It’s been my goal since the day I started paste2 to figure out how I can bring something new to the pastebin concept. I’ve targetted performance (already fast, but improved again in the new code), tried to make the interface as uncluttered as possible (which is also much improved in the new code) and paste2 is about to get the Akamai treatment on it’s assets with the new code. Not wanting to just compete and be like other pastebins, I’ve been trying to figure out – for over 3 years now in fact, where pastebins should go next. I’m absolutely convinced now that the next step for pastebins is ‘live’ real-time collaberative editing.
After seeing this happening in a IRC channel not long back, being done inside an editor that is really designed for creating word processed style documents, but with code, I’m absolutely sure it’s the way forward.
The problem of course is that this stuff isn’t easy. I already have a plan to do it using some parts of google mobwrite, and building the server side in PHP because it’ll be faster – and I’ll trust myself more if a bug comes up to know the language ins and outs, which while I can write Python I don’t really trust it or myself. I could easily just do it easily using mobwrite in it’s entirety but the performance wouldn’t be great, and like I said – if something came up it’d probably push my Python knowledge.
Problem is getting it done. I was thinking about (and started) writing the whole thing into the new code, but I’ve changed my mind – I’m going to push the new code out on the new application server, then start working on that.
There’s some other good pastebins around, since paste2 came on the scene (at the time pastebin.com was down basically all the time) some other new ones have popped up and are helping improve the competition in the ‘market’, which can’t be a bad thing. Even pastebin.com has had a redesign now (after being sold).
I wholeheartedly agree! Since there is gist.github.com I realized how convenient it is to have the possibility to paste something and have others revise it.
While not really related with pastebins I would like to see IRC being rewritten. It stems from a time when people used terminals to communicate and had slow 2400 baud lines.
Today it would be so much nicer to have IRC channels with connected collab-spaces (not as a web-service, but part of the protocol) with firewall-proof file-exchange, private messaging, VoIP and collab editing as well as organizing. A crossover of IRC+XDCC, Google Wave, Google Docs and VoIP. But not as something new, instead as “IRC NextGeneration”.
Oh my!
Till then I would like to have a pastebin, that lets us set up temporal workspaces, with a simple (! git may be too resource-hungry) history-control, the possibility to take any text from the history, edit it (collab if desired), making it a new revision, and also (!) be able to share pictures and other binaries like PDFs.
For example, right now I hang around on freenode, trying to put together an xsl-fo. I talk with people. We have so much to write in the chan, that could be much more easily expressed in code in a collab editor. In addition I need to post my experimental PDF output so the others see what is going on.
And always keep an API!
Have you tried Mozilla’s Bespin editor? It’s collab, has a plugin interface and a (pseudo?)-shell to the server.
I have seen it, played with it. It’s definitely got potential. When I first looked at it I was looking for something a bit richer for the main static paste some text and ‘let me get on with’ it interface, I decided it was a bit chunky.
That said, for a collaborative interface it obviously matters less about the weight of the thing and is on my list. The server stuff I may rewrite but the client side is well put together.
gist.github.com is a great tool, though for most people’s needs of course it’s too much. Most of the traffic paste2 gets isn’t even code so there’s room for a middle ground. Most people who use paste2 probably don’t know what git is and probably don’t care so a pure dev solution probably isn’t going to get it done. I want the new pase2 to be as good for Joe Average readers with no interest in creating pastes as it is for developers to create pastes.
The new code does better with trees of pastes (you can see the entire tree all the way to the root paste down to the bottom all at once), and has graphical 2-way diffs to compare any paste with another even if they’re not in the same tree. Combined with the way paste2 releases old pastes bad revisions will get thrown out of the tree and useful items are kept without any intervention.
Thanks for the comments.