[Standards] whiteboarding and shared editing

[Dave Cridland]

On Wed Aug 15 17:40:22 2007, Ian Paterson wrote:
> Greg Hudson wrote:
>> A generic XML editor isn't going to know much about the semantics 
>> of the
>> document it is editing.  It's not necessarily going to be a good
>> framework for a whiteboarding application, any more than emacs is 
>> a good
>> foundation for Photoshop.  They both edit files, but...
>>   
> 
> 
[...]


> I would have thought that, a *very low level* synchronised XML 
> editing protocol suitable for SVG documents could be very similar 
> to, for example, one for XHTML documents.
> 
> 1. What significant differences do people see between two such 
> *lowest* level protocols?
> 2. Could those differences be optional parts of a single low-level 
> protocol?
> 3. What specific real-world disadvantages do people see if we use a 
> single low level building-block protocol?

I have to say, my suspicion is that these kinds of questions would be 
far easier to answer if we developed an SVG protocol and an XHTML 
protocol, then looked for points of similarity. Trying to create an 
abstract protocol out of nowhere is going to be tricky, and as Greg 
suggested, quite possibly it'll go nowhere.

In particular, I'd welcome the Council reinstating the SVG XEP as an 
experimental protocol, and encouraging people to consider the XHTML 
case. I'd suggest attempting the latter by considering adaptations of 
the SVG spec to handle XHTML instead, then consider how to re-unify 
them, but even a wholly distinct effort would go a long way to 
getting a unified XML realtime collaborative editing protocol done.

Dave.
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