Google Wave ECF provider
Student: Sebastian Schmidt
Mentor: Mustafa K. Isik
This project is part of the Google Summer of Code 2010
Contents
Abstract
Google Wave is a real-time collaboration system based upon operational transformation approach to replicated state synchronization. With the Cola System (DocShare), ECF has been using operational transformations, for some time now. I will implement a provider to allow an equinox+ecf based web server to inter-operate with Google Wave.
Primary goals
Legend
Needs some research
Work in progress
Feature added
Implementation of a Google Wave ECF provider
that people can use to build their own wave applications on top of
ECF. The provider will handle the basic wave-protocol operations like
managing waves, contacts or documents. Also the provider will provide
an api which allows users to add listeners to wave changes and
implement real time shared editing applications.
Implementation of real time shared editing support
for eclipse. Currently there are
cola and docshare, which
allow document based real time shared editing for two collaboraters in
eclipse. With the help of the wave protocol I want to improve this
approach and allow more than two collaboraters to work on one document
at the same time. Once you logged into your wave account using the well known ECF
ui, you will be able to share a text-based document for collaborative
editing with your friends on your or third-party wave server.
On the horizon
In their GSoC welcome package Google told us to "think big and have fun". That's why Mustafa and I already have spoken about ideas we have for the time after the end of GSoC 2010. The wave protocol allows to handle more than one document (= wavelet / blips) in a wave. This feature can be adopted to introduce project-based real time shared editing to eclipse. Hopefully we will be able to share a complete project with our colleagues at some time and work with them collaborative on multiple files and folders in real time.
I would really appreciate to get inspiring ideas from the community. So please feel free to report your ideas.
Timeline
| Milestone | Date | Planned/Completed/Progressing items | status |
|---|---|---|---|
| M1 | May 5 | research and planning |
|
| M2 | July 1 | ecf wave provider implementation |
|
| M3 | TBD | real time shared editing for eclipse (basic version: one document, multiple collaborators) |
|
| M4 | TBD | bughunting, documentation |
|
Getting the source
The Wave provider is hosted at ecf1.osuosl.org. Detailed information is provided on the enhancement request The sourcecode is also mirrored on github.com to facilitate collaboration via the Git version control system and github features.
Open issues
To see all the open issues and feature requests of this project, take a look at this Bugzilla query.
New ideas
Do you have a great idea for the provider? Just open a new feature request or comment on the existing enhancement request.