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Today we are pleased to announce the first post-summer release of TextFlow. There are three points I want to mention with this new release.

Firstly, this new release is our first step towards significant speed improvements when working with large documents. We anticipate further new releases in the coming weeks that will improve working with large documents even more, but already now you should notice that you can work with much larger documents than has been possible up to now. Changes in both the client and the server (WeaveSync) components have been made to speed up both editing and comparing large documents.

The second change is a simplification to the document version list in TextFlow. The previous version was confusing for some users and we feel that the new version list is more intuitive.

Finally we have been working on improving compatibility with Microsoft Word documents. We have been able to make a number of improvements here and we hope that any documents you might have been having problems with before will work now.  If you are still experiencing problems with a particular document, please don’t forget that you can easily submit a bug report to us from within TextFlow.

As usual, TextFlow will automatically upgrade to the latest version next time you run it.

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Posted by Tim

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Today we respond to user feedback by announcing a minor new release of TextFlow.

The most important new feature is that TextFlow now preserves all formatting, style, background images, headers and footers when importing and then later exporting a Word document. The first Word document imported when starting on a new document defines a style “template” that is applied on subsequent exports back to Word. This means that you will no longer lose your custom Word styles, headers, letterheads, etc.   (Please note that embedded images and tables are still not supported in TextFlow.) 

This release marks the first step in our vision to make moving between Word and TextFlow as smooth as possible, and testing of this feature has gone so well that we decided to make an interim release.

This collage shows the original Word document to the left, the document being edited in TextFlow in the middle, and finally the exported result to the right.

The second new feature is that it is now possible to rename a document. However, there is a minor restriction: you are not allowed to rename a document that has already been shared, as this may create confusing situations where different users have different names it.

Finally, we have increased the maximum allowed length of a password for TextFlow from 10 characters up to 25.

As always, existing users of TextFlow will automatically upgrade next time they launch TextFlow.

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Today we release a new version of TextFlow, that introduces an enhanced user interface for document sharing. Share documents just as you would by email with the standard “To:” “CC:” “BCC:” fields.

This change from the previous version is subtle, but profound. Why is mail still the most used collaboration tool? One reason is that it’s so easy with mail to decide exactly who sees what, when sharing a work process. Sometimes you choose to CC:. You might go first for feedback to one group of people (say your colleagues), then to another group (maybe your customer). Maybe you want a lawyer’s opinion, or an accountant’s, before making a suggestion that others would hold you to. Email is great for this, because it’s decentralised. It also can be confusing, for the same reason. The new sharing interface in TextFlow supports the de-centralized approach of email — anyone can invite and exclude anyone — yet gives an overview of the different versions and easy collation of them.

You now have a single unified view of your incoming and outgoing TextFlow e-versions. Here you can quickly select the drafts you are interested in, and compare them.

Sharing a draft within TextFlow is now just like sending e-mail, and it shows up as e-mail. Your colleagues don’t need to install or download any software to be able to help with the document. They just click in your e-mail and they are up and running with TextFlow, right in their browser.

This release takes us one step closer to our goal of decentralised collaboration, where every user is free to collaborate how they like, with whom they like and when they like, and without needing to study a manual on how to categorize their contacts.

Don’t forget, you can always click on the Help button within TextFlow for more information about the new features.

Posted by Mark

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Today we are releasing the next version of TextFlow. This version comes with some major new features.

TextFlow can now store all documents and versions in a “Document home” on the TextFlow server. The new version also allows you to invite co-writers directly to TextFlow. New writers receive a secure link in an e-mail whenever you want to share a version. The secure link starts TextFlow directly in the browser without the need for them to install TextFlow or even create a TextFlow account.

 TextFlow Document Home

 TextFlow Editor with Version panel

This new version of TextFlow takes us a big step towards our long term goal: Allowing users to have their entire document workflow process available in one platform - from creation, to collaboration, to publishing – but without being locked into that platform at any stage.

Use the help button in TextFlow for help in getting started and testing the new features.

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A number of people have been asking us lately about how TextFlow might be used in a Wiki environment. Wikipedia, the most successful example of a Wiki, is an online encyclopaedia that is built on the idea of user contributions - each entry in Wikipedia is built up collaboratively over time. At first glance, it seemed like TextFlow would be a perfect tool for comparing several versions of an entry in Wikipedia and resolving them into a single version, and here I thought I had the perfect topic for this weeks blog: how TextFlow could help editing Wikipedia.

