Re: [office] Office in collaboration!

["David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com>]

Thomas Zander:
> Do note that sharing files on a common location does not, in my eyes, meet the 
> criteria for collaboration software :)

I agree; there's the little matter of collaboration to consider.

I'd love for there to be a SIMPLE way where different ODF-implementing applications can point to some central/common area (e.g., a WebDAV server that supports Delta-V), and support both of these version management models:
1. Immediate write-lock on read (checkout) and write-release-on-checkin. I suspect "Check in (to remote)" should be a different command than "save".
2. Even better: Easy "merge latest changes", like CVS/Subversion/Wikipedia, so many people can effectively edit simultaneously.  I.E., say I check out version 48 and start editing.  Since that time, version 49 and 50 were checked in.  When I try to check in, it detects that changes have happened since, so it tries to auto-merge in the other changes and shows me what happened (or helps me merge it manually if needed).  Then I get to try saving again.

I want these capabilities to be seamless to the user - he shouldn't need to exit his application.

Does such a capability exist now in the various implementations?  If not, is there a need to standardize some sort of convention/protocol so that the various implementations can do this seamlessly?  Or is there a need to store something in the ODF file to make this idea practical? I want to be able to do this even if the applications are different, and I'm guessing that an agreed-upon protocol would be needed.

--- David A. Wheeler