, 3:40 AM UTC

jeff18 wrote: post #41

thesethings wrote: post #34

I sincerely dig the word processor in Google Docs. It's quite good at handling multiple concurrent editors, and you can post to other platforms like WordPress from there. The recently added Folders feature is killer, and my Google Docs "list view" has started to become like an Inbox for me in the beginning of my day, as it neatly displays newly edited, and newly added docs.

Google Docs was awesome at the time, however, it is not really a real-time collaborative text editor. You have to coordinate your edits so that you are not working on the same thing, otherwise you create conflicts which are a pain in the ass. Once you use a real-time collaborative editor like EtherPad, you can never go back to something like Docs, it's too primitive.

I've never had to coordinate when I'm in the same doc as somebody at the exact same time. But I don't dispute your account. It's actually a quite interesting observation of how differently we all work.

In any case, I'll be following this thread. Tools aside, i think the topic is one of the most transformative things going on.