Etherpad Shows Google Docs How It’s Done (By AppJet)

People have asked us for a way to try it out with other people, so here's a set of pads for news.yc readers to play with:<p><a href="http://etherpad.com/ep/newsyc" rel="nofollow">http://etherpad.com/ep/newsyc</a><p>For the curious, I added this URL to our running web server in 5 minutes with 12 lines of JavaScript:<p><pre><code> function render_newsyc_get() { function countUsers(p) { return getCollab().getDocument(p).getNumConnectedUsers(); } var body = BODY({style: 'padding: 20px; font-family: monospace;'}); body.push(H3("Welcome news.ycombinator readers! ", "Join us in an EtherPad of your choosing:")); pads.forEach(function(p) { body.push(A({href: p}, p), ' ('+countUsers(p)+' users)', BR()); }); response.write(HTML(body)); } </code></pre> Just a taste of the AppJet Web Platform. (A separate 1-time script generated the array "pads").

"Changes are made in absolute real time, something even Google hasn’t been able to do (Google docs update every fifteen seconds)."<p>To imply that Google 'hasn't been able to do it' is kind of silly. It's more likely that they chose not to do it and/or their scaling requirements made it impractical.

What would make this application killer for me is if was embeddable in other applications as a widget (think rich-text editor on steroids). This, plus a git-like backend for revision history, would be just absolutely amazing.

What a fun service. I can't remember the last time I used the word "fun" in reference to a plain text editor. :)<p>It's really interesting to watch the POSTs fly by and consider the implications of out-of-order updates, breaks in the open downstream "comet" channel, interleaving potentially conflicting text from different clients. A lot of difficult tradeoffs that they seem to have made good -- or at least plausible -- decisions on.

Maybe this will change how people code. Instead of programmers hanging out in IRC, they can hang out in the code and fix things instead of just complaining :-)

SubEthaEdit has been one of the coolest pieces of software I've used, but it's 1) not free, 2) desktop-based, 3) OS X only. Etherpad offers all the functionality without those restrictions.<p>This is a really impressive product.

This would be useful for getting candidates to write code during phone interviews!

Just had an idea... when you show the revision view for a given revision, attach the chats that happened during the same time as <i>comments</i> to the page.

There is no test etherpad on their page where you can actually test it on a document with others editing simultaneously, so I created one for HN:<p><a href="http://etherpad.com/a4jtHYAoF9" rel="nofollow">http://etherpad.com/a4jtHYAoF9</a><p>Just join in and try it!

My first thought while playing with it during class was that it'd make a great replacement for Basecamp's crappy Writeboard feature.<p>I was also thinking that instead of unnamed, you could build a list of celebrity names that are used until the user changes it (which should be pretty quick if you wind up with something like Danny Glover or Hans Blix). If not, at least you'd have a way to distinguish between people.

Hey, where have I seen this before?<p>Oh yeah, here: <a href="http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/" rel="nofollow">http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/</a>

This seems like SubEthaEdit but for the web. Maybe it was the barrier to entry or the technical wrangling to get it working that killed SEE; But even among Mac-heads I haven't seen it being used in years.<p>I'm not sure how much this will fly.

Interesting app; it looks like it has a lot of potential.<p>On an unrelated note, something about Arrigton's journalism just bothers me. It's like every title has to involve some tired old cliché or unsubstantiated, conflicting statements.

neat but hardly killer.<p>Yes they have the handiness of true realtime updates (and I am not denying that isn't a huge feature) but that's hardly a unique feature (or wont be for long).<p>But then the rest of the UI / feature set is far too bland :( at least get some code highlighting and stuff in there.<p>Also in our short test earlier it didnt handle mass deletions &#38; editing very well (if I deleted a block of text as someone was adding to it merry hell broke loose :P).<p>IMO a nice demo of a cool idea but badly executed enough to be no real use. Make me a real time white board and THEN I might take notice :D

This is very cool for sure. I really think it would be nice for brainstorming on code with other developers.