Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=977107

by jeff18 • 17 years ago

71 59 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

EtherPad was probably the most useful web app I have ever used. The main use case of EtherPad for me was that I embedded it into my startup's blog, so that we could seamlessly collaborate on blog posts together and it would auto-save, etc.

Now that EtherPad has been killed, what are some alternatives? Is there any other embeddable, collaborative text editor out there?

It looks like old EtherPads are still active for the next couple months, so until March, I will probably be abusing the crap out of a poor, used EtherPad. It would be great to migrate onto a more permanent solution though.

Alex3917• 17 years ago

SubEthaEdit: http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/

This is what EtherPad was based on. The only problem is that it only works on OS X. I remember using it to take notes with a bunch of other people at the first couple Startup School events. I haven't really ever used it since, but I can say that it held up extremely well even with a dozen people typing as fast as they could all at once.

jeff1816• 17 years ago

SubEthaEdit is awesome, and I bought a copy for ~$45 back in the day. However, because it is expensive and a Mac OS X only desktop application, I have only had opportunity to use it maybe once or twice. :(

mahmud• 17 years ago

$45 is not expensive for anyone in a developed country, specially as a business expense. That's how much you would pay for a decent dinner for one and 2 drinks by the glass.

aditya• 17 years ago

If you're looking for collaborative code editors, Mozilla's bespin is (going to be) epic: https://bespin.mozilla.com/

jeff1816• 17 years ago

This looks like the most promising successor. Unfortunately it does not look like you can embed a collaborative pad or share it via a link. You need to register an account, go through Mozilla's website, and actually use the command line to join up. Why a website has a command line is a little beyond me!

dangoor2• 17 years ago

Bespin definitely does not have the same sort of "just start editing a shared document" user interface that etherpad does. That isn't really our primary goal.

As for the command line: I really wish TextMate had a command line. I truly think the command line is going to be one of Bespin's fantastic features (though I'll agree with anyone that it is not a replacement for other nice bits of UI).

(ObDisclaimer: I'm on the Bespin team.)

al3x• 17 years ago

The guys who were really pushing Bespin forward went to Palm several months ago. The project looks great, but it may not have the same velocity right now.

dangoor2• 17 years ago

Ben and Dion left in September, just before we kicked off the "Bespin Reboot" project, which we had been planning since mid-summer. I believe we'll soon have much better velocity than we did previously, thanks to our work in the Reboot. (Reboot is not a rewrite, but a very significant rearrangement of the code.)

(I am on the Bespin team.)

spolsky• 17 years ago

http://squadedit.com is a pretty similar service. The free version has too many flashing ads for my taste... hopefully they'll fix that!

jeff1816• 17 years ago

This is pretty epic -- the only problems are that it doesn't have an API to retrieve text from it or create a new pad. Also, it is not suitable for embedding. However, as a standalone editor this is the best alternative I've seen.

UPDATE: I take it all back. This product is junk. Only one person can edit the entire document at once. If someone is typing, it literally locks the entire screen. This is worse than Google Docs.

trotzke3• 17 years ago

The first version of Squad didn't lock people out, but after some testing we liked the lock out method for code review and help purposes.

The goggle wave everyone type at once stuff is like reverb in the 80's if you ask me. Too much.

Particularly when you are dealing with multiple tabs. What I want to do when I'm asking a buddy to take a look at or help me with code is see what he or she is doing.

The tool really wasn't designed to compete with/replace Etherpad. It was designed to make our lives as developers a little easier. I think Etherpad is awesome. I've used a ton for google docs type stuff, but never really thought of it as code editor.

futurephonic• 17 years ago

I wouldn't want multiple collaborators editing my code all at once - I wouldn't know what they are doing. If I invite someone to collaborate I need to know what they changed before I redeploy the code.

jbyers• 17 years ago

A big difference is it doesn't highlight or denote authors.

swombat2• 17 years ago

http://wave.google.com

jeff1816• 17 years ago

Wave is slightly similar in the technology depeartment but fundamentally different from EtherPad. :(

swombat2• 17 years ago

Wave offers a text editor that's embeddable and allows multiple concurrent edits (which is what the OP requested). Having used both Etherpad and Wave, I don't really see how they're that different. Wave has more features, that's all. If you don't want to use the other features of Wave, well, just don't use them.

lukifer• 17 years ago

Wave is a pretty good collaborative workspace in general. However, it currently lacks tools specific to programming: auto-indenting, code auto-complete, syntax highlighting, etc. I imagine such tools will exist as Gadgets or somesuch in the near future.

ilaksh• 17 years ago

See syntaxy

cmelbye• 17 years ago

This is somewhat possible if your needs are basic. There's a syntax highlighting bot called Syntaxy and of course Wave supports the collaborative editing part of it. It's the layout of Wave that prevents me from using it, though. It doesn't seem like it was structured to be something like EtherPad. Rather, it looks like it was structured to be the next email or forum or something.

vsiva68• 17 years ago

Sorry for this OT question, but does anyone know of a replacement for Omnisio (http://www.omnisio.com/)? They had great integration of slides and video and how you could browse to a particular slide.

