the XWiki TeamOW2 and XWiki are proud to announce that we are working together to deliver an improved Realtime Collaborative Editing extension in XWiki.
While Google Docs with its real-time collaboration feature has become a significant part of the modern paperless office, enterprises in Europe and around the globe are becoming increasingly wary of Google's off-shore data retention and privacy policies.
To address this data sovereignty concern and to improve the level of Free/Libre software used at OW2, the OW2 Management office has undertaken a "de-googlization" effort (largely inspired by the Framasoft campaign) to move from Google based solutions to FLOSS and other privacy-enabling technologies including XWiki.
With sponsorship from OW2, XWiki Research has added three new features to the XWiki Realtime CKEditor Extension.
Avatars to show the people who are editing a document in realtime, cursor location indication and automatic link highlighting.
Previously XWiki Realtime Collaborative Editor had names indicating who you are collaborating with, but not avatars. In order to make the editor feel more collaborative and more familiar to those who were used to Google Docs, we implemented new avatars or names together with avatars.
In addition, a common issue for adopters of the XWiki Realtime Collaborative Solution was knowing where a colleague was editing. To help we added little avatars which are shown in the margin so it is easy to see where a particular colleague is editing. We also allowed clicking on a colleague's avatar or name to seek your view right to their place in the document.
