sback@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Steve Back) (10/11/89)
A "wish list" idea I have for emacs, would be some way to allow two or more
users at remote sights to be able to edit the same buffer at the same time.
Think of it as a logical extension of "talk". I think most of the work could
be done as an elisp program.
1. Establish a communication path, someone familiar to how talk does this
would be a good start here. Eighter sockets, pipes or shared memory,
doesn't really matter all that much.
2. Both user run emacs as two independent local jobs.
on each machine one user will be called the master, the other
the guest. Both machines will keep two sets of cursor locations,
one for the guest and one for the master. As part of the start
up task, make sure both users windows are the same size and,
scroll-step is set to the same value.
3. All key strokes typed by the local user is echoed down the pipe.
4. If the local user is current typing something (1/3 second window to
allow for meta commands) buffer the guests input in a temporary buffer.
5. If the local user is not typing something, then switch location
to the guest users cursor location and allow the guest input to edit
the current buffer. When buffer and pipe is empty, switch back to
master's cursor and repeat.
Any thoughts on if this is workable, usable or useful?
sback@elbereth.rutgers.edu