Another Google acquisition that hasn't seen the light yet.

Spreadsheet• 17 years ago

http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/ Gobby.

jeff1816• 17 years ago

Looks kind of neat, but it's a desktop app. :(

johnnyg• 17 years ago

My preferred alternative to Etherpad, is etherpad.

Etherpad is more popular than email in my office. I etherpad stuff, tag it with firefox bookmark tags and share it around. When this was announced, there was a literal, biblical gnashing of teeth.

Etherpad guys, I'm happy you're exiting with style but I will miss you badly. And if I could pay you instead of missing you, that'd be peachy.

DanBlake• 17 years ago

While its not text based, check out http://flockdraw.com which is a multiplayer paint I made with @lunixbochs

bprater• 17 years ago

Looks like a great opportunity for someone here!

skywalker• 17 years ago

..until a big company acquires this new startup and kills their product again.

This is one more problem with the cloud computing era.

In the 90's, you could continue to use a product even after it was discontinued. I remember reading that Steve Wozniack is still an Eudora mail user. The last time I heard about Eudora was maybe 15 years ago. You can't say the same about the last startup product.

notauser• 17 years ago

If you cut me a large enough check I'll install my cloud app in your data center, or sell you an off line version.

/notajoke

blasdel• 17 years ago

The best alternative to hosted Etherpad is "EtherPad Private Network Edition": http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts/pne-pricing-store

Hopefully one of their former customers will leak it to the world.

byrneseyeview• 17 years ago

http://www.yourworldoftext.com/

Try, e.g.,

http://www.yourworldoftext.com/byebyeetherpad

jeff1816• 17 years ago

This is sort of a neat tech-demo, but it is unusable for serious editing for obvious reasons.

mamasha• 17 years ago

http://i47.tinypic.com/ncjwup.jpg (Just Letters)

thesethings2• 17 years ago

I sincerely dig the word processor in Google Docs. It's quite good at handling multiple concurrent editors, and you can post to other platforms like WordPress from there.

The recently added Folders feature is killer, and my Google Docs "list view" has started to become like an Inbox for me in the beginning of my day, as it neatly displays newly edited, and newly added docs.

jeff1816• 17 years ago

Google Docs was awesome at the time, however, it is not really a real-time collaborative text editor. You have to coordinate your edits so that you are not working on the same thing, otherwise you create conflicts which are a pain in the ass.

Once you use a real-time collaborative editor like EtherPad, you can never go back to something like Docs, it's too primitive.

thesethings2• 17 years ago

I've never had to coordinate when I'm in the same doc as somebody at the exact same time. But I don't dispute your account. It's actually a quite interesting observation of how differently we all work.

In any case, I'll be following this thread. Tools aside, i think the topic is one of the most transformative things going on.

gfodor2• 17 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if re-building etherpad would be a weekend project for a talented hacker, now that Wave is open source. The Wave protocol would allow you to replicate EtherPad pretty easily, you'd just need to build the appropriate UI on top.

jeff1816• 17 years ago

I'd pay $350 for the privilege of using it.

gfodor2• 17 years ago

Well, it is Friday... :)

RedKnight• 17 years ago

beWeeVee Notepad is a techdemo but it works. It does more or less the same as Etherpad. It also have an SDK to develop applications on top of the Operational Transformation Technology.

The Url is: www.beweevee.com

jeff1816• 17 years ago

This one is so close it hurts!

It is almost a perfect clone of EtherPad, but it's written in Silverlight. Therefore, it's painfully slow, takes forever to load, and doesn't act like a standard Mac OS X text editor (ctrl-t to twiddle characters, for example, or ctrl-d for fwd delete.)

I am so desperate, I may have to bite the bullet and use this in the meantime though.

bnoland• 17 years ago

http://collabedit.com

norova• 17 years ago

I have not had a chance to play around with it much and I'm not sure about embedding (it's late, I must be off to bed!), but take a look at Amy Editor: http://www.amyeditor.com/

Edit: Here is a screencast of it in action: http://www.amyeditor.com/screencasts/collaboration1.mov

myprasanna• 17 years ago

I am an early user of etherpad & loved it. I'm hosting and maintaining it here: www.ietherpad.com

Cheers.

chris1232• 17 years ago

I guess EtherPad-like features are coming to Google Docs. Now that will be sweet!

Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?

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