SimpleText.ws sharing documents #2

Last week I posted a geeky way for sharing documents on SimpleText.ws. Since then I’ve had a few requests from people who want to hack the open source SimpleText.ws server code to make this process easier. So here are some thoughts on how to do it:

• First, as shown in the last post, the server code already supports document sharing. I don’t think any major modifications need to be done to the open source python files the run SimpleText.ws on Google App Engine.
• Second, I think the proper place to add the document sharing UI is in the Javascript front end to the website. That front end is download when you visit your document page, and then all of your document access is done via async Javascript calls to the server.

The end UI might be as simple as just adding a new text field somewhere, that allows you to enter the email addresses of everyone that needs access to the document. And for starters, dont’ worry about email addresses, just use the the user_id’s that the server uses. Later I can write something on the server to translate between emails and user_ids.

Right now the Javascript front end is coded in Googles GWT environment. I did this because I don’t know Javascript and GWT allowed me to write in Java with a debugger. Once setup this system works quite well, but it’s rather complex to setup.

If someone’s a Javascript framework expert and wants to rewrite the existing logic in pure Javascript that might be a better approach. I’m sure I could catch up, I just am not comfortable enough with Javascript to start a whole new project in it at this point. I think taking GWT out of the picture would make the project easier for other people to hack on in the end. I’ve been looking a bit at Cappuccino and Sproutcore wondering if they would be a better option.

At the moment I don’t really have time to work on this project, but I’d be happy to help answer any questions if someone else wants to take it on.