Collaborative text editing in a web application

Question

I have a group of writers around the world all trying to work on one story. I want them to be able to work with each other like they would on google documents, but from within our application. Specifically, being able to see who else is working on the document and what they are changing in real time. Something like an embedded etherpad.

Are there any good solutions out in the wild? I'm sure building something like this would be a significant project.

Answer 1

I had not heard of Etherpad before running into your question, but I found the Google Code instructions for compiling and running Etherpad.

It seems that Google have opened the source, and you can both run your own Etherpad server, and embed Etherpad pads in other web applications using Javascript.

Answer 2

Here's how to embed an etherpad:

<div id="ep">
<iframe src="http://etherpad.com/foo?fullScreen=1"></iframe>
</div>

Replace "etherpad.com" with whatever clone you're using, "foo" with the name of your pad, and you may or may not want to change that fullScreen=1 to fullScreen=0 (or leave it off altogether).

See also this related question: I want to use EtherPad (or a clone). My site is running Ruby on Rails. API or local install?