On Sat, Jun 06, 2020 at 12:42:07PM +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

[...]

> 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?

That would indeed be a Good Thing.

> 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?

DISCLAIMER: I haven't much experience with collaborative editing.

That said, as far as I understand the collaborative editing folks,
the difference to a dVCS (which I read as "distributed version
control system" à la git) is the "live" experience: you see other
people's cursors (points?) running over the text making changes,
while you change the text, too. Ideally supported by a side channel,
e.g. audio.

Think several people doodling simultaneously over a shared blackboard.

There was a thread a while ago in -help or -devel explaining why
several emacs clients connected to a common server didn't quite
fill that bill: I could only partially understand what the limitations
were. I think I'll have to try it in practice to get a grip on
that.

Cheers
-- tomás