Discussion » OnLine collaboration tools for writers

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Posted by Saltation_DUPE1, around 25th October 2005:
 
anyone know of any good ones?

i've looked at 3:
jotspot.com , which is good for meetings but not much else
writely.com , which appears to support Styles but doesn't export anything that Word can detect, so you're up for manual reformatting anyway
writeboard.com , which appears the most basic at first glance but has lovely Versioning (and version-comparison) plus out-of-band Commenting. plus Exports with slightly better html Style tagging.

but still not real happy with any of them. anyone know of others/betters?
Posted by Saltation_DUPE1, around 25th October 2005:
 
anyone?
Posted by Brock, around 25th October 2005:
 
I don't collaborate online in a writing form, dude.

I merely spread the goodness that is my hot love and wit.
Posted by reitsma, 25th October 2005:
 
my only recommendation was going to be www.writeboard.com .

you can use a wiki, they seem to be pretty hot right now.

:o)
Posted by Saltation_DUPE1, 26th October 2005:
 
at the moment, we're going with writeboard.com for the brainstorming stuff, for its spectacular version-comparison strengths, and with writely.com for the final output pieces, for its vastly superior formatting ability and editing interface, and with bloglines.com to tie them all together (visually). (have put in a Feedback request to writely to tweak their versioning and their Styles implementation and export, but not holding my breath.)
Posted by ellipse, 26th October 2005:
 
what about backpack?
Posted by cal_DUPE1, 26th October 2005:
 
wiki? i like pmwiki if it doesn't need to have hundreds of revs per page (else diffs get slow)
Posted by SuperFunGordon_DUPE1, 26th October 2005:
 
Brock: I merely spread the goodness that is my hot love and wit.


You spead your hot love online?
Posted by ellipse, 26th October 2005:
 
he spreads it everywhere else
Posted by syl_DUPE1, 26th October 2005:
 
Brockles is HOT! ;)
Posted by Saltation_DUPE1, 26th October 2005:
 
"smear hot brock over your toast for an unusual breakfast treat... uh, well: surprise"

su: backpack is more just a todo list -- thesame company offers Writeboard for text collaboration.

on the bright side, going forward, Writely may adopt key additional features, according to this nice email i got back today:
Major:
• Version Control:
needs CRITICALLY the ability to SEE who's changed what
could do with a much better interface
check out writeboard.com for an astoundingly powerful approach
• Export to Word/HTML:
USE STYLES. at the moment, all formatting is passed hardwired/raw. no good for anyone wanting to quickly reformat a document by changing the document-wide styles
• Styles:
the fact you have some Styles is excellent.
but if you let Custom Styles be defined (and then use the stylenames as CSS div tags for html export, same as MSWord does, to get instant perfect webpages), along with exporting those to MSWord AS styles, you become The Killer App.

all in all guysNgals -- i am truly impressed. take a bow.

but if you've got the appetite for adding these last wrinkles, you can take a market.

[...] I'm happy to say that we're already working on many of the things you list below...with any luck will have it all in place before before the end of our beta.
Posted by Sul_DUPE1, around 28th October 2005:
 
I like Writely, been playing today. With you on the need for styles though.
Posted by Alfie_DUPE1, 28th October 2005:
 
folders would be nice.
projects even better
So I could have a few projects going with different people, invite them to the project, then everyone can make as many docs as they want, without needing to authorise people each time. That would be ace.
Posted by Saltation_DUPE1, 29th October 2005:
 
naming conventions on the filenames can ease the thought-overhead on that