"The perfect way to collaborate on a text document and keep everyone literally on the same page"
Doesn't Google Docs already do this? This is their answer
"
No. Google Docs is a suite of products that do many things,
from word processing to spreadsheets to document management. One
thing that Google Docs does not do is real-time
collaborative text editing. We think this is an important use
case, so we built EtherPad with real-time collaboration as the
focus.
For example, with Google Docs it takes about 5 to 15 seconds
for a change to make its way from your keyboard to other
people's screens. Imagine if whiteboards or telephones had this
kind of delay! In contrast, the EtherPad infrastructure is built
to carry your every keystroke at the speed of light, limited
only by the time it takes electrons to travel over a wire
(such as an "ethernet" cable).
EtherPad stacks up favorably in other ways as well:
- Google Docs are cumbersome to share with other people. It
requires sending an email, and all collaborators must have a
Google Docs account. With EtherPad, you just copy and paste
a link, no emails or accounts required.
- Google Docs does not highlight who typed what, so with
more than 2 editors, things get chaotic and confusing very
quickly. EtherPad makes things clear by highlighting each
author's contributions with a unique background color.
- One of the most basic operators for editing text is
"undo." In Google Docs, while collaborating, you lose undo
history whenever someone else makes a change. EtherPad
supports infinite undos and ensures that every operation is
forever undo-able, even in the presence of other editors.
Of course, EtherPad is a tool for a specific purpose, and depending
on your needs, Google Docs may still be a suitable option for working
together on documents. But for
real-time collaboration, EtherPad beats Google Docs hands down.!
EtherPad
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