One of the questions I often see is, “how can I collaborate in real time with Emacs?” This may be because a couple of programmers want to do some remote pair programming or because two or more people want to collaborate on a paper they’re writing with Org-mode. Until recently, I didn’t have a good answer—Magit, Emacs, blah blah blah—but the ever resourceful Mike Zamanksy has the answer in the latest video of his Using Emacs Series.
In the video, Using Emacs 69 Floobits, Zamansky demonstrates how to use Floobits. It works with Emacs, Atom, Neovim, and a couple of other editors. This is really good news for Emacs users because for the first time there’s a good solution for realtime collaboration.
Zamansky is, of course, a teacher so his interest is mainly in negotiating the learn-from-home regime necessitated by COVID-19 but useful though it is for teachers, Floobits is a boon to those of us outside of education. It’s a boon for the same reason it is for education: it allows two or more Emacs users to collaborate in real time. If nothing else, it’s an answer to those who say, “I have to use Google Docs so I can collaborate with my coauthors.”
Floobits is a bit like the early GitHub. You can get a free account but your workspaces are pubic. If you want private workspace, you have to buy a subscription but they’re not too expensive and well worth the expense if you really need the live collaboration.
The video is 15 minutes, 43 seconds so plan accordingly. If you have any interest at all in realtime collaboration and you’re an Emacs user, you’ll find it well worth your while.