Hi everyone,

Please note that I've asked to people on the forum
(http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=7521&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&sid=e11537887ed588c7d3befc86d1b50920)
where suggestion box was located and I've been told suggestion have to be made here.

That said, here is my point :

I'm an French Canadian junior electrical engineer and I'm currently studying in
a part time MBA. I say that because that's what made me pop up with this idea.
Indeed, during my years in engineering, we had to deal with redaction of
documentation or technical reports using 2 or more people (for some of them, we
were as much as 8). As for now, in my MBA we have to deal with the same kind of
task (except for technical reports of course). I my experience in consulting
engineering and other kind of professional field, there is a lot of people who
have to deal with editing of a single document, but in parallel with many
coeditors. As you probably know, it's kind a defy in management to deal with
editing of a single document (writer, calc or presentation) when there is 2 or
more coeditor. When people sit at same physical place, it may not be that hard
to sync ideas and not resulting with multiple versions of a same document but
when people have to work from different physical place, it becomes a real mess.

This is an introduction of a long time thinking I had with myself about finding
a solution to this problem. I've looked on the web to find (based my knowledge
of course), that there was 2 solutions that may address this problem as is. I
found :

1. Google Docs (still beta of course). Please watch this video
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRqUE6IHTEA) made by marketing team of Google
that explains very well what I've mentioned before.
2. Zoho (writer, sheet and show)

Why don't they resolve the problem ? At this point, you may find that I've
resolved myself the issue and that it is possible to edit a single document
simultaneously for more than one person. You are half right. I'll explain why it
doesn't :

1. Both (google docs and zoho) don't have a page view feature that let us plan
how adjusting text to fit printing.
2. Both don't have feature for math editor. Also, no support for Mathtype editor.
3. Both have real big problems with cut and paste from an Word, Excel, Power
Point (or openoffice equivalent)
4. Both have many important bugs when it comes to edit text with more than one
person
5. Both are very slow
6. Both are good for editing one document, but not for having a structured file
depot that deal with many documents.
7. Impossibility to copy and paste images. In general image management is very weak.
8. Support for table in word processing are very bad.
9. Both have real big issues when converting web 2.0 to files (pdf, doc, ppt, etc.)
10. And so on...

In general, I don't think that using web 2.0 is a good way for dealing with
edition of documents. People still prefer using an installed program on the
computer that better fit their needs. That's the reason when I think OpenOffice
project could address this issue. I've thought of two ways that should be used
for that. I say there should be two because those have different target users :

1. Organization target

When you are an organization, you have many persons that need to access your
document, but your also need right access management, version history in a very
structured presentation of files. I've came with the idea that this kind of
needs would be fit using an infrastructure mode with a server running CVS and/or
SVN for which you get all files management and using OpenOffice to deal with
multiple users for edition of a single document. 

Users would have to connect the OpenOffice server in which CVS/SVN is integrated
and would be able to enter in edit mode for files they have rights while other
users would be able to work on the same document at same time.

2. End user target

End users don't have accessibility to dedicated infrastructure. They have to
deal with realtime coediting of 1 or 2 documents at same time. So one of them
act as server/coeditor while others connect as peers on the temporary server.
History of the document can be deal with version history built-in OpenOffice. 

I've made a schema as an image worth 1000 words ! Please note those probably
don't fit those made by an Informatica worker as this is not my field... See
here : http://ohara00.homeftp.net:8080/OOo/

Please, discuss those ideas as those principally result in my own brainstorming
and are, mabye, not best solutions !

Thank you

P.S. Sorry for my mistakes in English.