SubEthaEdit Collaborative Writing/Coding Tool

This weekend Nick and I used SubEthaEdit to work on installment 4 of Implementation. SubEthaEdit is a great piece of freeware for Mac OSX, allowing multiple people to work on one document at one time, either on your local network via Rendezvous or over the Internet. A tool like this would make the kind of “jam session” writing that Dirk, William and I liked to do when we could get together in person while working on The Unknown a lot easier from remote locations.

The name of the software, which seemed strange to me, is from Douglas Adams. Cool:

The Guide was compiled by researchers roaming round the galaxy, beaming their copy in, which was then instantly available to anybody to read. Over, believe it or not, something called the SubEthaNet. […] I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course – the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end. But I did have the inkling of an idea that a collaborative guide, one that was written and kept up to date by the people who used it, in real time, might be a neat idea.

— Douglas Adams