Please do *not* use Google Wave for real work
Edward K. Ream
about Leo using Google Wave. But for now, that does not seem
possible, for the following reasons:
1. [Most important] Apparently, it is not possible for us to issue
more invitations to Google Wave, which means that most members of this
Google Group can not take part. We can not tolerate this.
2. [Very important] There seems to be no way to invite everyone in
this Google Group to take part in a wave. Until that happens, I don't
think we want to create cliques within this group.
3. [Somewhat important] It's not clear that Google Wave can deliver
the required performance as millions of people start using it. The
performance I've seen has been marginal.
4. [Unknown importance] As most of you may know, I am not a fan of
instant messaging. I find it to be, usually, a huge distraction.
Perhaps I can use Google Wave more like email, so that I don't get
sucked into immediate conversations, but I'm not convinced that that
will happen.
5. [Unknown importance, but troubling] The *promise* of Google Wave
is effective collaboration, but the waves I am seeing would need
intensive editing for their contents to be useful as any kind of
writing. I *really* do not add yet another task to my life, namely
the task of deleting or summarizing dozens or hundreds of IM-like one-
line comments.
Perhaps each wave will need a designated editor who will clean up the
wave, or perhaps some other solutions can be found, but until that
solution becomes clear I have a bad feeling about the entire project.
Anyway, until the concerns in points 1 and 2 above are completely
resolved, I think it only proper that all important communication
about Leo takes place here, in leo-editor, rather than in various
waves.
Edward
Gour
>>>>>> "Edward" == "Edward K. Ream" >>>>>> wrote:
Hi Ed,
Edward> Perhaps each wave will need a designated editor who will clean
Edward> up the wave, or perhaps some other solutions can be found, but
Edward> until that solution becomes clear I have a bad feeling about
Edward> the entire project.
I'm glad to hear your realisations about that 'over-hyped' tool which
promises a lot. ;)
Sincerely,
Gour (still loyal to the old-fashioned tools)
--
Gour | Hlapicina, Croatia | GPG key: F96FF5F6
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Ville M. Vainio
> 1. [Most important] Apparently, it is not possible for us to issue
> more invitations to Google Wave, which means that most members of this
> Google Group can not take part. We can not tolerate this.
>
> 2. [Very important] There seems to be no way to invite everyone in
> this Google Group to take part in a wave. Until that happens, I don't
> think we want to create cliques within this group.
Agree about these.
> 3. [Somewhat important] It's not clear that Google Wave can deliver
> the required performance as millions of people start using it. The
> performance I've seen has been marginal.
I trust google's judgement on scalability. They will absolutely not
issue so many accounts that the wave slows down intolerably.
> 4. [Unknown importance] As most of you may know, I am not a fan of
> instant messaging. I find it to be, usually, a huge distraction.
> Perhaps I can use Google Wave more like email, so that I don't get
> sucked into immediate conversations, but I'm not convinced that that
> will happen.
Apart from high level of interactivity being somewhat more
"demanding", I also believe it's more productive, in that less time
will be wasted on producing communication that fall to deaf ears (as
the subject matters gets too "advanced", or off-topic, or whatever). I
have often noted that things get grossly misunderstood when a slow,
clumsy medium such as email is used.
Even if the form of communication may feel a bit "alien" initially,
the whole point is to reach a superior level of communication (where
we have less talk and more results).
> 5. [Unknown importance, but troubling] The *promise* of Google Wave
> is effective collaboration, but the waves I am seeing would need
> intensive editing for their contents to be useful as any kind of
> writing. I *really* do not add yet another task to my life, namely
> the task of deleting or summarizing dozens or hundreds of IM-like one-
> line comments.
>
> Perhaps each wave will need a designated editor who will clean up the
> wave, or perhaps some other solutions can be found, but until that
> solution becomes clear I have a bad feeling about the entire project.
I expect this to happen quite organically. Cleaning up waves is a
collaborative effort, and you could just do 5 minutes of it every now
and then, and let someone else continue. It could start simple, like
perhaps just going through a wave and making important points stated
stand out in boldface. After that, someone can scan for deeper
information related to the bolded points, etc. etc.
It should be very productive (esp. when we don't have several
consequtive hours at a time to contribute, just 10 minutes here, 2
hours there).
> Anyway, until the concerns in points 1 and 2 above are completely
> resolved, I think it only proper that all important communication
> about Leo takes place here, in leo-editor, rather than in various
> waves.
