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Ask HN: alternatives to EtherPad?
EtherPad was probably the most useful web app I have ever used. The main use case of EtherPad for me was that I embedded it into my startup's blog, so that we could seamlessly collaborate on blog posts together and it would auto-save, etc.
Now that EtherPad has been killed, what are some alternatives? Is there any other embeddable, collaborative text editor out there?
It looks like old EtherPads are still active for the next couple months, so until March, I will probably be abusing the crap out of a poor, used EtherPad. It would be great to migrate onto a more permanent solution though.
- Alex3917 17y agoSubEthaEdit: http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/ http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/ This is what EtherPad was based on. The only problem is that it only works on OS X. I remember using it to take notes with a bunch of other people at the first couple Startup School events. I haven't really ever used it since, but I can say that it held up extremely well even with a dozen people typing as fast as they could all at once.
- jeff18 17y agoSubEthaEdit is awesome, and I bought a copy for ~$45 back in the day. However, because it is expensive and a Mac OS X only desktop application, I have only had opportunity to use it maybe once or twice. :(
- mahmud 17y ago$45 is not expensive for anyone in a developed country, specially as a business expense. That's how much you would pay for a decent dinner for one and 2 drinks by the glass.
- JoelSutherland 17y agoAnything that costs money is expensive given the right (wrong?) circumstances.
- jeff18 17y agoGiven that most text editors are free, $45 is relatively expensive. Especially when, until this afternoon, an arguably superior product was available at no cost in your web browser.
- j_baker 17y agoErm.... Where do you live? Cuz I could probably buy two or three decent dinners for one and plenty of drinks by the glass for that much.
- diN0bot 17y agomy husband and i don't eat out. in fact, we live in a cooperative with 7 other folks in order to efficiently share rent, utilities, grociers, chores and cooking. $45? oof. there's some software i pay for, but that's because it's worth it. as a startup software developer myself, i also feel empathetic to the cause. i rarely buy things because "it isn't expensive so why not." it's true that this might not be strictly necessary. i could buy 7 etha edits a month or pay rent....and since i only need 1 etha edit forever, it's orders of magnitude less expensive compared to rent. still, the numbers just tell me why it might be ok to make the purchase. if i threw away 1/7th of rent every month that would add up to a non-trivial amount. so, yeah, it better be worth it.
- aditya 17y agoIf you're looking for collaborative code editors, Mozilla's bespin is (going to be) epic: https://bespin.mozilla.com/ https://bespin.mozilla.com/
- jeff18 17y agoThis looks like the most promising successor. Unfortunately it does not look like you can embed a collaborative pad or share it via a link. You need to register an account, go through Mozilla's website, and actually use the command line to join up. Why a website has a command line is a little beyond me!
- dangoor 17y agoBespin definitely does not have the same sort of "just start editing a shared document" user interface that etherpad does. That isn't really our primary goal. As for the command line: I really wish TextMate had a command line. I truly think the command line is going to be one of Bespin's fantastic features (though I'll agree with anyone that it is not a replacement for other nice bits of UI). (ObDisclaimer: I'm on the Bespin team.)
- jeff18 17y ago"I truly think the command line is going to be one of Bespin's fantastic features" No offense, but this is why EtherPad just got acquired for 8 figures and BeSpin is on track for obscurity.
- grayrest 17y agoI'll point out that I doubt that amount EtherPad's purchase matters to a MOZILLA editor team and that the project being from Mozilla provides at least some guard against obscurity...
- al3x 17y agoThe guys who were really pushing Bespin forward went to Palm several months ago. The project looks great, but it may not have the same velocity right now.
- spolsky 17y agohttp://squadedit.com http://squadedit.com is a pretty similar service. The free version has too many flashing ads for my taste... hopefully they'll fix that!
- jeff18 17y agoThis is pretty epic -- the only problems are that it doesn't have an API to retrieve text from it or create a new pad. Also, it is not suitable for embedding. However, as a standalone editor this is the best alternative I've seen. UPDATE: I take it all back. This product is junk. Only one person can edit the entire document at once. If someone is typing, it literally locks the entire screen. This is worse than Google Docs.
- trotzke 17y agoThe first version of Squad didn't lock people out, but after some testing we liked the lock out method for code review and help purposes. The goggle wave everyone type at once stuff is like reverb in the 80's if you ask me. Too much. Particularly when you are dealing with multiple tabs. What I want to do when I'm asking a buddy to take a look at or help me with code is see what he or she is doing. The tool really wasn't designed to compete with/replace Etherpad. It was designed to make our lives as developers a little easier. I think Etherpad is awesome. I've used a ton for google docs type stuff, but never really thought of it as code editor.
- swombat 17y agohttp://wave.google.com http://wave.google.com
- jeff18 17y agoWave is slightly similar in the technology depeartment but fundamentally different from EtherPad. :(
- swombat 17y agoWave offers a text editor that's embeddable and allows multiple concurrent edits (which is what the OP requested). Having used both Etherpad and Wave, I don't really see how they're that different. Wave has more features, that's all. If you don't want to use the other features of Wave, well, just don't use them.
