EtherPad is an online editor for collaboration or work.

    Greetings to our readers. Although I don’t have much time lately (hmm, tautology however), but once again looking at the news feed, I came across a description of an interesting service, an online text editor for collaboration. Of course, there are Google Docs , Zoho Writer and many others, including Adobe Buzzword, but from experience it is either difficult decisions, or aimed at the full replacement of word processors, for example, MS Office Word. But what if a simple editor is required, where, well, let's say, only one function will be available - directly editing texts? Moreover, with the caveat - with the possibility of parallel work on one document of several users. Someone in this case uses wiki systems and they just provide joint text editing, allowing you to roll back to any number of versions back and view user edits. But the wiki has never been a means of working in real time - that is, I open the document, make edits and save and only after that I see what has changed taking into account the edits of other users (if they have saved their additions at that moment). And if you need real-time work?

    This is where the EtherPad project enters the scene . This is a very simple, even more - absolutely simple editor in which you can create your own documents (pad in the project terminology) and invite other users to edit. Significantly, there are no fundamentally any means of formatting the text — only an input field and a line numbering function (a very correct and necessary option, I dare say). Such a limitation immediately puts an end to other applications of the service - they obviously will not deploy here, showing their colleagues the art of filling out a document in three fonts and six styles at the same time. However, this is precisely the main strength of the editor.

    The author of the document can invite any number of other users to edit by e-mail (this registration is not required, only a unique URL for each pad), each of which gets its own color to highlight its corrections (similar to the collaboration mode in Word , I remember how I drew up contracts with lawyers, the document literally dazzled with all the colors of the rainbow). I have not yet found an indication of the number of simultaneous editors of one document, but it is logical to assume that the system’s limitation has nothing to do with it - after five or six people who will rule something at the same time, without clear rules, you’ll just get confused and no tools for you, most likely will not help.

    Typically, all the edits made by one user are very fast, literally instant, accessible to everyone - the technology is appliedComet for continuous communication with the server, the developers themselves contrast this with the classic AJAX approach, in the same Google Docs, where it takes several, or even tens of seconds, to save a document. Here, the delay is often imperceptible, which allows for almost lively communication.

    Additionally there is a chat for communication of the editing participants - it is also no frills, which is very pleasing (uh, I'm so glad that there are no smiles here). It will be useful for general notification of participants or clarification of certain edits. Chat history is saved when you reboot and re-enter the editor, which is also a big plus.



    The editor implements a version system, albeit adjusted for the specifics of the application. Any user can save the current state of the document for revision, along with all the edits that have been made at the moment, and in the future you can return to any intermediate version or simply view it (though with limitations - only in plain text). It is commendable that all intermediate versions are available at their unique addresses and can be handed out to others or bookmarked - documents will always be available, and if you have the right to edit them, then you can immediately start working with any intermediate version.

    It should be said that saving revisions here is done manually, and not automatically, as in Google Docs, and this is the right decision. In most cases, the document is updated directly as another user types the text, so automatically scheduled text saving would hardly give the desired result - the document is persistent, that is, the current copy is saved, and where and when, at what stage to create intermediate versions that may need, is already a personal matter of the editors themselves.

    There are not many options in the editor that you can customize, but one I would like to highlight especially - highlighting JavaScript code! If you are editing not just a text document, but the JS source code, then this option will allow you to organize your work much more conveniently. Honestly, it is in this function that the main purpose of the editor is hidden, in my opinion - it is very convenient for learning or parsing complex moments in code between developers. Well, or for pair coding, following the popular XP methodology - you do not have to sit at the same desktop and share one computer, you can be anywhere, but work together. Well and a pleasant trifle - the editor can be expanded to the entire screen area, hiding even the options and chat panel, thereby freeing up maximum space for the text itself.

    Honestly, the project is really simple, yes, there’s nothing in it ... and all together is just fine! It turns out that it is not necessary to block the most complicated interfaces and use super-technologies, it is enough to implement just a few, but the most necessary and used features, and that’s all.

    What can be added or improved? I would expand the communication part in terms of communication between the editors of one document - it would be worth adding here if not full support for IM, then at least an extension towards voice communication, I think this would be a good addition. The lack of formatting tools is a shame only at first, it really is not really needed here, but expanding the support for syntax highlighting to other languages ​​would be very worthwhile - and first of all, to popular ones in the web environment. At first I wanted to write that autosaving is still necessary, but then I realized that it is already there, the document is constantly stored after each change, so the revision mechanism simply supplements it, implementing forks, so to speak, of the main document. It’s hard to add anything else - I see that the project is really finished,

    By the way, the platform on which the project is developed and executed is worthy of a separate study. AppJet is an online platform that uses JavaScript, executed both on the server and on the client, to build a web application. At the lower level, on the server, a servlet is executed that provides all the other features - scaling, access to databases, implements the Comet protocol, an integrated object database and even a simple development IDE that also works directly in the browser. However, you can find out the details yourself on the project website, and I promise to soon write a separate review of this platform.

    PSStill, blogging is power! EtherPad currently has private beta status and no open registration. But it was worth writing to the administration and indicating that I want to receive an invitation in order to write a review, by the way, the first one in Runet, as I was kindly sent an invitation for several hours.

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