Agreed about important communication. Less important communication is
okay in wave I think, esp. if it's expected to be collaboration
between only a few people with wave accounts.
The "philosophers stone" of wave is IMO that it could turn out to be a
form of collaboration superior even to sharing an office space. We
definitely don't want to miss that.
--
Ville M. Vainio
http://tinyurl.com/vainio
thyrsus
simply a toy demo. Wave's importance is that it provides a library
and service to provide "eventually consistent" documents - and why
shouldn't that document be a Leo file?!
- Stephen
On Nov 8, 4:48 pm, "Ville M. Vainio" <vivai...@gmail.com> wrote:
Edward K. Ream
In the presentation Google gave at LISA, the "chat" application is
simply a toy demo. Wave's importance is that it provides a library
and service to provide "eventually consistent" documents - and why
shouldn't that document be a Leo file?!
I had to read this a few times before I understood what you might be saying :-)
So, are you saying it might be possible to use the wave library to edit Leo documents interactively?
OTOH, we already have a way to collaborate on editing, say, leoDocs.leo: it's bzr. I've often said that I don't like "instant" (im-like) collaboration. I much prefer to work on my own most of the time, uninterrupted.
Edward
thyrsus
promise of wave is that, used correctly, there would be no document
conflicts to resolve - and you would be aware that someone is
contemporaneously changing the same node/tree that you're working on.
There are still cases where preserving versions is appropriate.
I and my colleagues use Leo to generate the files that configure
computers. The Leo file is the one source of truth for that
configuration. We rarely are working on the same component - whether
that is host or role or implementing script - at the same time, but we
need simultaneous access to the entire Leo file. Currently, version
control conflict resolution on XML like entities is so worthless that
I've simply declared the Leo file to be binary, and we lock and unlock
the file to make changes, with only one person able to make changes
while the file is available read-only to others. Wave could fix
this. The insights gained from the @shadow implementation are
important. Don't hold your breath for an implementation from me: the
idea is easier than the programming, but I wanted to get the idea out
there in case it inspired a more productive programmer than I.
- Stephen
On Nov 20, 9:03 am, "Edward K. Ream" <edream...@gmail.com> wrote:
Edward K. Ream
Yes: wave could be used to edit Leo documents interactively. The
promise of wave is that, used correctly, there would be no document
conflicts to resolve - and you would be aware that someone is
contemporaneously changing the same node/tree that you're working on.
There are still cases where preserving versions is appropriate.
I and my colleagues use Leo to generate the files that configure
computers. The Leo file is the one source of truth for that
configuration. We rarely are working on the same component - whether
that is host or role or implementing script - at the same time, but we
need simultaneous access to the entire Leo file. Currently, version
control conflict resolution on XML like entities is so worthless that
I've simply declared the Leo file to be binary, and we lock and unlock
the file to make changes, with only one person able to make changes
while the file is available read-only to others. Wave could fix
this. The insights gained from the @shadow implementation are
important. Don't hold your breath for an implementation from me: the
idea is easier than the programming, but I wanted to get the idea out
there in case it inspired a more productive programmer than I.
Many thanks, Stephen, for these details. Any solution for .leo files would, it seems to me, immediately generalize to all xml files.
Edward
Graham Chiu
On Mon, Nov 9, 2009 at 10:48 AM, Ville M. Vainio <viva...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 2:35 PM, Edward K. Ream <edre...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 2. [Very important] There seems to be no way to invite everyone in
>> this Google Group to take part in a wave. Until that happens, I don't
>> think we want to create cliques within this group.
>
> Agree about these.
Graham Chiu
thyrsus
operating on XML documents. From the wave definition at
http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/06/wave:
"Document - A document has an ID that is unique within its containing
wavelet and is composed of an XML document and a set of "stand-off"
annotations. Stand-off annotations are pointers into the XML document
and are independent of the XML document structure. They are used to
represent text formatting, spelling suggestions and hyper-links.
Documents form a tree within the wavelet."
- Stephen
On Nov 20, 3:40 pm, "Edward K. Ream" <edream...@gmail.com> wrote:
Edward K. Ream
But wave is "operation transform" enhanced XML, they're already
operating on XML documents. From the wave definition at
http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/06/wave:
"Document - A document has an ID that is unique within its containing
wavelet and is composed of an XML document and a set of "stand-off"
annotations. Stand-off annotations are pointers into the XML document
and are independent of the XML document structure. They are used to
represent text formatting, spelling suggestions and hyper-links.
