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Open source collaborative text editors

juretriglav.si

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Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#31

Post by willvarfar »

So, lots of open-source UIs that use closed-source servers for collaborative editing?

This figures. This is one of the ways 'open source' companies can make money.

So, the author sets about making an open-source collaboration server that inter-operates with the existing open-source editor?

Kudos!

But now the company can retaliate by adding features or inconsistencies to the closed source server and its integration into the UI, making the open-source server forever out-of-date and playing catch-up.

Ouch.

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#32

Post by Iv »

ilaksh wrote: post #9
juretriglav wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey thanks for that. :) Diving is super fun but also exceptionally exhausting. But often it's impossible to 'load' a complex problem in your head if you don't dive in for hours. Would be nice if there was a less stressful way. In terms of editable 3d universes (whoah!), have you considered chucking together Three.js's JSON scene description ( https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/wiki/JSON-Object-Scene-fo... ) with http…

ShareJS has a JSON editor example https://github.com/josephg/ShareJS/tree/master/examples/publ...

Thanks! But a big part of my obsession is to be able to modify a 3d universe from within.

I won't claim it is practical or a good idea in any way, just an obsessive thing I want to try.

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#33

Post by londons_explore »

ma2rten wrote: post #18
choward wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google Docs, minus the WYSIWYG bits, and all plaintext w/ maybe some syntax highlighting thrown in And the feature creep begins. Eventually you'll be asking for a full blown IDE.

Google has actually already has an internal cloud-based IDE.

Which doesn't do real-time collaboration, and due to the way it's backing store works, likely never will.

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#34

Post by pmontra »

alalonde wrote: post #13

Indeed, the space is growing quickly. I run a company that provides a backend for real-time collaboration, so we necessarily stay on top of what's out there. There's a reason the server-side tech tends be paid: it is extraordinarily difficult to provide guaranteed eventual consistency of data at low latency. The CKEditor guys (and us, for that matter) have put YEARS of development effort into their solutions. We're w…

Are you working only with editors running inside web browsers or also native ones? What I would like to have is something that bridges two native editors, let's say emacs and VS Code, and let's a team share the editor (whatever each developer's preferred editor is) and not only the screen on Slack or similar. That would be great for remote pair programming. I guess there would be a protocol for selecting the buffer/tab and opening files (with local approval to prevent remote file reads/writes).

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#35

Post by jraph »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #6

I would be very appreciative if Google made a stripped down version of Google Docs for plaintext editing. There are a bunch of basic integration features that would also be fantastic, but if the product was literally just Google Docs, minus the WYSIWYG bits, and all plaintext w/ maybe some syntax highlighting thrown in, I'd be super happy.

This looks like etherpad https://etherpad.org/

Not plain text only but probably can be configured for that.

No syntax highlighting.

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#39

Post by improv32 »

Iv wrote: post #4

I love your description of "the dive". I am happy to see I am not the only one experiencing these recurring devouring interests that bring me much much deeper than I would like to go until I am starting to fork a github repo at 2am wondering "what the hell am I doing?" And that article is tangentially related to a recurring interest of mine (shared editable 3d universe in which you can code collaboratively). If you h…

You've probably heard of it already, but if not you should check out the game Cube/Sauerbraten. It's an open source quake-style fps game, with its level editor integrated right into the game itself, and you can edit levels collaboratively with other players at the same time.

Re: Open source collaborative text editors

#40

Post by mochidusk »

ilaksh wrote: post #24
mochidusk wrote: post #22

I was able to get real-time collaborative text editing to work on one of my side projects by combining quill.js[1], ot.js[2], and firebase[3]. This was a few years ago when there weren't any fully open-source options. I'm in the process of switching out firebase for an elixir/phoenix backend[4]. I'm really glad for this article because it captures the exact feelings that I have. [1] https://quilljs.com/ [2] https://g…

That looks like a really cool project but.. there weren't any fully open source options? The original Etherpad came out 10 years ago. Etherpad Lite has been out for several years also and has had formatting plugins for quite awhile.

You're right, I completely forgot about Etherpad. But I don't consider Etherpad the same as Quilljs or ProseMirror. Etherpad is something you host (an app itself) while the other text editors are something you can build upon/integrate into your app. I didn't want to host an instance of Etherpad, I needed a library.

I wanted an editing experience similar to Medium.com text editor: consistent, well-formed html output and formatting. At the time, Quilljs was one of the best open-source editor that produced consistent output regardless of the browser.

Also I didn't want to store html, I wanted to store operations in the database.

I have an app similar to Figma[1] (basically real-time Sketch) and I needed just the real-time text editing feature.

[1] https://www.figma.com/

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