A collaborative table editing technique based on transparent adaptation

Abstract

Tables are an efficient means to organize information. Collaboration is important for table editing. In this paper, we report an innovative technique, called CoTable, for supporting collaborative table editing in both table-centric and word-centric complex documents. This collaborative table editing technique is based on the Transparent Adaptation approach and hence applicable to commercial off-the-shelf single-user editing applications. Key technical elements of the CoTable technique include: (1) techniques for adapting a variety of table-related data address models, accessible from the single-user Application Programming Interface (API), to that of the underlying Operational Transformation (OT) technique; and (2) techniques for translating user-level table editing operations into the primitive operations supported by OT. The CoTable technique has been implemented in the CoWord system, and CoWord-specific table processing issues and techniques are discussed in detail as well.