Re: GSoC: collaborative editing

[Brian Templeton <bpt@tunes.org>]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> writes:

> Brian Templeton writes:
>
>  > I have considered a P2P architecture, but as Stefan mentions, that makes
>  > it much harder to ensure consistency, and P2P algorithms are
>  > considerably more complicated than algorithms that rely on a central
>  > server.
>
> 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*.
>
Most P2P algorithms *do* impose a total order on operations; it's just
more difficult to maintain that order.