CoWord is a software add-on to

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includin ...

to enable multiple users to edit the same document over the Internet with

MS Word Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includin ...

. It is a part of the CoOffice suite of collaboration tools for

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...

. CoWord can be considered as a

collaborative real-time editor A collaborative real-time editor is a type of collaborative software or web application which enables real-time collaborative editing, simultaneous editing, or live editing of the same digital document, computer file or cloud-stored data – suc ...

, with the editor being MS Word (which is not distributed with CoWord). To use CoWord, users need to supply their own copies of

. As of August 2010, CoWord has become CodoxWord, released by CodoxWare.

Technology

One of the main challenges in building collaborative real-time editors is in

concurrency control In information technology and computer science, especially in the fields of computer programming, operating systems, multiprocessors, and databases, concurrency control ensures that correct results for Concurrent computing, concurrent operations a ...

. The concurrency control technology used by CoWord is Operational transformation. Operational transformation (OT) can incorporate concurrent changes made to replicas of the same document. This means systems built with OT allow multiple users to make concurrent changes to the document, and all changes will be incorporated. Other known systems based on

Operational transformation Operational transformation (OT) is a technology for supporting a range of collaboration functionalities in advanced collaborative software systems. OT was originally invented for consistency maintenance and concurrency control in collaborative edit ...

are:

ACE An ace is a playing card, Dice, die or domino with a single Pip (counting), pip. In the standard French deck, an ace has a single suit (cards), suit symbol (a heart, diamond, spade, or club) located in the middle of the card, sometimes large a ...

, Gobby, and

Subethaedit SubEthaEdit is a collaborative real-time editor designed for Mac OS X. The name comes from the Sub-Etha communication network in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' series. History SubEthaEdit was first released under the name Hydra in earl ...

. In CoWord, OT is implemented in a module called Generic Collaborative Engine (GCE). GCE is also provided as a library package, allowing other developers to create real-time collaborative editing systems without having to implement OT.

External links

CodoxWord Home page

Adaption technology used build CoWord

The operational transformation algorithm used by CoWord

OTFAQ: Operational Transformation Frequently Asked Questions and Answers

* ttp://www.codoxware.com/ CodoxWord and CodoxWare

References

{{Reflist Microsoft Office Collaborative real-time editors