- jeff18 17y agoWell, I am the op, so let me elaborate. By default, Wave creates new "boxes" for everything, or lets you reply to other boxes. These boxes cannot be rearranged, only deleted, or have the contents changed. I don't give a crap about these boxes, I just want to edit a single document like EtherPad. To achieve this in Wave, have to arbitrarily agree on which box you want to make the "main" box. You then need to click the little tab on this box and choose "edit box" every single time you want to make a change to it. You also can't track who has made what change in the same box. Also, your cursor turns into a long string (your name) that shifts everything around in an annoying manner. It is sort of a cross between EtherPad, a chat client, and a wiki. I just want a text editor. For reference: here is what an embedded Wave looks like: http://smarterware.org/my-favorite-google-wave-bots http://smarterware.org/my-favorite-google-wave-bots
- durin42 17y agoThank you, you just described what's bugged me about wave for a long time, I never really could put it into words why I liked EtherPad more, I just knew that I did.
- vsiva68 17y agoSorry for this OT question, but does anyone know of a replacement for Omnisio (http://www.omnisio.com/ http://www.omnisio.com/)? They had great integration of slides and video and how you could browse to a particular slide. Another Google acquisition that hasn't seen the light yet.
- Spreadsheet 17y agohttp://gobby.0x539.de/trac/ http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/ Gobby.
- jeff18 17y agoLooks kind of neat, but it's a desktop app. :(
- johnnyg 17y agoMy preferred alternative to Etherpad, is etherpad. Etherpad is more popular than email in my office. I etherpad stuff, tag it with firefox bookmark tags and share it around. When this was announced, there was a literal, biblical gnashing of teeth. Etherpad guys, I'm happy you're exiting with style but I will miss you badly. And if I could pay you instead of missing you, that'd be peachy.
- DanBlake 17y agoWhile its not text based, check out http://flockdraw.com http://flockdraw.com which is a multiplayer paint I made with @lunixbochs
- bprater 17y agoLooks like a great opportunity for someone here!
- skywalker 17y ago..until a big company acquires this new startup and kills their product again. This is one more problem with the cloud computing era. In the 90's, you could continue to use a product even after it was discontinued. I remember reading that Steve Wozniack is still an Eudora mail user. The last time I heard about Eudora was maybe 15 years ago. You can't say the same about the last startup product.
- notauser 17y agoIf you cut me a large enough check I'll install my cloud app in your data center, or sell you an off line version. /notajoke
- blasdel 17y agoThe best alternative to hosted Etherpad is "EtherPad Private Network Edition": http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts/pne-pricing-store http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts/pne-pricing-store Hopefully one of their former customers will leak it to the world.
- byrneseyeview 17y agohttp://www.yourworldoftext.com/ http://www.yourworldoftext.com/ Try, e.g., http://www.yourworldoftext.com/byebyeetherpad http://www.yourworldoftext.com/byebyeetherpad
- thesethings 17y agoI sincerely dig the word processor in Google Docs. It's quite good at handling multiple concurrent editors, and you can post to other platforms like WordPress from there. The recently added Folders feature is killer, and my Google Docs "list view" has started to become like an Inbox for me in the beginning of my day, as it neatly displays newly edited, and newly added docs.
- jeff18 17y agoGoogle Docs was awesome at the time, however, it is not really a real-time collaborative text editor. You have to coordinate your edits so that you are not working on the same thing, otherwise you create conflicts which are a pain in the ass. Once you use a real-time collaborative editor like EtherPad, you can never go back to something like Docs, it's too primitive.
- thesethings 17y agoI've never had to coordinate when I'm in the same doc as somebody at the exact same time. But I don't dispute your account. It's actually a quite interesting observation of how differently we all work. In any case, I'll be following this thread. Tools aside, i think the topic is one of the most transformative things going on.
- gfodor 17y agoI wouldn't be surprised if re-building etherpad would be a weekend project for a talented hacker, now that Wave is open source. The Wave protocol would allow you to replicate EtherPad pretty easily, you'd just need to build the appropriate UI on top.
- RedKnight 17y agobeWeeVee Notepad is a techdemo but it works. It does more or less the same as Etherpad. It also have an SDK to develop applications on top of the Operational Transformation Technology. The Url is: www.beweevee.com
- jeff18 17y agoThis one is so close it hurts! It is almost a perfect clone of EtherPad, but it's written in Silverlight. Therefore, it's painfully slow, takes forever to load, and doesn't act like a standard Mac OS X text editor (ctrl-t to twiddle characters, for example, or ctrl-d for fwd delete.) I am so desperate, I may have to bite the bullet and use this in the meantime though.
- bnoland 17y agohttp://collabedit.com http://collabedit.com
- norova 17y agoI have not had a chance to play around with it much and I'm not sure about embedding (it's late, I must be off to bed!), but take a look at Amy Editor: http://www.amyeditor.com/ http://www.amyeditor.com/ Edit: Here is a screencast of it in action: http://www.amyeditor.com/screencasts/collaboration1.mov http://www.amyeditor.com/screencasts/collaboration1.mov
- myprasanna 17y agoI am an early user of etherpad & loved it. I'm hosting and maintaining it here: www.ietherpad.com Cheers.
- chris123 17y agoI guess EtherPad-like features are coming to Google Docs. Now that will be sweet!