Re: What is the most useful potential feature which Emacs lacks?

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> On Jun 6, 2020, at 18:42, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
>> From: Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@traduction-libre.org>
>> Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2020 08:50:33 +0900
>> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>,
>> excalamus@tutanota.com,
>> van.ly+2020@sdf.org,
>> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>,
>> emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> 
>>>> What is missing in Emacs to make this possible?
>>> 
>>> I don't know for sure.
>>> 
>>> In the past, I was able to collaborate with a friend using an Emacs
>>> extension called "Rudel", which lets two distant buffers communicate
>>> with each other over the Gobby protocol.
>>> 
>>> https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Rudel indicates that the reference
>>> implementation for the Gobby protocol is broken.  I have not tried.
>>> 
>>> So perhaps the required work is not on the Emacs side, but on that 
>>> of the protocol and its implementation.
>> 
>> It looks like SubEthaEdit, the text editor that first provided solid 
>> collaborative editing features on macos is now released under the MIT 
>> license and its communication protocol is documented on emacswiki:
>> 
>> https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SubEthaEditProtocol
> 
> What I think is missing is not the description of a specific protocol,
> but a higher-level spec of basic capabilities needed for the
> collaborative editing support in Emacs.  Is this available anywhere?
> If not, could someone please write it up?
> 
> For example, one thing that strikes me is why "collaboration" via a
> dVCS is not a good solution, or at least the basis of a solution?  Am
> I missing something?

I am totally unable to talk about the technical aspect, but in fact, the 
software that I mention in the emacs for translators thread on help-gnu-emacs 
(OmegaT) actually uses Git or svn as the "engine" for collaboration.

The files that are shared on the git server are manipulated by all the 
collaborators who regularly commit their modifications and when there is a 
conflict, the collaborators are asked to resolve it. One collaborator commits 
are regularly reflected to the other collaborators so that the work proceeds 
with only a small lag between updates.

But I think what collaborative editing users have in mind is closer to an 
etherpad than to what OmegaT does.


-- 
Jean-Christophe Helary @brandelune
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com