CoWord is a software add-on to Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...

 to enable multiple users to edit the same document over the Internet with MS Word. It is a part of the CoOffice

CoOffice

CoOffice is a suite of software tools intended to allow real time collaborative work in Microsoft Office programs. At present the most notable functional tool within CoOffice is the CoWord plugin that converts Microsoft Word into a collaborative real-time editor.It is developed in academia by...

 suite of collaboration tools for Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...

.

CoWord can be considered as a collaborative real-time editor, with the editor being MS Word (which is not distributed with CoWord). To use CoWord, users need to supply their own copies of MS Word.

As of August 2010, CoWord has become CodoxWord, released by CodoxWare.

Technology

One of the main challenges in building collaborative real-time editors is in concurrency control

Concurrency control

In information technology and computer science, especially in the fields of computer programming , operating systems , multiprocessors, and databases, concurrency control ensures that correct results for concurrent operations are generated, while getting those results as quickly as possible.Computer...

. 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

Operational transformation

Operational transformation is a technology for supporting a range of collaboration functionalities in advanced groupware systems. OT was originally invented for consistency maintenance and concurrency control in collaborative editing of plain text documents...

 are: ACE

ACE (editor)

ACE - a collaborative editor is a platform-independent, collaborative real-time editor. It is a real-time cooperative editing system that allows multiple geographically dispersed users to view and edit a shared text document at the same time.-Introduction:...

, Gobby

Gobby

Gobby is a free software collaborative real-time editor available on Windows and Unix-like platforms. It was initially released in June 2005 by the 0x539 dev group....

, and Subethaedit

SubEthaEdit

SubEthaEdit is a collaborative real-time editor designed for Mac OS X. The name comes from the Sub-Etha communication network in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series....

.

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

• CoWord Home page
• CoWord demonstration in ACM CSCW 2004 conference
• Adaption technology used build CoWord
• The operational transformation algorithm used by CoWord
• OTFAQ: Operational Transformation Frequently Asked Questions and Answers
• Presentation of CoWord technology to Microsoft Research (Video)
• CodoxWord and CodoxWare