Re: A new collaborative editing package (maybe tangent)

[Yuan Fu <casouri@gmail.com>]

> On Jan 4, 2024, at 12:02 AM, Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide <arne_bab@web.de> wrote:
> 
> 
> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>> What we should do now, however, before installing anything,
>> is decide what architecture we want to use for collaborative editing.

I don’t think we are installing anything into Emacs. Collab-mode, if ever completes, will be like any other Emacs package.

>> 
>> For instance, is this the right protocol to use?
>> Do we want to base communication on this protocol?
> 
> The decision for OT seems to already be taken and may not be easy to
> change midflight, so I don’t know whether discussing this part has much
> merit.

Also, since what ever protocol collab-mode uses will be limited to collab-mode itself, I don’t think the protocol is very interesting to discuss anyway.

> 
>> Should we base access control on logging in to some other sort
>> of service?  Could we base it on access to a repo which is where
>> the shared document is to be stored?
> 
> And which methods are already well-supported in Rust?

I’ve thought about using public keys for authentication. Users would share their public keys through secure side-channel, then it’s easy to verify you are connecting to the person you think you are connecting to.

I also thought about adding OpenID support to the signaling server, such that the signaling server can endorse each user’s identify. Is is obviously more complicated, and requires the user to trust the signaling server.

Yuan