CoWord
{{Short description|Software add-on to Microsoft Word}}
{{Infobox Software|
name =CoWord
| screenshot = Image:CoWord.gif
| caption = A CoWord editing session with 2 users
| developer = [http://cooffice.ntu.edu.sg Advanced ậCollaborative Technology Research ]
| latest_release_version = 1.0
| latest_release_date = May 15, 2007
| operating_system = Windows
| genre = Word Processor
| license = Free
| website = [http://cooffice.ntu.edu.sg/coword/ cooffice.ntu.edu.sg/coword]
}}
CoWord is a software add-on to Microsoft Word to enable multiple users to edit the same document over the Internet with MS Word. It is a part of the CoOffice suite of collaboration tools for Microsoft Office.
CoWord can be considered as a collaborative real-time editor, with the editor being MS Word (which is not distributed with CoWord).{{Cite web |title=Collaborate on Word documents with real-time co-authoring - Microsoft Support |url=https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/collaborate-on-word-documents-with-real-time-co-authoring-7dd3040c-3f30-4fdd-bab0-8586492a1f1d |access-date=2023-01-25 |website=support.microsoft.com}} To use CoWord, users need to supply their own copies of MS Word.{{Cite web |title=Definitions of ms word - OneLook Dictionary Search |url=https://www.onelook.com/?cobrand=rhy&loc=rz2&w=ms+word |access-date=2023-01-25 |website=www.onelook.com}}
As of August 2010, CoWord has become CodoxWord, released by CodoxWare.{{cn|date=December 2023}}
Technology
One of the main challenges in building collaborative real-time editors is in concurrency control. 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 are: ACE, Gobby, and Subethaedit.{{Cite book |last1=Sun |first1=David |last2=Xia |first2=Steven |last3=Sun |first3=Chengzheng |last4=Chen |first4=David |chapter=Operational transformation for collaborative word processing |date=2004-11-06 |title=Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work |chapter-url=https://doi.org/10.1145/1031607.1031681 |series=CSCW '04 |location=New York, NY, USA |publisher=Association for Computing Machinery |pages=437–446 |doi=10.1145/1031607.1031681 |isbn=978-1-58113-810-8|s2cid=2878999 }}
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
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20130721170953/http://www.codoxware.com/codoxword CodoxWord Home page]
- [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1188816.1188821 Adaption technology used build CoWord]
- [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1180875.1180918 The operational transformation algorithm used by CoWord]
- [http://cooffice.ntu.edu.sg/otfaq/ OTFAQ: Operational Transformation Frequently Asked Questions and Answers]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20061007135537/http://cooffice.ntu.edu.sg/coword/vods/lecture.htm Presentation of CoWord technology to Microsoft Research (Video)]
- [http://www.codoxware.com/ CodoxWord and CodoxWare]