Hi Jose and other LyX-Users, Very interesting articles, thanks for sending them.
While trying to digest the ideas, though, I found myself asking two questions and I'd be interested in your feedback. The first question, of course is spurred by pure skepticism. In what instances do you think this feature would be useful? For my part, I'm not a collaborative writer. I don't think well in the presence of others and I hate writing with an audience. My one and only experience with Google Wave was a nightmare. People could see just how much backspacing was involved in my replies! It was deeply humiliating and I'm quite glad that Wave died. (Unfortunately, this whole real time collaboration thing is the next major front in online communication, and I'm sure others will take up the mantle. Pity.) But I'm probably not representative of the general population. Even VCS collaboration often feels too "real time" for me (though I use it and heartily recommend it to others). I much prefer distinct drafts (PDF) sent via email. Even better is paper sent via post. This allows for me to organize my commentary and deliver an overall impression and specific recommendations (To be clear, I prefer this arrangement when editing and when receiving feedback.) However, with all that said, real time collaboration is becoming an expected feature. AbiWord and Google Docs have it, OpenOffice is talking about it, and MS Word even has a rudimentary option. I have several colleagues that have moved to Google Docs specifically because of the real time collaboration options. Even though they've never actually used them, at least to the best of my knowledge and the editing experience is hideous in every other respect. The people I've talked to take solace in knowing that they are present and "would never move to a platform that didn't have them." I've even heard this from the small cadre of users I've converted to LyX. In effect, real time document collaboration is a marketing feature. Unfortunately, marketing features matter. They differentiate program A from program B and providing a talking point. And because they're talked about, such features become part of the criteria by which a program is judged. If you need an example, look at what Google Docs has done for real time collaboration. The presence/lack of a collaboration feature has become a standard review of any word processor. Microsoft Word 2007 was knocked on ZdNet because it wasn't present. MS Word 2010 was lauded because it was (even though it sucks). Yet, I've never actually met anyone who writes with others in real time. The only counterexample I can think of was an exchange with Michael Foord, who uses it to start program documentation. But when I pressed him, what Michael described was more of an outlining tool and could easily be created via an interactive whiteboard rather than a full-featured real-time editing environment. Which leads to my second question. What should real time collaboration look like in order to be helpful? Should it be built into an IM client (ala screensharing) with voice and video? Or would it be better as an online service? Is integration into a desktop writing program necessary? Or would an implementation similar to the MS Word 2010 version be more appropriate, which is a hybrid approach? You have advocated for this strongly and I would love to hear your opinions on the above questions. What would be most helpful for your work? Based on other implementations, what doesn't work quite so well? As more tools release similar real time solutions, I think calls for something similar in LyX will increase. Not necessarily because it's useful, but because it's expected. And yes, I know that this is a terrible reason to add new features. Which is actually my general point. Current implementations of real-time editing are generally terrible. A desktop level approach would be infinitely superior to the approach we are seeing now where each word processor does its own thing. So, if the feature doesn't fit within LyX, perhaps we could send the use case scenarios and discussion to another project where it did fit? The natural fit, at least to my mind, would be one of the IM clients. Perhaps Empathy? Anyone else have any thoughts? Cheers, Rob Oakes
