A minimalist approach to the development of a word processor supporting group writing activities

Abstract

Group-writing, in which a document is jointly produced by a team of writers, occurs widely in science and in industry. There are now a number of products and research tools designed to support group-writing teams. Most, however, require use of non-mainstream word-processing systems, and assume that full information is available through a network to mediate conflicts. Tlds paper reports research on group-writing tools that deviate as little as possible from conventional word processors and assume only intermittent network connection for document exchange and conflict resolution. GroupWn.ter can be used by some people in a collaborative team as a conventional word processor, by others as a versioning and text/sound annotation system, and by others as a full hypertext system all while working with the same corpus of documents. It offers fill typographic and page layout facilities and imports typographic text from, andl exports to, the mainstream commercial word pmeessors.