WEBVTT

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All right, here I run, it's megan, this is about something that is very raw, very fresh,

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very new, very prototype, distributed real-time collaboration for writer.

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So I'm just here presenting that actually, quote,

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I've just been packed by Michael Stahl into T-Board.

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So I'm just talking about it.

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Although I had some ideas down about the actual work that's done with some money else.

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I'm distributed real-time, what does it mean?

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Let's start with a few definitions.

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Document collaboration.

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So this is not collaborating in a video call.

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This is actually a document that you want to work with more than one person on that.

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Distributed, which means not like a collaborative online with a one copy,

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and then like getting all the input into one copy,

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but more than one copy, two, three, ten, twenty,

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and different places on different machines and different instances in this world.

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So you need to kind of synchronize all those documents.

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And real-time means like not just sending the document around by email,

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and then everybody does that sequentially, but collaboratively,

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like in real-time, like at the same time editing.

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So right, there's some history there.

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Of this in the, let's say, computer science community,

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there was some ad hoc things to do collaboration as this mother of all,

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for demos from the Engelbord late sixties,

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which was allegedly at least the Wikipedia, the very first instance of some collaboration

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on some text document.

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Then in the early 2000s, there was the pre-web,

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if you will, area on Mac, most of this moon added,

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so ether added, which already did some sort of collaboration,

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we wrote different machines rightly, it was another one.

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And then it started slowly with the Ajax JavaScript world,

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and then it really was taking off, so that was the some Google wave,

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either paired, CK editor, started in the mid 2000s.

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And it was the first time that people actually started to look into that more

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conceptually, so there was this time of operational transformation,

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which was a formalized way to reason about what kind of algorithm do we need

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before that it was mostly ad hoc, so someone just somehow implemented that and made it work.

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And it was the second wave that's item three conflict free replicated data types,

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which is I think one step further from operational transformation.

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The idea there is to do something where you do not have inherent conflicts.

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So the problem with operational transformation was that it was formalized,

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but it didn't solve the problem that if someone was ten minutes offline

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and was editing something, and the rest was then editing in the same paragraph,

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there would be a conflict of this person come online again,

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and someone would need to resolve that conflict.

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And there's a CRDT which is this kind of newfangled thing,

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at least supposedly resolves that in a way that it's this always defined way

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that the conflict will be resolved, so for simple cases there are no conflicts.

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Although sometimes surprising behavior.

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So that is actually pretty wide spread now, it's all over the place, it's databases,

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the next cloud, if you've been using the next cloud editor,

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and the markdown editor is using that zip tab.

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But it was through the code, if you do a collaboration there is using that code,

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not always using that.

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And there's a number of libraries, many of them,

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obviously for the web, YAS, auto merge,

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and that's 2010, 2011 and later,

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and there's plenty of papers and plenty of research there.

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So let's say the history and the background.

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What we thought we could do is run a little prototype and see whether that is actually feasible and doable.

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So we were asking and now that, and I'm happy to say that they approved that project,

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and there was a bit of funding there to implement a prototype real-time collaboration.

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So we started small, so we said let's use CRDTs,

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because that's most of the parties these days,

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and do it for writer and do it for writer, read only document,

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where people want to collaborate on the comments.

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So that's the serious, very small use case, but I think not irrelevant.

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You get a contract, you get a, I don't know,

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there's some law enacted, that's like 20 pages of document,

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you want to review that, so you get like 20 people in the room,

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and you want to comment that, so you highlight the things,

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or this is a problem, or this is fine, and ask Jack about that.

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So go over that, and yeah, so that will be asked and then to fund.

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There's a project page there, and the first thing, of course,

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is we need to have editable comments while the document is read only.

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So that's what T were implemented, the patches there.

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And that's the comment from the, from the git commit,

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this is a prototype, obviously, and it creates a special note,

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that allows editing comments, and adding new comments,

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and deleting comments while the rest of the document is actually read only,

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which is mostly, there's a bit of plumbing there,

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but it's mostly enabling that part of the UI,

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whether the rest is still disabled, so there's this lot,

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there's a little bit of tweaking there,

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to make that still work.

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There's an environment variable you need to set to enable that, so yeah, very early days.

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The second one is actually, and that's the more,

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more involved, but here, hook an existing CIDT library into liberal office,

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and so we thought, let's start with rest here,

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and the good thing is that there was actually the only option,

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so there was either JavaScript, and there's some auto merge C++,

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but those were early days.

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The only thing I was really like mature enough,

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and our opinion was the MyRS library, which is Rust,

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and it's one of my secret plans, a number of years,

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to get some rest, just to prototype a way

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to get Rust integrated into the build system,

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and I'm making that usable from liberal office,

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and so Michael did that, that's the commit,

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Command-WRS working progress,

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which was linked on Garrett,

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so that adds a shadow added engine model,

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which mirrors what is in the added engine,

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which is the text engine that powers the commands,

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which models what is in the added engine,

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text model into the CODT data type,

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so that the CODT can then sum that,

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and then we copy it out back into the added engine.

