Real-time, multi-user collaborative editing, commenting & 'suggesting' system [ like google drive ]

[Grayhem]

I know of only Google drive [in its document editing feature] that has live real-time user collaboration with editing, commenting and suggesting edits - this would be an amazing feature to have within Affinity itself, if it were somehow possible. Either just locally on a work network, or even further afield over the internet, real-time collaboration on documents or books or whatever content would be an amazing feature to have within the affinity apps. Is it worth consideration?

[PaoloT]

While I’ve sometimes used the collaboration feature of Google Docs, when discussing of product specs and advertising texts, I wonder how collaborations could be used in page layout. Would you like to give some hints?

Paolo

 

[William Overington]

@Grayhem@PaoloT@Alfred@Wosven

I have set up a page in Alfred's wiki so that we can experiment and discuss what @Grayhem is suggesting.

https://punster.me/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.Real-timeMulti-userCollaborativeEditingExperiment

The main page of the wiki is as follows.

https://punster.me/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.HomePage

Other people are welcome to join in too.

William

 

 

[Alfred]

24 minutes ago, William Overington said:

I have set up a page in Alfred's wiki so that we can experiment and discuss what @Grayhem is suggesting.

https://punster.me/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.Real-timeMulti-userCollaborativeEditingExperiment

Now also accessible via a link on my PmWiki home page, and via the ‘Collaborative Editing Experiment’ link in the sidebar.

25 minutes ago, William Overington said:

The main page of the wiki is as follows.

https://punster.me/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.HomePage

 

[William Overington]

I have now started a stoey using two sentences.

Over to you to have a go.

What features not available in the wiki would be desirable in an Affinity version please?

William

 

 

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, William Overington said:

I have now started a stoey using two sentences.

Speaking of stoeys, I’ve corrected a typo in the introductory sentence.

[walt.farrell]

What is this experiment intended to demonstrate or prove? That you can do collaborative processing on a website? Didn't Google Docs already demonstrate that?

Publisher is not running on a website. It's running locally on each user's computer.

[William Overington]

I have never used Google Docs, I don't know anything about it.

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

What is this experiment intended to demonstrate or prove? That you can do collaborative processing on a website? Didn't Google Docs already demonstrate that?

I suppose that the original poster has put forward an idea.

Typically nothing happens with such ideas, no feedback that it will be done, so I thought, well, I would generate something in Alfred's wiki and see if people want to have a go and feedback here and maybe make progress.

I have started a story.

One or more people can add to the story, edit it, whatever, if they wish.

If nobody bothers, well that will be how it is.

Maybe some people will grumble away the opportunity, .perhaps because without actually having a go they don't envisage that anything could be achieved and consider it would be a waste of time.

Maybe some people will laugh at the idea.

But the facility is there if people want to have a go and perhaps some idea not apparent at present will emerge.

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Publisher is not running on a website. It's running locally on each user's computer.

So we need to discuss whether what is wanted is possible and if so how to do it.

Perhaps figuring out the answer will produce some new facility in computing.

William

[William Overington]

I have begun to start forming an idea of how what is wanted could be achieved.

I have added content to the wiki.

Will anybody add more?

Will anybody even look?

https://punster.me/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.Real-timeMulti-userCollaborativeEditingExperiment

William

 

[PaoloT]

52 minutes ago, William Overington said:

I have started a story.

But what has this to do with page layout, in particular?

We all know what online collaboration on shared documents mean, if we have worked in a team during the latest years.

What I would like to understand is how and why collaboration on a shared document can be used on a page layout document.

Paolo

 

[William Overington]

So if an email such as the following is sent to each participant then each could adjust the .afpub document in Affinity Publisher on his or her own computer.

=Add Block 25

The plant is a Monstera Delicosa.

=End block

If this could be automated it could be quite efficient.

William

 

[Guest]

Instead of a wiki or even Google Docs I suggest you folks take a look at Figma or Sketch. While they’re geared more toward UX/UI design, they do provide a functional version of this concept to play with.

