[ale] Question: Transparent document sharing over the Internet

[Michael B. Trausch]

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Jason Smith wrote:
> 
> Solutions
> 1. I was thinking of simple solutions like a script
> that woke up every 5 mins and would scp the documents
> over / send an email with the document as an
> attachment and so on.
> 
> Are there more elegant non-obstrusive ways of doing
> this ?
> 

Depending on what format the documents are in, there are a number of
ways that you can accomplish this task.

You mentioned that the laptops that they are running on are Windows
laptops.  Assuming that they are Windows 2000 or Windows XP laptops,
they can carry IIS (comes with the Windows operating system) on it.  So,
you install IIS, have them edit the document through a web browser
connected to http://localhost.  Use PHP and MySQL on the Windows
machines, running locally.  You could then set MySQL up to replicate the
databases when online.

If that's too complex (and it may very well be; I don't know what all
would be involved in that, just that it should be possible in theory
from what I've seen) then it's possible that you can do something with
another database setup somehow or another:  Keep the documents in a
database that can be replicated (e.g., New records on the client are
sent to the server, and new records from the server are downloaded by
the client).  If you use Lotus Notes in your workplace, you may be
familiar with that type of functionality, however, note that Lotus Notes
doesn't (natively) run on Linux, nor does the Domino database software,
at least as far as I am aware.

But if you can have them work with a database in one fashion or another,
then replication is the buzz-word that I think you are looking for.

Otherwise, you could use something like SVN, and while that does require
checking in/out and the like, there is a client for Windows that
integrates into the shell, making it a matter of just clicking the right
mouse-button and checking files in or out.  Look into TortiseSVN for that.

	- Mike
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