Gobby is a free software collaborative real-time editor available on Windows and Unix-like platforms.[3] (It runs on Mac OS X using Apple's X11.app.) It was initially released in June 2005 by the 0x539 dev group[4] (the hexadecimal value 0x539 is equal to 1337 in decimal). Gobby uses GTK+ for its GUI widgets.

Gobby
Original author(s)Armin Burgmeier
Developer(s)0x539 dev group
Stable release
0.6.0 / January 21, 2021; 3 years ago (2021-01-21)
Repository
Written inC++, C.[1]
Operating systemUnix, Windows
TypeText editor
LicenseGNU GPLv2+[2]
Websitegobby.0x539.de

Description edit

Gobby features a client-server architecture which supports multiple documents in one session, document synchronisation on request, password protection and an IRC-like chat for communication out of band.[5] Users can choose a colour to highlight the text they have written in a document. Gobby is fully Unicode-aware, provides syntax highlighting for most programming languages, and has basic Zeroconf support.[4]

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).[6] The collaborative editing protocol is named Obby, and there are other implementations that use this protocol (e.g. Rudel,[7] a plugin for GNU Emacs). Gobby 0.5 replaces Sobby with a new server called infinoted.[8][9]

Version 0.4.0 featured fully encrypted connections and further usability enhancements.[4] Users have commented versions prior to 0.5.0 had some issues.[10]

Versions numbered 0.4.9x are preview releases for version 0.5.0. The most noticeable improvement is undo support,[11] using the adOPTed algorithm for concurrency control.[12]

Criticisms edit

While offering Unicode support it has been suggested the product is suitable for producing plaintext rather than formatted documents.[13]

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ "What is Gobby?". Gobby.0x539.de. Development Area. Archived from the original on 29 December 2014. Retrieved 28 November 2009.
  2. ^ "root/COPYING". Gobby.0x539.de. Archived from the original on 18 July 2011.
  3. ^ Brockmeier, Joe (11 July 2006). "Collaborative text editing with Gobby". Linux.com. Retrieved 9 July 2019.
  4. ^ a b c "news". Gobby.0x539.de. Archived from the original on 20 July 2014.
  5. ^ Kereki, Federico (24 September 2007). "Group text editing with Gobby". linux.com.
  6. ^ "Setting up a dedicated server to host EOS Sessions | Tutorial". Epic Developer Community. Retrieved 12 December 2023.
  7. ^ "Rudel". EmacsWiki.org. 23 October 2014. Retrieved 16 July 2016.
  8. ^ "Infinoted". Gobby.0x539.de. Archived from the original on 13 October 2014.
  9. ^ Mouw, Evert (27 December 2010). "Working together on text and source code with Gobby and infinoted". TechMonks. Archived from the original on 27 March 2017. Retrieved 9 July 2019.
  10. ^ Trentini, Andrea (1 January 2013). "Three years of teaching using collaborative tools: patterns and lessons learned". University of Milan. Archived from the original on 9 July 2019.
  11. ^ "What is Gobby?". Gobby.0x539.de. 2008-10-18: Gobby 0.4.90 released. Archived from the original on 26 November 2014.
  12. ^ "Infinote protocol". Gobby.0x539.de. Archived from the original on 20 July 2014.
  13. ^ Kochedykova, Tatiana. "5 open source alternatives to Google Docs". Opensource.com. Retrieved 9 July 2019.

External links edit