danielroehrig / diary

Simple Diary for nextcloud
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
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[FR] Co-Journalling #57

Open thymaro opened 1 year ago

thymaro commented 1 year ago

I would love to be able to write a journal collaboratively with another person about a common subject. I have perused the internet and don't know of any app that allows this without it being a workaround of varying degrees. Or it's not possible at all, in the crushing majority of dedicated diary/journal software.

In my imagination, the co-journal wouldn't be one or thirty clicks away, but could be set to be the standard diary when opening the app. The co-journal would just be in the same place as the personal diary, or even replacing it altogether if the person doesn't usually hold a personal diary. Ideally, both people could write entries at the same time, seeing what the person is writing. I don't use Etherpad, but that's what I imagine it to be. I think Google Docs works similarly (from a user's perspective).

What bugs me (please understand this is a severe euphemism) about other apps is that I have to invite people to one of “my” diaries. They are effectively in a lesser position, at risk of losing access privileges whenever I please. In many cases, I have to circumvent the “homepage” of the app where my personal notebook is waiting for me to write something, to access some sort of shared space. The other person has to click through to some “shared with me” space or other.

It doesn't have to be like Etherpad or Google docs, but being able to save the entries to a common directory, and being able to point the app to that directory from both accounts on the NC instance. The simultaneous thing probably requires a tad more involved coding and databases and occult server wizardry, so that's not a priority, let's say.

danielroehrig commented 1 year ago

I'm afraid that is out of the scope of this little app for now. But it seems like you are very passionat about so I would like to know your personal use case for this.

I think, the ownership problem is not something that nextcloud can solve. Someone will be the owner of the data and the other one must simply trust them. In any other case both participants must have a local copy of the data and some way to directly change the files in their filesystem as well as the others. But who is coordinating that? The closest thing I can come up with is something like git.

That sounds like an interesting challenge, although not something that I can solve, probably. But I'd like to hear your ideas.