Adding Realtime Collaboration to Vim | Hacker News Reader

Adding Realtime Collaboration to Vim

news.floobits.com

6 pointskansface6 comments

Will this run on an Amiga and BeOS?

I haven't looked, but I doubt it. We could always patch those modules too, but its not worth the effort. The real problem is getting a working python.

Sorry; that was a bit of teasing.

Real question: I have experimented with RTC using TMUX and VIM; and it seems like an essential meh factor was the single cursor; sure any of us could take the "driver seat." But a rogue mode with multiple cursors on the screen would be more like the google docs implementation; and this does not seem like a problem you have solved??

If I understand your question, you want to know if its possible for multiple people to type at the same time? The answer is yes- all changes are synced in real time to everyone. Ideally, the user experience is no different, just multiple sources of input. We also have some tools built around following incoming changes, etc.

"Cursors" was the question; with TMUX and VIM in rogue mode multiple people can type independently in a separate "window." But it only supports one cursor per window.

google docs on the other hand seems to allow multiple cursors on the same window. So one person may type in section 1; while the other person type in section 2 without interfering with each other.

With a single cursor however; when two people type at the same time they almost necessarily interfere with each other. Unless one stops driving while the other types.

I think to implement the 'google docs' style multiple editors would require a different buffer for each user and a merge script that periodically runs the commands for each ofthe other multi-user buffers into each other buffer of the multi-user sessions.

Sorry for the late reply. Floobits doesn't actually work on the level of cursors. It understands changes in buffers. As you pointed out, we ship around patches and attempt to merge them in sane ways relying on eventual consistency. We also have to keep around the previous state of the buffer (in general).

The benefit of this system is that multiple people can edit the same file at the same time. The downside is that when they interfere with each other, they get garbled text (instead of interleaved).

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