https://blog.yhuang.org/?p=204 here. Tue, 14 Oct 2025 11:10:14 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.1 https://blog.yhuang.org/?p=204&cpage=1#comment-88647 Some stuff » chrome os, wave, collaboration Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:10:20 +0000 http://scripts.mit.edu/~zong/wpress/?p=204#comment-88647 [...] So let me make it very concrete. I take out a piece of hardware — it is a tablet. I would like to write a paper. But I have coauthors. So I start a new document — maybe it’s for writing LaTeX. I start writing — with a pen — or I type, whatever. At some point I decide I want collaboration, so maybe I turn this into a “collaboration” mode. Think of this as going to a public space to write on the whiteboard. Now anybody can see this in progress, in real time, not as its autosaved version, if open up the same program of theirs and I’m on their collaborator list or something. Maybe I tell them out of band that I want to collaborate or they already know. They can request to join, and I can let them, and even add them to the list of collaborators for this document (or project, as every document should be automatically versioned into a project tree). They can edit at the same time as I edit, and each person can see what the other person is doing, if they just went to the right part of the document to look. The part you are editing can be locked if you wish. Or you can lock other parts, doesn’t matter. You can make comments on the margins. You can run a view of the current snapshot any time, without interfering with other editors. At any time, you can save a state as a satisfactory “version”. References can be added by dropping anything — PDF, URL, some search text — and the editor can go look for the reference and turn it into the right format, and cache it into your library of references. If you want to draw figures, you should be able to do it in place, with a pen, and it will be turned into nice figures (discussed separately before)… etc. etc. [...] [...] So let me make it very concrete. I take out a piece of hardware — it is a tablet. I would like to write a paper. But I have coauthors. So I start a new document — maybe it’s for writing LaTeX. I start writing — with a pen — or I type, whatever. At some point I decide I want collaboration, so maybe I turn this into a “collaboration” mode. Think of this as going to a public space to write on the whiteboard. Now anybody can see this in progress, in real time, not as its autosaved version, if open up the same program of theirs and I’m on their collaborator list or something. Maybe I tell them out of band that I want to collaborate or they already know. They can request to join, and I can let them, and even add them to the list of collaborators for this document (or project, as every document should be automatically versioned into a project tree). They can edit at the same time as I edit, and each person can see what the other person is doing, if they just went to the right part of the document to look. The part you are editing can be locked if you wish. Or you can lock other parts, doesn’t matter. You can make comments on the margins. You can run a view of the current snapshot any time, without interfering with other editors. At any time, you can save a state as a satisfactory “version”. References can be added by dropping anything — PDF, URL, some search text — and the editor can go look for the reference and turn it into the right format, and cache it into your library of references. If you want to draw figures, you should be able to do it in place, with a pen, and it will be turned into nice figures (discussed separately before)… etc. etc. [...]

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