Re: GSoC: collaborative editing

[Thomas Lord <lord@emf.net>]

On Tue, 2009-04-14 at 17:14 -0400, Richard M Stallman wrote:
> Basically what you're saying is "OK, let's impose an arbitrary total
>     ordering on the changes."  Indeed that makes writing the collaborative
>     tool easier, but it also undermines collaboration by giving priority
>     to getting there *first* rather than doing it *better*.
> 
> With all due respect, I think that is a misunderstanding of the issue.
> We are talking about editing conflicts on timescales of a few seconds.
> If two people are trying to edit the same part of the text at the same
> time, they are stepping on each other's feet.  Which one does the
> stepping "better" is hardly an issue.


You still need a way to keep remote buffers in sync
and to re-sync them after temporary netsplits.
The issue Stephen is worried about is that the 
proposal offered is to ignore that problem and
assume a reliable network.   FWIW I think Stephen's
concerns are valid but that there is value in a 
short experimental project that ignores the problem
to get something basic working - at least as long
as there is some confidence that the solution to the
simpler problem stands a good chance of growing into
a solution for the more general problem.  Stephen
is right on strategy here but the offered tactic
might have some value anyway.  (Or it might not, I'm
not evaluating.)

-t