Gobby is a
free software
Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...
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 – s ...
available on Windows and
Unix-like
A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...
platforms. (It runs on
Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
using Apple's
X11.app
XQuartz is an open-source version of the X.Org X server, a component of the X Window System (X11, or shortened to simply X, and sometimes informally X-Windows) that runs on macOS. It formally replaced Apple's internal X11 app. The name "XQuart ...
.) It was initially released in June 2005 by the 0x539 dev group
(the
hexadecimal value 0x539 is equal to
1337 in
decimal).
Gobby uses
GTK+ for its
GUI widget
A graphical widget (also graphical control element or control) in a graphical user interface is an element of interaction, such as a button or a scroll bar. Controls are software components that a computer user interacts with through direct ...
s.
Description
Gobby features a client-server architecture which supports multiple documents in one session, document synchronisation on request, password protection and an
IRC
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat an ...
-like chat for communication
out of band. Users can choose a colour to highlight the text they have written in a document. Gobby is fully
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
-aware, provides
syntax highlighting
Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors that are used for programming, scripting, or markup languages, such as HTML. The feature displays text, especially source code, in different colours and fonts according to the category of terms ...
for most programming languages and has basic
Zeroconf support.
A dedicated server called Sobby is also provided, together with a script which could format saved sessions for the web (e.g. to provide logs of meetings with a collaboratively prepared transcript). The collaborative editing protocol is named Obby, and there are other implementations that use this protocol (e.g. Rudel,
a plugin for
GNU Emacs
GNU Emacs is a free software text editor. It was created by GNU Project founder Richard Stallman, based on the Emacs editor developed for Unix operating systems. GNU Emacs has been a central component of the GNU project and a flagship project of ...
). Gobby 0.5 replaces Sobby with a new server called infinoted.
Version 0.4.0 featured
fully encrypted connections and further usability enhancements.
Users have commented versions prior to 0.5.0 had some issues.
Versions numbered 0.4.9x are preview releases for version 0.5.0. The most noticeable improvement is
undo support,
using the
adOPTed algorithm for concurrency control.
Criticisms
While offering Unicode support it has been suggested the product is suitable for producing plaintext rather than formatted documents.
See also
*
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 – s ...
References
External links
*
Gobby: A Collaborative Text Editoron
Debian
{{Use dmy dates, date=April 2020
Free groupware
Collaborative real-time editors
Free text editors
Text editors that use GTK