On 1/2/2012 9:00 AM, Abdelrazak Younes wrote: > On 02/01/2012 16:53, Tommaso Cucinotta wrote: > Unless we buy some server I don't think this will be possible. Maybe > someone wants to deliver this kind of services for free or not... it > does not have to be a LyX.org service I guess.
If we're just looking for some hardware, there's lots of options we can pursue. This might include the purchase of a cheap server to looking for a university or company to donate resources. Alternatively, we might look at setting up a Google apps instance or an AWS account. In the era of the cloud, the cost of computing resources is near zero and I don't think we need to let that stop us from pursuing development. In the case of donating services, I've got access to several servers that might be used for development/testing. Depending on what the dependencies are, I might even be able to donate bandwidth and hosting (though I don't think we're quite ready for that conversation yet). I would need to talk with the primary developer about the planned implementation. Before that, though, we should talk about what the goals for such a system are. Is this sort of collaboration server the sort of thing that we want to develop as a LyX specific resource, or are there similar systems that already exist? Would it be possible to integrate with Jabber or another messaging system to connect users and pass messages? What about OpenFire? For that matter, is this a premium service that we would want to develop to create a revenue model for LyX? Would we want a generic communications client that would enable users to connect to any collaboration server and interactively work on documents? (Using an existing solution would seem to me a preferable option than trying to develop a server side app on our own. Less code to maintain.) As I said earlier, I don't think that hardware resources should derail this project. There are lots of ways we could provide them. If there is someone who is very serious about starting development, I would be happy to get the basics in place (testing server, shell account, Jabber instance, etc.) But I'm more interested in hearing how we think the system should function. To that end, I'd prefer any collaborative writing features to: 1.) Use an existing open source messaging protocol like Jabber (which means that any XMPP server could be used for collaboration). Passing information about geometry, actions, etc. seems like it would be pretty straightforward. 2.) Reuse external tools and libraries as much as possible (e.g. libpurple), limiting the LyX-specific code we would need to develop and maintain. 3.) Remain as open as possible, meaning that we don't tie users to a specific service. Using a generic solution, like Jabber would be ideal. (Though running a server through LyX.org might be a good way to raise funds for LyX development.) Cheers, Rob
