Re: SubEthaEdit style networked editing

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> editing of a text file. One computer is designated as the server for
> the file, then other users can connect and edit the file... everyone
> sees everyone else's edits in realtime in their editor (in different
> colours).

I'm sure this can be done in an Emacs package, and IIRC someone has done
something along these lines several years ago (but maybe it was for XEmacs
and used some patches to the C code; can't remember well).

Basically you just need to add an after-change-functions hook that sends the
changed text&location to the other processes and have each one of those
processes listen to those messages and apply the change (after adding some
color if needed).

The main difficulty might be in ensuring that the changes are seen in the
same order by every process or to somehow correctly handle the case where
changes are received in a different order.  But it shouldn't be that hard,
really, as long as you can assume a reliable and fast enough communication
between the different machines.


        Stefan