OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC

http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/03/22/1815222

PengYou is a promising Java-based client/server document management
solution and versioning tool for individual users and small workgroups

Now this is ODF taking off!

regards

-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk

On Thursday 29 March 2007 20:47, Dave Pawson wrote:
> http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/03/22/1815222
>
> PengYou is a promising Java-based client/server document management
> solution and versioning tool for individual users and small workgroups

Hmm, it seems KDE + KOffice really needs to advertise our capabilities much 
more.  It has been able to do all the features posted in the article for 
years already.  Saving a file on a remote location or opening it is what KDE 
allows us to do with its networking ready solutions.

I, for example, place files on a webdavs server and can access that (securely) 
from everywhere in the world.  Read only for others, read/write for ones that 
have a password.

Do note that sharing files on a common location does not, in my eyes, meet the 
criteria for collaboration software :)

Still, its very nice to see people writing software like that!
-- 
Thomas Zander

Thomas Zander:
> Do note that sharing files on a common location does not, in my eyes, meet the 
> criteria for collaboration software :)

I agree; there's the little matter of collaboration to consider.

I'd love for there to be a SIMPLE way where different ODF-implementing applications can point to some central/common area (e.g., a WebDAV server that supports Delta-V), and support both of these version management models:
1. Immediate write-lock on read (checkout) and write-release-on-checkin. I suspect "Check in (to remote)" should be a different command than "save".
2. Even better: Easy "merge latest changes", like CVS/Subversion/Wikipedia, so many people can effectively edit simultaneously.  I.E., say I check out version 48 and start editing.  Since that time, version 49 and 50 were checked in.  When I try to check in, it detects that changes have happened since, so it tries to auto-merge in the other changes and shows me what happened (or helps me merge it manually if needed).  Then I get to try saving again.

I want these capabilities to be seamless to the user - he shouldn't need to exit his application.

Does such a capability exist now in the various implementations?  If not, is there a need to standardize some sort of convention/protocol so that the various implementations can do this seamlessly?  Or is there a need to store something in the ODF file to make this idea practical? I want to be able to do this even if the applications are different, and I'm guessing that an agreed-upon protocol would be needed.

--- David A. Wheeler

On Friday 30 March 2007 04:29, David A. Wheeler wrote:
> Does such a capability exist now in the various implementations?  If not,
> is there a need to standardize some sort of convention/protocol so that the
> various implementations can do this seamlessly?  Or is there a need to
> store something in the ODF file to make this idea practical? I want to be
> able to do this even if the applications are different, and I'm guessing
> that an agreed-upon protocol would be needed.

Such a capability does not exist in any implementation I know of.  I have been 
working on the usecases to give this a start. Always a good way to get people 
to join in.
http://wiki.koffice.org/index.php?title=Collaboration

The idea I've been trying to push is that we have a way for implementations to 
produce an ODF fragment with the changes to the last version. So it contains 
only the content that changed, and nothing more.
Applications should then be able to integrate that into their open document. 
Which means that the real collaboration is able to take place; where 2 
persons have any ODF capable applications open with the same document, and 
when I type a character that other person will see it being updated in his 
document at nearly the same time.

This concept of ODF fragments can be used to store diffs in a version control 
system as well, as long as applying the diffs is possible on the server. 
Otherwise your idea of using webdav and delta-v provides a fall back.



Now all we need is someone brave enough to actually do it ;)
-- 
Thomas Zander