Post #2767726

2026-04-28 11:12 UTC

(I would actually find it really interesting to study those ad-hoc, out-of-band protocols that people cook up for offline collaborative editing! You know the ones I mean: "I'm grabbing the lock on section 3" and so forth. Does anyone have a really sophisticated one that doesn't just amount to coarse-grained locking?)

Replies (4)

@dotstdy@mastodon.social 2026-04-28 11:16

@lindsey@recurse.social I would say the way this is expressed is usually structural, people change the way they organize their data so that coarse locking can function. Like using UUIDs which cannot conflict for new object names. Splitting data along boundaries defined by frequency of change. Using systems which aggregate at a high level, rather than using conflict heavy lists. Etc

Open ##2767727
@bnut@aus.social 2026-04-28 11:51

@lindsey@recurse.social I worked on an operational transform based one for a while, which was an evolution from Google Wave. There’s server authoritative versioning which defines a window of operations (deltas) that need to be resolved when merging. The structures are built from data types that are carefully designed (category theory) for associativity. Clients merge local deltas together then send it with their server (and client) version. The server sends back a delta for the resolved changes since the client’s sent version.

Open ##2767729
@mort@mastodon.me.uk 2026-04-28 18:15

@lindsey@recurse.social not really document editing unless you squint (a lot) but maybe the CSCW type work from the 80s on air traffic control and other collaborative information processing systems would be interesting?

Open ##2767732
@clew@ecoevo.social 2026-04-29 18:46

Some of them are time, yes? “I’ll work on this till eleven, you have the afternoon, we’ll go over changes at four”? @lindsey@recurse.social

Open ##2767733