NetEdit: A Collaborative Editor

Zaffer, Ali A. and Shaffer, Clifford A. and Ehrich, Roger W. and Perez, Manuel (2001) NetEdit: A Collaborative Editor. Technical Report TR-01-13, Computer Science, Virginia Tech.

Abstract

We present a collaborative text editor named NetEdit. NetEdit uses a replicated architecture with processing and data distributed across all clients. Due to replication, the response time for local edits is quite close to that of a single-user editor. Clients do not need explicit awareness of other clients since all communication is coordinated by a central server. As a result, NetEdit is quite scalable (linear growth relative to purely distributed systems (quadratic growth) in terms of number of communication paths required as the number of clients grow. NetEdit uses an n-way synchronization algorithm derived from the synchronization protocol of the Jupiter collaboration system. Along with describing the editor, its architecture and its synchronization algorithm, we present the results of a usability study that evaluated the collaboration awareness tools included in NetEdit.