By ddalley on

Google took control of EtherPad, an on-line cooperative writing system, and released its source code, recently.

http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts/etherpad-open-source-release

Is there any desire to develop something Drupal around this source-code, whether it is hooks into someone else's EtherPad service or a new module?

I can't believe it is totally worthless to this CMS.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

with it being acquired by google, it's probably going to go bye bye, lol.

ddalley’s picture

ddalley commented

Google is going to use the technology themselves, yes, but they are releasing the source code for the current EtherPad.

I can visualize uses for it in a good CMS, if you can't.

tinou’s picture

tinou commented

I certainly would like to see Etherpad as an editor in Drupal. It looks great for any community-oriented work, and Drupal is certainly deeply used by communities. But some questions about the integration are:

  • Etherpad is written in Java, who are the Drupal developers ready to dig into this ?
  • Drupal wants one author per node, Etherpad doesn't care, how do we match them ?
  • Etherpad is missing the "preview" feature that Drupal has for each node, and would probably not fit the input filter system ...
  • Are the chat, invite, import/export features, to be kept, dropped, split from the core and integrated as separate modules ?
sashainparis’s picture

sashainparis
Primary language French
Location Provins
commented

* Etherpad should be a wysiwyg module compatible editor
* The etherpad module will then deliver the html code to Drupal which will save it in any CCK text field (or body for the one who like it...)
* UID of the node is the one who decided to create the node: in other word we can easily benefit from Drupal permission system to allow access at node level - assuming we can use all the node access modules available for drupal :-)
* A part of the permissions are then managed at Wysiwyg / Filter level
* As permissions are managed at Drupal level, we do not need to interface with Pro Etherpad version: just make sure the drupal user login is given to etherpad as the current writer
* The CCK text field widget should use jquery regular udpate to give live reading to the reader of the node
* The CCK text field widget have to force the Etherpad wysiwyg filter on the node interface

What do you think?

Edit: I found this link http://groups.drupal.org/node/40488

https://asynchr.one

batsonjay’s picture

batsonjay
Location Boston, MA
commented

I _personally_ would love to see this. I have some personal related sites where this would be useful.

I'm not capable of helping much, though - I'm not really a techie. I do know how to build / deploy Java EAR files, but that's not much help....

So all I can do is lend moral support, and "wishes."

maxeeem’s picture

maxeeem commented

What about etherpad-lite?

https://github.com/Pita/etherpad-lite

It's all javascript based and even has a jQuery plugin. Seems like it could be easier to implement. I'm going to mess with it this weekend but i'm new to php so results are far from guaranteed. Any seasoned developers that are interested in integrating Etherpad Lite with Drupal?

webflo’s picture

webflo commented

Look into my development sandbox. Its etherpad lite as field. http://drupal.org/sandbox/webflo/1255474

maxeeem’s picture

maxeeem commented

Cool, i'll give it a spin tonight.

I was able to write a simple module last weekend which puts an etherpad in a block using iframe. It also takes the pathauto name of a node and uses it as a title for the etherpad. That pretty much accomplished what i wanted to use etherpad for but it will definitely be interesting to see somebody else's take on the problem.

Here's the functional part of my code. Please remember i'm a total n00b in php :)

 $node = request_path();
 $alias = explode('/', $node);
 $padID1 = "<iframe src='http://beta.etherpad.org/p/";
 $padID2 = "?showControls=true&showChat=true&showLineNumbers=true&useMonospaceFont=false' width=960 height=400></iframe>";
 $block['content'] = "$padID1$alias[1]$padID2";