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The Open Collaboration Tools

typefox.io

177 pointstodsacerdoti15 comments

Wow, this feels pretty big. As a openvscode-server user (maybe switching to Eclipse Theia), the lack of ability to remote collab with "Microsoft VSCode" users was always a bit annoying. The TypeFox folks continue to impress, and I feel like this hints that there is collaboration between them and Theia folks.

I'm curious if openvscode-server will end up slowly getting replaced by Theia, if Theia really lives up to its promises.

> "TypeFox folks continue to impress, and I feel like this hints that there is collaboration between them and Theia folks."

There's already been collaboration for years? Mark Sujew (one of the article coauthors) is a pretty active contributor to Eclipse Theia AFAIK.

From https://github.com/msujew :

"I act as a project lead for the Langium and Theia projects at the Eclipse Foundation.

I work at TypeFox."

> I feel like this hints that there is collaboration between them and Theia folks

The Typefox homepage says:

> Software tools we have created: Sprotty, Langium, Theia

> one person starts a collaboration session as host and invites others to join. The IDE extension distributes the contents of the hostʼs workspace and highlights text selections and cursor positions of other participants. In parallel, they get together in their favorite meeting or chat app for immediate discussion.

I really hope I'm not being the "Dropbox is just rsync" guy, here, but...how is this preferable to the host screen-sharing via that same meeting or chat app?

The largest difference is everyone who joins would be editing the code like it's a Google Doc instead of having a read-only view of the host's screen; you still end up having to join some kind of voice chat (unless maybe there's an IDE VOIP integration I don't know about in some of these tools!). I haven't used this specifically, so I can't say how well it pulls it off.

However, from the few times I've used VS Live Share, it has been helpful being able to join into someone's coding session and pair with their code directly. Both of us being able to highlight and tweak lines as we're talking did wonders to remove the "add x, no, sorry, not there, the next line/parameter/<item I referenced too vaguely>" or "show me y, now z, wait, go back to y" song and dance routines.

It's not necessarily a game changer for the way every person or team works, but as someone who has an easier time forming a mental model of everything happening when I'm "in" the code, there have been times I think it's saved a lot of back-and-forth compared to a traditional screen share.

Oh! It was not clear to me at first that this was non-read-only, though in hindsight I should have concluded as much from the phrase "see what the others are looking at and and [sic, whoops!] what changes they propose in real-time". Makes sense, thank you!

> how is this preferable to the host screen-sharing via that same meeting or chat app?

Higher quality at lower bandwidth, should handle different screen sizes more elegantly

Would it be theoretically possible to get this working in one of the "highly highly" editors like Vim/Neovim, Emacs, etc?

By the looks of it, the announcement webpage also breaks Tridactyl unnecessarily, so I doubt they are interested in supporting *vim... Joking aside, I would be shocked if someone doesn't quickly write a plugin for at least Neovim to support this.

> "highly highly" editors

What does that mean?

Having used Emacs for decades I get the sentiment, but unfamiliar with the idiom

Stupid autocorrect thing, I meant "highly programmable".

This is an open source verfsion of MS Live Share for VS Code, by the look of it.

> This way of remote collaboration reduces confusion and maximizes productivity.

[citation needed]

Very interested in this.

I see there's a YJS provider in the repo.

I assume this is the Monaco support TFA alluded to.

Is this provider ready for use right now or are there limitations?

Also how well does this scale for one to many sessions?

Yjs is used for synchronization of distributed editing, not just for Monaco but for VS Code and Theia, too. The Monaco integration is currently in the making. Once it's ready, there will be an example page on the open-collab.tools website where you can connect with others and work with a single editor.

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