While I understand the draw of real-time, collaborative apps I’m not convinced the real-time aspect is the important bit of a collaboration when it comes to design and publishing apps such as the Affinity suite. Comments, edits, reviews, and approvals, yes. Everybody working on a single doc together at the same time? Hmm, probably not as important.

That said, having multiple people being able to seamlessly integrate their work into a larger project/publication (with versioning) and along with pipeline automation/publishing via the Affinity suite would be extremely interesting.

[William Overington]

6 minutes ago, PaoloT said:

But what has this to do with page layout, in particular?

We all know what online collaboration on shared documents mean, if we have worked in a team during the latest years.

What I would like to understand is how and why collaboration on a shared document can be used on a page layout document.

Paolo

 

What I am suggesting is a simulation within a wiki so as to try to figure out how what the original poster wants could be achieved.

I think we could get somewhere without any changes to Affinity Publisher.

If some additions were made to Affinity Publisher the system could be automated and thus become efficient.

We can simulate sending and receiving emails to each person in the group of people by posts in this thread.

We can simulate the document in each person's copy of Affinity Publisher in the wiki as each such Affinity document would be the same.

William

 

[William Overington]

=Add Block 32

Sandra walked down the stairs to the hall.

=End block

[Alfred]

9 hours ago, William Overington said:

=Add Block 32

Sandra walked down the stairs to the hall.

=End block

What about blocks 6 through 31, inclusive?

[PaoloT]

12 hours ago, Bryan Rieger said:

That said, having multiple people being able to seamlessly integrate their work into a larger project/publication (with versioning) and along with pipeline automation/publishing via the Affinity suite would be extremely interesting.

Somewhere else I tried to stress the importance of collaborative work on a publishing project. I may have used the work on software development or on a video project as an example, with the concept of a manager distributing the tasks to the other collaborators, and then accepting their contributions. This is very different from what you can do with Google Docs, where all the contributors are on a peer level, and can change everything at will. I could experience this can be a mess even with smaller documents; I can't even imagine what it can be when working on something like a magazine.

A software that can be used in a small publishing house seems to me to be missing. I guess the bigger publishers use their own software, but what about smaller ones?

At the same time, I have to ask myself one more time what the future of publishing will be. Most of the "magazines" and "newsletters" I see are now published online as web pages (if not as Instagram posts…). So, I wonder if it is a savvy idea to make Publisher something to be exclusively used in a context similar to the one in which InDesign was first developed, or it should as soon as possible become a publishing tool aware of the current times.

Paolo

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, PaoloT said:

I may have used the work on software development or on a video project as an example, with the concept of a manager distributing the tasks to the other collaborators, and then accepting their contributions.

Serif have indicated that Publisher will be getting a "Book" concept, allowing a document to be decomposed into separate files (as I understand InDesign provides). In an environment like that, I can conceive of the developers using a Git-based repository of some kind, with the objects being Book files, and having a main document that includes Books, and allowing individual collaborators to work on their own Book files. Then the overall manager could incorporate those Books into the main document. 

The Git repository system would be responsible for checkout, checkin, etc. to keep all the objects organized. And it would allow replication (cloning) of the objects or centralized storage.

[PaoloT]

5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Serif have indicated that Publisher will be getting a "Book" concept, allowing a document to be decomposed into separate files (as I understand InDesign provides). In an environment like that, I can conceive of the developers using a Git-based repository of some kind

Having a way to break down a project will be a very important step to allow collaboration. The elements contributing to a shared workflow would be:

- Splitting the project between modules (a book section), as atomic as possible (down to an 'H4' level).

- An effective way of managing and navigating through the building blocks (sort of an interactive ToC).

- Dynamic linking of texts in an AfPub document.

- Dynamic linking of images in an AfPub document.

- Preflighting/checking of error and coherence between all building blocks.

- Propagation of properties (color tables, text styles…) to all the building block.

This should make for an effective collaboration between writer, translators, page artists, illustrators, drawing artists, and the project manager.

Paolo