SubEthaEdit is a collaborative real-time editor designed for Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

. The name comes from the Sub-Etha communication network in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...

series.

Apart from the usual text-editing capabilities, collaborative editing is one of SubEthaEdit's marquee features. The collaboration is document

Document

The term document has multiple meanings in ordinary language and in scholarship. WordNet 3.1. lists four meanings :* document, written document, papers...

-based, non-locking, and non-blocking. Anyone participating in the collaborative edit can type in the document anywhere at any time. Using Bonjour

Bonjour (software)

In computing, Bonjour is Apple Inc.'s trade name for its implementation of Zeroconf, a group of technologies that includes service discovery, address assignment, and name resolution...

 (formerly Rendezvous) and BEEP

BEEP

In computer networking, BEEP is a framework for creating network application protocols. It includes an application protocol kernel for connection-oriented asynchronous interactions, and can be used both for binary and text messages within the context of a single application user identity.BEEP is...

, SubEthaEdit works without any configuration on the LAN

Län

Län and lääni refer to the administrative divisions used in Sweden and previously in Finland. The provinces of Finland were abolished on January 1, 2010....

 but can also coordinate collaborative editing over the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

. SubEthaEdit is particularly popular for distributed pair programming

Pair programming

Pair programming is an agile software development technique in which two programmers work together at one workstation. One, the driver, types in code while the other, the observer , reviews each line of code as it is typed in...

 and collaborative note-taking in conferences. TheCodingMonkeys licensed this "Subetha Engine" for use in Coda

Coda (web development software)

Coda is a commercial and proprietary web development application for Mac OS X, developed by Panic. It was released on April 23, 2007. It won the 2007 Apple Design Award for Best User Experience. It is available for $99. - Concept and idea :...

  in 2007.

Other SubEthaEdit features include:

• Regular expression
  Regular expression
  In computing, a regular expression provides a concise and flexible means for "matching" strings of text, such as particular characters, words, or patterns of characters. Abbreviations for "regular expression" include "regex" and "regexp"...
  
   search and replace in many regexp dialects
• Customizable syntax highlighting
  Syntax highlighting
  Syntax highlighting is a feature of some text editors that display text—especially source code—in different colors and fonts according to the category of terms. This feature eases writing in a structured language such as a programming language or a markup language as both structures and...
  
   and symbol pop-up for more than twenty languages
  Programming language
  A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
  
   — and over 40 user contributed languages.
• Full line-ending and character encoding
  Character encoding
  A character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...
  
   support (including Unicode
  Unicode
  Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
  
  )
• Live-updating preview of rendered HTML documents using WebKit
  WebKit
  WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook...
  
  

SubEthaEdit was first released under the name Hydra in early 2003. For legal reasons, the name was changed to SubEthaEdit in late 2004. The first version of Hydra was built in just a few months with the intent of winning an Apple Design Award, which it did at Apple's

Apple Computer

Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...

 Worldwide Developers Conference

Worldwide Developers Conference

The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, commonly abbreviated WWDC, is a conference held annually in California by Apple Inc. The conference is primarily used by Apple to showcase its new software and technologies for developers, as well as offering hands-on labs and feedback sessions...

 2003.

External links

• Subetha Engine - website of the collaboration engine behind SubEthaEdit
• Official SubEthaEdit website
• Wikipedia syntax mode for SubEthaEdit