An editing-based characterization of the design space of collaborative applications

The design space of collaborative applications is characterized using the notion of generalized multiuser editing. Generalized multiuser editing allows users to view interactive applications as editors of data structures. It offers several collaboration functions, which allow users to collaboratively edit application data structures. These functions include coupling, concurrency control, access control, and multiuser undo. Coupling allows the users to share editing changes, access control and concurrency control prevent them from making unauthorized and inconsistent changes, respectively, and multiuser undo allows them collaboratively to undo or redo changes. These functions must be performed flexibly to accommodate different applications, users, phases of collaboration, and bandwidths of the communication links. In this paper, we define and motivate the notion of generalized multiuser editing and describe some of the issues, approaches, tradeoffs, principles, and requirements related to the design of the functions offered by it.