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Right, what's not working?

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This cavalry and transport is mostly not working.

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This cavalry means, well, I'm sitting here,

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and somebody else sits in Berlin,

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and so how can we collaborate?

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So we need some way to find each other,

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that is superbly done by piggybacking

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on existing chat protocols.

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You already have a signal or an XMPP,

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or a matrix, chat, or teams, or whatever,

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so you would say, okay, we need an external,

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and then let's collaborate on the document,

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so there would be a way then to have an existing

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encrypted peer to peer,

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or at least an existing way for two people

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or any people to talk to each other.

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Yeah, there's peer to panda,

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which is quite interesting,

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that they are building blocks for peer-to-peer apps.

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They're also having some project there,

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with the norm, possibly getting libraries,

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and to the norm stack, so that might be interesting things there,

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and interesting projects to piggyback on,

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that's not done.

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So what we do currently is we just have local sockets,

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so that's one machine,

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it's obviously a demo, there's no very much practical use of that,

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but that needs to be doing.

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The other one is some,

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the improve the common skewie for that particular use case.

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The, I think there's a problem with a slide.

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Let's go here.

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So the common skewie is not really suitable for this actually,

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so it is in Colabron line obviously,

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because when you've seen that talk earlier from Planam here,

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but for playing desktop liberal office,

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it's clearly not been made for this,

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actually there's more than one user on the same document.

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The other thing is having multi-user curses,

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so being able to see where the other person has the attention,

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so that's quite useful then if you want to collaborate,

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if you can see Jack is over there,

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so let's not disturb him and Bob is here with me,

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so we can chat about this thing.

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Are you really reading what I'm reading, et cetera?

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And I've done this overlay with the user names,

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pretty much the same experience that you've got from Colabron line.

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We push this all into the feature branch,

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so this is a kind of consolidated,

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all this patches into one, if you're curious,

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as I said, it's really quite a prototype,

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so let's see demo if I can pull this off.

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Important is get this branch, build the branch,

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and then you need to set,

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edit, comment and read only mode for both instances,

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and for one instance you need to set this wire as a set,

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which is making the sockets listen here,

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so that's this guy, let's see if that comes up.

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Yeah, so that comes up, but it's waiting,

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it's waiting for the other side of the demo,

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which is this one here,

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right, and it does seem to work.

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So let's start here,

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so you watch the right side,

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which is the other side,

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so first thing is,

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I'm typing something, it works.

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Okay, so let's try the other side,

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let's type something here,

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well, that works as well,

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oops,

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yeah, that works as well.

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Okay, let's go one step up, let's,

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let's make this bold, let's be bold,

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and I'll actually know this is the,

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the read only side, which is,

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I think there's a bug in the,

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there should actually be,

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well, let's look here,

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so the, the, the text and edit rule,

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why it's not not active here,

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but it's on this side, so let's let's go here,

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and let's make this bold,

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and let's make this italic,

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and let's make this underlying,

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so you see that, that's mirrored to the other side,

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let's, let's go over here,

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and let's do something like,

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delete command, oh yeah, that also works.

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Right, so,

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so basically, what works is,

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text on both sides,

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what works is adding and deleting of commands,

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what works is basic formatting,

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you can't do that much formatting,

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it's not like a writer,

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three column layout that you can do in the comments,

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they can do basic things like change font size,

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bold italic, that sort of thing,

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alignment of the paragraph, you see this,

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kind of, this is some,

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flash,

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light,

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light, so let's, let's make this,

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flash,

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left,

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and it's, it's getting reflected down,

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so so the basic, so it's not just text,

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but basic formatting and layout,

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that works,

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and it's getting mirrored by the CIDT,

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but with a promise that if,

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if one side goes offline,

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it would still resolve,

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if that comes online again,

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and if that's a conflict,

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usually that defined way,

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to resolve that,

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for example,

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if somebody deletes a paragraph,

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and the other side is typing in the paragraph,

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then the deletion would always been,

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that's,

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that's the way that needs explaining, of course,

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you can, but,

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but the way then to resolve that,

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if this, something unexpected happens,

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is that undo,

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is always possible,

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so you can always go back,

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so if the user's,

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well, what, there's what's important,

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then you just do undo,

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and then you have the side,

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see's the undo,

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and it comes back,

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and of course,

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if there's the edit wall,

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that's not something that technology

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can resolve them,

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so the people need to kind of talk to each other.

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So yeah,

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so that's,

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that's the first step,

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plans,

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obviously,

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that's the do items,

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like getting some,

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some discovery,

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and some transport going,

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and,

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I guess that's it,

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and I'm out of time.