In this article I will show you how to install and use Kobby as a collaborative text editor.

Installation

Installation of Kobby is simple, especially if you are already running the KDE desktop. If not, then you will have to install the KDE desktop as well. If you prefer the GNOME desktop then you have two choices:

• Use Gobby.
• Install KDE (and Kobby) and use Kobby from GNOME.

Either way is a win. So pick your poison and continue on. I am going to assume you already have KDE installed on your machine. So in order to install Kobby all you need to do is fire up your Add/Remove Software tool (Synaptic, Ubuntu Software Center, gnome-packagekit, etc), search for “kobby” (no quotes), mark for installation, and click Apply to install. That’s it. Once installed you are ready to collaborate!

Setup

Figure 1

When open up Kobby for the first time you will have to walk through a setup wizard. This “wizard” really has only one step which is the reation of a profile (with nickname and hostname). Once you have done that the main Kobby window will open (see Figure 1) .  Let’s first connect to a Gobby host on another machine.  Their are two (sometimes three) pieces of information you will need:

IP Address of host.

Port.

Password (if applicable).

To create the connection  click on the Remote tab and click the Create Connection button. This will open up a new window where you enter the details for the remote machine. Do this and click OK. If the server is running a compatible server (such as infinote) Kobby

Figure 2

will connect (as shown in Figure 2). In order to actually collaborate you have to open up a collaborative document. To do this right click on the “/” in the left-most pane, select New Document, and then give your new document a name.

When your new document opens you will see the text of your document (once there is text) in the center pane along with users who are collaborating in the lower right-most pane, and the documents available in the upper right-most pane.

The text editor itself is not quite as basic as some of the other editors we have looked at. It features:

• Line numbers.
• Dynamic word wrap.
• Undo/Redo.
• Highlighting.
• Indentation.
• Encoding.
• Word completion.
• Spell check.

and more. Naturally the most appealing feature of this editor is the collaborative nature.

Once you have completed collaboration you can then save your document on both remote and local hosts.

Final thoughts

The collaborative text editor is a really great tool for a lot of situations. Instead of passing documents (or emails) back and forth to get your work done, collaborate in real time, thanks to tools like Kobby, Gobby, and Infinote.

Update: The Kobby homepage is no longer available

The program will automatically display all available and supported audio and video devices during first run. To start a video conference users need to be selected from the address book. The first step after installation of the software is therefor to add users to the address book. The username that was registered at the iVisit website needs to be added to add the user to the software program.

It is then possible to call or send messages to users that have been added to the address book. The sharing tools can be used to share documents with another user. It is for instance possible to share documents, presentations, applications, web browsers and even the whole desktop.

Presentation Sharing

Web Browser Sharing

The software is available for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh computers. A mobile version is also available for Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional. Interested users can download the video conferencing and collaboration software at the iVisit website.

The session starter selects an application to share, for example a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The shared document will be displayed brighter in this case than the parts of the desktop that are not shared. It is furthermore possible to post additional files that every user can access. Lastly it is possible to preview the desktop how users who join would see it.

Several options are available:

A toolbar will be displayed on the top of the screen that can be used to start and join sessions and to access the options. An option to share documents is offered in selected Microsoft applications after installation of the software. Invited users can take control of a session to work on the document. Changes are automatically tracked and logged so that everyone can identify which user made the changes to the document.

Microsoft SharedView offers a way to quickly share and work together with multiple users on documents.

The difficult part begins to combine and make use of that feedback without loosing control. If you do that in Microsoft Word or any other desktop text editor you will most likely wind up with multiple documents opened in tabs or windows trying desperately to align them comfortably.

Text Flow is an online collaboration software using Adobe Flash and Adobe Air that allows the user to compare and display multiple versions of a document online. With Text Flow it is just a matter of dragging and dropping the documents into the interface to visualize all comments and changes made by other authors who worked with the document.

Check out the Text Flow online demo to see how the system works.

There are obviously other ways to handle the problem of receiving feedback from multiple colleagues. If time is not a issue you could make the colleagues work on one document only that gets send to each of them successively.

Other services like Google Docs offer basic collaboration features but they are not always allowed to use depending on the company you work for.