writing software which plays back all the changes a text go through

March 25, 2011 5:59 AM

i saw a video of software that played back the history of how a text was written, showing all the changes the text went through. I can't remember whether it was existing software or a mock up. Do you know what it was?
posted by compound eye to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

Response by poster: clearly you needed to develop the text with this piece of software, you couldn't just drop in shakespeare and see how he did it, that would have been a big clue that it was just a mock up
posted by compound eye at 6:05 AM on March 25, 2011

Are you thinking of Google Wave?
posted by Andrhia at 6:07 AM on March 25, 2011

Response by poster: I could be,
I was hoping it wasn't because isn't that gone now?
posted by compound eye at 6:08 AM on March 25, 2011

Response by poster: oh it's still there for now
posted by compound eye at 6:09 AM on March 25, 2011

Response by poster: Yeah it might have been,
maybe I'll set something up with subversion instead then

thank you Andrhia,

I'll leave the question open a bit longer in the faint hope that someone might know something that does exactly what i was imagining
posted by compound eye at 6:17 AM on March 25, 2011

Were you thinking along the lines of IBM's History Flow?
posted by anildash at 6:33 AM on March 25, 2011

This reminds me of Heavy Metal Umlaut, it's an animation of the evolution of a Wikipedia page.
posted by Tom-B at 7:00 AM on March 25, 2011

Best answer: Paul Graham writing an essay in EtherPad? (no longer available since EtherPad shut down)
posted by djb at 7:14 AM on March 25, 2011

Best answer: The main Etherpad site has been shut down, but you can still use the software on a number of sites. I like iEtherpad the best---free for public documents or private/group accounts.
posted by aparrish at 7:16 AM on March 25, 2011

Doesn't Wikipedia do that?
posted by musofire at 9:51 AM on March 25, 2011

Response by poster: thank you all those things are very interesting, and in some way achieve what i am looking for.

Etherpad does exactly what I remember, so chances are it's probably the tool from the video I half-remember.

Best of all, it's open source, so I'll download it and have go.
posted by compound eye at 4:07 PM on March 25, 2011

Response by poster: eg. wikipedia, or wave,

I remember a video which you were able to replay each keystroke and past, not just committed edits
posted by compound eye at 4:09 PM on March 25, 2011

on OSX iTerm2 has a replay feature.... it can record terminal sessions and replay them like a video.
posted by TravellingDen at 9:33 PM on March 25, 2011