CoWord Collaboration-Specific
Features
Co-Existing
with Single-User Word
Unconstrained
Collaborative Editing
Consistency Maintenance and Users' Work Preservation
Concurrent Editing
and Commenting in the Same Document
Asymmetric
Collaboration Modes
Detailed
Workspace Awareness Support
This new CoWord version has a significant
improvement in robustness (stability) and performance over prior CoWord demo
versions, and includes new collaboration features (as described below). This
document focuses on CoWord collaboration-specific features. For collaborative
editing features, please refer to CoWord Collaborative Editing features. For
instructions on using CoWord, please refer to CoWord User Manual.
Word Versions Supported
The new CoWord version supports Microsoft Word 2000, XP (2002) and 2003.
Moreover, it supports heterogeneous real-time collaboration by allowing users to use different
Word versions (2000, XP, or 2003) to edit the same document at the same
time.
Co-Existing with Single-User Word 
While collaboratively editing document with CoWord, you can also edit
your local documents with the single-user Word.
Unconstrained Collaborative Editing
Users may edit any objects of any type (e.g. formatted texts, graphic objects, clip-art objects,
tables, bulleting and numbering, paragraph alignment, etc.) at any granularity (down to individual
text characters, graphic lines, etc.) at anytime, including the same time (real-time) and different times.
Consistency Maintenance and Users' Work
Preservation
CoWord automatically preserves consistency of document
copies at distributed sites in the same session in the face of concurrent
editing operations. It also preserves all users work effort in the face of
conflicts.
Concurrent Editing and Commenting in the
Same Document
CoWord allows users to create and edit comments in the
document at any time concurrently with other editing operations.
Selective Undo
CoWord allows users to
undo any operations performed by any user at anytime. In particular, CoWord
provides two undo modes:
·
The Local Undo
mode chronologically undoes the local user’s operations.
·
The Global Undo mode chronologically undoes
the all user’s operations.
Note:
The undo modes can be selected in the Options window of CoWord.
Asymmetric Collaboration Modes
In a collaboration
session, a user may be in one of the following two different modes:
a.
Public
mode: the
local user's operations are propagated to all remote users. This is the default
mode.
b.
Private
mode: the
local user's operations are executed locally but not propagated to remote
sites. The private user can receive other public users' operations. This mode
is particularly useful for users who want to receive other users' inputs but
want to keep their own inputs private.
Note:
The user can click the Enter Private Mode button on the CoWord
toolbar to enter the private mode.
Once a user is in the
private mode, she/he has to stay in this mode for the entire session (cannot go
back to the public mode), which is an implementation restriction and shall be
relaxed in the future.
In the private mode, the
user cannot activate or stay in the Single Actor/View modes (see below) since
these modes are incompatible with the private mode.
Flexible Interaction Control
CoWord supports the
following interaction control modes:
a.
Multi-Actor
mode: multiple
users can edit the document at the same time. This is the default mode.
b.
Single-Actor
mode: only
one user can edit the document at any instance of time (users may take turns to act). The user can click the Switch to Single-Actor Mode button on the CoWord toolbar to switch
from the Multi-Actor mode to the Single-Actor mode.
c.
Multi-View
mode: multiple users may view
different portions of the document, or view the document in different formats
or from different user interface modes (supported by Word) at the same time.
d.
Single-View
mode: all
users can view the same portion of the document in the same format and from the
same user interface mode. The user can
click the Switch to Single-Actor Mode button on the CoWord toolbar to switch
from the Multi-View mode to the Single-View mode.
Detailed Workspace Awareness Support
a.
Collaborator identities: users may view information about other
collaborators in the same session.
b.
Telepointers: CoWord supports telepointers to indicate
remote users' mice positions.
c.
Radar views: CoWord supports radar views to indicate
the locations of remote users' view ports.
d.
Notification of remote operations
¨
Audio notification: different sounds are played to indicate
the execution of different types of remote operations.
¨
Visual notification: an image flashes to indicate the effect region and type of a remote operation, as well
as the location of the remote cursor.
e.
Collaborative text inputs highlighting
Texts
inserted by collaborating users are highlighted by different colors. This
highlighting can be saved and stay across different sessions. This feature can
be regarded as a lightweight version of the real-time collaborative change tracking mode (see below).
Note:
¨
The
user can click the Highlight
Collaborators’ Input with Colors button on the CoWord toolbar to enter/leave the highlighting mode.
¨
The
user can click the Remove Input
Highlights button on the CoWord
toolbar to remove the colors from the text.
f.
Real-time collaborative change tracking: This is a multi-user version of the
Word's single-user tracking feature: multi-users' inputs are tracked and
automatically merged in real-time. This feature is more sophisticated than the collaborative text inputs highlighting feature
since it can track all kinds of operation (insert, delete, and update) and
maintain all users' identities and change dates/times.
Detailed UI Notification
CoWord notifies the user when the following events
occur:
a.
Operation conflict: two updates on the same attribute of the same
object concurrently.
b.
Over-shadowed undo effect: the effect of undoing an operation is overshadowed
by other operations.
c.
Collaborating user joining/leaving: new users join an session
or existing users leave a session.
d.
Unsupported features: the user tries to trigger a Word function that is
not supported in the current CoWord version.
Features Unsupported or with Limited
Support
Note: The following features are not fully supported in
the current CoWord version. Intensive use of limitedly supported features may
cause document inconsistency.
a. Graphic objects grouping and ungrouping are not
included in this demo.
b. Support for table editing is limited.
c. Support for itemization/enumeration is limited.
d. Some short-cuts are not supported.
e. Mouse double-clicks and right clicks in Word
workspace are not supported.
f. Word menu items and toolbar buttons associated with
unsupported functions are disabled in Word user interface.
The
above features shall be gradually added to the future versions of CoWord.
However,
if you are the only user in all collaborative editing sessions you participate
in, you can use all Word functions.