Wrong. I quickly discovered that finding an interesting example to illustrate the value of TextFlow for Wikipedia was difficult to say the least. Every entry I looked at seemed inherently linear in the way that it was built up over time. Which lead me to a more fundamental topic for this blog: is something like Wikipedia inherently linear? Or is it linear simply because the tools for working with it enforce linearity? Are these tools limiting Wikipedia in some way?

Wikipedia works by having multiple versions of an entry, slowly built up over time, with each version adding new information or polishing the existing information. In order to avoid the conflicts that arise with branching versions, Wikipedia strictly enforces a linear editing and versioning system - each version builds strictly on the version before it, the current official version, and each new version becomes the new official version when it is saved, leading to a linear evolution shown in the image to the right.

TextFlow’s strength lies in supporting concurrent editing; the branching and merging of multiple concurrent versions, allowing editors to work in parallel and to reach a consensus over several iterations of branching and merging. This is possible because TextFlow does what other collaborative tools don’t - it gives you a way to handle the merging of many documents into a single result. Editing in TextFlow more typically looks like this:

With Wikipedia now looking to introducing flagged versioning to combat problems with vandalism, could a TextFlow-like tool that allows concurrent editing help? The current suggestion at Wikipedia of having flagged revisions is quite simple: someone who is trusted can flag a particular version of an entry as being OK for public viewing, a sort of “vouching” that the content in this entry is approved and thus accurate to some degree.

I think TextFlow should be able to help here - allowing anyone to make edits from the flagged version, thus creating many branches. These branches would then be merged into a single consensus version that is ready for flagging by an editor. TextFlow would streamline the process of merging and approving by clearly highlighting every change and making it trivial to accept or reject each individual change.

I’m still looking for a good example of where TextFlow could have helped in Wikipedia - either by allowing for faster development of an article, or avoiding any contributions from being missed. If anyone knows of a good entry that could be used to demonstrate the strength of TextFlow, please let me know and I will package up the Wikipedia entry as a TextFlow demo much like this one.

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Seldom does a programmer have the privilege to use his own product in a real-life situation, but as an Australian living in Sweden I am often asked by friends and colleagues to proof read or even translate text. I was recently asked to proof read a short text for a friend who works at Myra Industriell Design, an early adopter of TextFlow.  I promptly fired up TextFlow and devoted half an hour to fine tuning and polishing the text. I was quite proud of the minor adjustments that, in my eye, really made a big difference to the text.  Imagine, then, how disappointed I was when WeaveSync just clobbered all my changes together into two big yellow blobs:

Which brings us to this weeks blog.  What is WeaveSync?  And, more importantly, why do we need your help beta testing WeaveSync?

WeaveSync is the heart of TextFlow. It is our patent-pending approach to comparing multiple versions of text, and much of WeaveSync is a direct beneficiary of the many, many years of research being done in the fields of bioinformatics and DNA analysis. Early on, when designing TextFlow, we realised that there isn’t such a big difference between text and DNA strings as one might first think - and careful adaptation of several bioinformatic algorithms got us quickly up and running with our first version of WeaveSync that could compare two documents and show differences, such as transposition, intelligently.

WeaveSync is constantly evolving and being improved as we discover types of text modifications that it doesn’t handle well.  We have always been careful to design it so that even the worst case scenario for any change is still usable, such as the above example where it presents my changes as a single rewrite of a paragraph - even in this situation I can still make use of TextFlow. However, in situations like this we humans can easily see how TextFlow could have given a more detailed presentation of the changes I actually made - that it can more accurately reflect the real-world situation.

This is why we need help from our beta testers not only to find bugs in TextFlow itself, but to also help us improve WeaveSync.  If you think that TextFlow could have done a better job when analysing a particular part of your text, please report this just as you would any other bug, along with a comment about how you think TextFlow could have presented the change.

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Updates were made to the TextFlow server over the weekend to improve the importing of MS Word documents.  A number of users were experiencing a various problems associated with Word importing, including truncated documents as well as certain formats of Word documents being completely unreadable. All known Word conversion bugs have now been fixed, so if you have previously been experiencing problems with your Word documents we now invite you to try again and let us know if you are still having problems.

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Announcing the immediate availability of TextFlow beta release 27. Existing users will be able to automatically upgrade to the latest version the next time you start TextFlow.

New for this release is a change in the signup process. New users do not need to apply for a beta account first, but rather will be able to download the app and then request an account from within TextFlow. Also included is a reworking of all dialog boxes to conform to the TextFlow standard, helping improve the look and feel of the app. 

With the new signup process we will be listing TextFlow on Adobe’s AIR Showcase - so keep an eye there!

Posted by Mark

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