Documents form a tree within the wavelet."
The very first paragraph in the link above mentions operation transformation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_transformation
This seems like the essential element. Presumably, the Google Wave architecture packages this capability in an easy-to-use manner. Obviously, there are a lot of complexities involved, and if the architecture can hide most of them this will be a huge step forward for general collaboration. It would be just what is needed to do what we used to describe as LeoN, Leo on the net.
So this is exciting. Just as early users (and investors!!) confused web browsers with the net itself, I had been confusing the wave *tool* with the entire Wave. Thanks again for this clarification.
Edward
Edward K. Ream
On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 4:36 PM, thyrsus <ssch...@acm.org> wrote:But wave is "operation transform" enhanced XML, they're already
operating on XML documents. From the wave definition at
http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/06/wave:
"Document - A document has an ID that is unique within its containing
wavelet and is composed of an XML document and a set of "stand-off"
annotations. Stand-off annotations are pointers into the XML document
and are independent of the XML document structure. They are used to
represent text formatting, spelling suggestions and hyper-links.
Documents form a tree within the wavelet."
The very first paragraph in the link above mentions operation transformation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_transformation
This seems like the essential element. Presumably, the Google Wave architecture packages this capability in an easy-to-use manner. Obviously, there are a lot of complexities involved
Indeed there are. From the first url above:
QQQ
Operational Transformation
This is the crucial part of Wave’s technology. Google Wave makes extensive use of Operational Transformations (OT) which are executed on the server. When an user edits a collaborative document opened by several users, the client program provides an Optimistic UI by immediately displaying what he/she types but it also sends the editing operation to the server to be ratified hoping that it will be accepted by the server. The client waits for the server to evaluate the operation and will cache any other operations until the server replies. After the server replies, all cached operations are sent from client to server in bulk. The server, considering operations received from other clients, will transform the operation accordingly and will inform all clients about the transformation, and the clients will update their UI accordingly. Operations are sent to the server and propagated to each client on a character by character basis, unless it is a bulk operation. The server is the keeper of the document and its version is considered the “correct” version. In the end, each client will be updated with the final version received from the server, which is the result of possibly many operational transformations. There are recovery means provided for communication failure or server/client crash. All XML documents exchanged between the client and the server carry a checksum for rapid identification of miscommunications.
QQQ
Obviously, all this must happen behind the scenes. To get this "for free" is what I was calling the "huge step forward".
Edward
Edward K. Ream
In the presentation Google gave at LISA, the "chat" application is
simply a toy demo. Wave's importance is that it provides a library
and service to provide "eventually consistent" documents - and why
shouldn't that document be a Leo file?!
I'm looking for more concrete examples about how we might use Google Wave to edit .leo files collaboratively.
I've just found the section called "xml document support" near the middle of:
http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/operational-transform
EKR
Edward K. Ream
I'm looking for more concrete examples about how we might use Google Wave to edit .leo files collaboratively.
I've just found the section called "xml document support" near the middle of:
http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/operational-transform
The problem with any xml support is that Leo doesn't use xml while Leo is running: it uses vnodes.
I suppose the problem isn't necessarily fatal: when opening a Google wave session we could create a *virtual* xml representation of the entire Leo outline. This is different from how Leo usually writes the .leo file, because the virtual .leo file would contain the full contents of all kinds of @<file> trees, including @auto, @thin, etc. Leo would then have to convert the xml delta's given by the wave architecture to outline deltas. After applying the changes to the outline, Leo would update the screen.
Edward
Edward K. Ream
In the presentation Google gave at LISA, the "chat" application is
simply a toy demo. Wave's importance is that it provides a library
and service to provide "eventually consistent" documents - and why
shouldn't that document be a Leo file?!
As I think about this more, it's obvious that I don't understand what a collaborative edit of a .leo file would look like. We certainly don't want nodes to be selected as various people edit different nodes. The simplest thing would be to only show work on the presently selected node. Alternatively, we could use multiple body editors to show other people's work. That will work only if just a few people are working concurrently.
Edward
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor?hl=.
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Edward K. Ream email: edre...@gmail.com
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Ville M. Vainio
> As I think about this more, it's obvious that I don't understand what a
> collaborative edit of a .leo file would look like. We certainly don't want
anyway (albeit without clones).
Someone might to whip up a wave robot with google app engine, that
allows you to download (and maybe upload) the current state of the
wave as .leo document for local editing.