XEP-0058: Multi-User Text Editing

Abstract: This document defines how several people may simultaneously edit text.
Author: Alexey Shchepin
Copyright: © 2002 – 2002 XMPP Standards Foundation. SEE LEGAL NOTICES.
Status: Deferred
WARNING: This document has been automatically Deferred after 12 months of inactivity in its previous Experimental state. Implementation of the protocol described herein is not recommended for production systems. However, exploratory implementations are encouraged to resume the standards process.
Type: Standards Track
Version: 0.1 (2002-11-12)

Document Lifecycle

Experimental
Deferred
Proposed
Stable
Final

1. Introduction¶

This document defines an XMPP protocol extension for editing one text document by several people. This can be useful when several people write different parts of one single document, or one person edits the text and other people can see the changes. The advantage of using this protocol in compared to using a version control systems is that all changes are distributed between editors in real-time.

2. Protocol description¶

To start editing a file, the user must subscribe to it on special "server" The server stores text files. A User first can ask for list of these documents.

After that the server returns a list of the documents. For each list item an ID and description is given.

Then the user can send a subscribe request to the server by sending the documents ID. Attribute type can be rdwr for full access or rdonly for read-only access.

After successful subscription, the server sends the full contents of the document to the new editor.

If an editor wants to commit the changes he made, then he sends a patch file to this text in GNU diff(1) unified format without first two lines (they specify file names and modification dates, that is not needed).

If server accepts the patch, then it resends it to all subscribed text editors and readers.

If server receives an error IQ reply from one of the editors/readers on any of above requests, then it must remove him from subscribers list and may send a message to him about this.

3. Formal Definitions¶

Appendices

Appendix A: Document Information¶

Appendix B: Author Information¶

Alexey Shchepin

Appendix C: Legal Notices¶

Copyright

Permissions

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this specification (the "Specification"), to make use of the Specification without restriction, including without limitation the rights to implement the Specification in a software program, deploy the Specification in a network service, and copy, modify, merge, publish, translate, distribute, sublicense, or sell copies of the Specification, and to permit persons to whom the Specification is furnished to do so, subject to the condition that the foregoing copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Specification. Unless separate permission is granted, modified works that are redistributed shall not contain misleading information regarding the authors, title, number, or publisher of the Specification, and shall not claim endorsement of the modified works by the authors, any organization or project to which the authors belong, or the XMPP Standards Foundation.

Disclaimer of Warranty

## NOTE WELL: This Specification is provided on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, express or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. ##

Limitation of Liability

In no event and under no legal theory, whether in tort (including negligence), contract, or otherwise, unless required by applicable law (such as deliberate and grossly negligent acts) or agreed to in writing, shall the XMPP Standards Foundation or any author of this Specification be liable for damages, including any direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages of any character arising from, out of, or in connection with the Specification or the implementation, deployment, or other use of the Specification (including but not limited to damages for loss of goodwill, work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all other commercial damages or losses), even if the XMPP Standards Foundation or such author has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

IPR Conformance

This XMPP Extension Protocol has been contributed in full conformance with the XSF's Intellectual Property Rights Policy (a copy of which can be found at <https://xmpp.org/about/xsf/ipr-policy> or obtained by writing to XMPP Standards Foundation, P.O. Box 787, Parker, CO 80134 USA).

Visual Presentation

The HTML representation (you are looking at) is maintained by the XSF. It is based on the YAML CSS Framework, which is licensed under the terms of the CC-BY-SA 2.0 license.

Appendix D: Relation to XMPP¶

The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is defined in the XMPP Core (RFC 6120) and XMPP IM (RFC 6121) specifications contributed by the XMPP Standards Foundation to the Internet Standards Process, which is managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force in accordance with RFC 2026. Any protocol defined in this document has been developed outside the Internet Standards Process and is to be understood as an extension to XMPP rather than as an evolution, development, or modification of XMPP itself.

Appendix E: Discussion Venue¶

The primary venue for discussion of XMPP Extension Protocols is the <standards@xmpp.org> discussion list.

Discussion on other xmpp.org discussion lists might also be appropriate; see <https://xmpp.org/community/> for a complete list.

Appendix F: Requirements Conformance¶

The following requirements keywords as used in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119: "MUST", "SHALL", "REQUIRED"; "MUST NOT", "SHALL NOT"; "SHOULD", "RECOMMENDED"; "SHOULD NOT", "NOT RECOMMENDED"; "MAY", "OPTIONAL".