Re: [office] Office in collaboration!

[Thomas Zander <zander@kde.org>]

On Friday 30 March 2007 04:29, David A. Wheeler wrote:
> 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.

Such a capability does not exist in any implementation I know of.  I have been 
working on the usecases to give this a start. Always a good way to get people 
to join in.
http://wiki.koffice.org/index.php?title=Collaboration

The idea I've been trying to push is that we have a way for implementations to 
produce an ODF fragment with the changes to the last version. So it contains 
only the content that changed, and nothing more.
Applications should then be able to integrate that into their open document. 
Which means that the real collaboration is able to take place; where 2 
persons have any ODF capable applications open with the same document, and 
when I type a character that other person will see it being updated in his 
document at nearly the same time.

This concept of ODF fragments can be used to store diffs in a version control 
system as well, as long as applying the diffs is possible on the server. 
Otherwise your idea of using webdav and delta-v provides a fall back.

<off-topic> this only covers the 'on the wire' content. The connection itself 
can be based on different methods; but I strongly suggest dbus as that gives 
us the widest range of (cool) options. </off-topic>

Now all we need is someone brave enough to actually do it ;)
-- 
Thomas Zander

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