1st International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing

Research Article

Syntax-based reconciliation for asynchronous collaborative writing

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/COLCOM.2005.1651243,
        author={Haifeng Shen and Chengzheng Sun},
        title={Syntax-based reconciliation for asynchronous collaborative writing},
        proceedings={1st International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={COLLABORATECOM},
        year={2006},
        month={7},
        keywords={Collaboration  Collaborative work  Computer networks  Documentation  Merging  Processor scheduling  Product design  Productivity  Sun  Writing},
        doi={10.1109/COLCOM.2005.1651243}
    }
    
  • Haifeng Shen
    Chengzheng Sun
    Year: 2006
    Syntax-based reconciliation for asynchronous collaborative writing
    COLLABORATECOM
    IEEE
    DOI: 10.1109/COLCOM.2005.1651243
Haifeng Shen1,*, Chengzheng Sun1,*
  • 1: School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798
*Contact email: ashfshen@ntu.edu.sg, czsun@ntu.edu.sg

Abstract

With the rapid popularity of computer networks, collaborative document writing becomes increasingly desirable in recent years. In practice, collaborative writing is more likely to be done in an asynchronous manner, where collaborators usually work in parallel with different time schedules and are not present at the same time. Merging is the key technique to support concurrent writing and textual merging remains the primary and the only successful merging function to date. However, most of existing systems support constrained textual merging for the simplicity of the underling merging algorithms. In this paper, we propose a flexible operation-based syntactic textual merging algorithm that is capable of reconciling changes made in parallel by different users according to the syntax of the files to be merged or user-specified merging policies. Moreover, this syntax-based reconciliation algorithm is able to preserve the intentions of individual changes.