Issues to add

In addition to adding/copying/collating/crosschecking the long list of “legacy” feature
requests from http://uservoice.etherpad.com/forums/17280-feature-requests,
here is a list of community-generated issues from prior to Meeting 1.
(I’m getting tired, so feel free to add them — or I’ll take it from here after
I get some rest!) —holtzermann17

• easy way to work with standard port numbers (without requiring root access)
• Ability to create read-only links that don’t also allow edit access (e.g. by changing the URL) — could be done by having read-only links be more random and then not require pad passwords (with ability to expire/remove them)
• Advanced/modules
• Template system for style / clean up the HTML tagging and simplify the css styles and the css compilation stuff
• And a Customize/Module subsystem
• openid consumer support
• syncing from offline work
• offline backups
• Ability to comment on sections of text.
• Discuss/Talk page (as in Mediawiki style)
• A way to assign pads to a “class” and for those pads to be previewed? So teachers can monitor the progress of documents
• Perhaps a way to “watch” a pad, like you would watch for edits in a wikipage (This seems to be a variant of the “RecentChanges” feature.) – We have worked on a “watch class pads” option for the Grand central library or something, basically 10 pads embedded on a page w/ max height set and sidebar=0.
• API – create, update, search
• Different fonts? And how about support for mathematics, e.g. using MathJaX (see http://www.mathjax.org/?page_id=13 for a preview; note that some version of math support could be done just using in-line images, but that’s by no means the limit of what’s possible).
• etherpad pads committing changes to a file in a git repo
• EtherPad working as a “SideWiki”-esque tool. Actually, it seems to me that any wiki or wiki-like software could be used in a sidewiki-esque fashion — but EtherPad’s “live-communication” features make it particularly attractive. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to see who was reading what right now across the whole web? Great for organizing ‘swarming’ type behavior. Once we have the wiki functionality working, the code to make it work like side-wiki should be an easy/obvious next step.
• Features to assist the installation of an EtherPad
• Decent script to check environment variables during install
• Simple install script
• Could we go as far as a package, added to a repository? For linux based set ups

• Needs categorizing
• Documentation (of course! I love documentation. We all love it. Yes?)
• Abandoning edits to the public (note: apparently this already exists via the “clear authorship colors” button?)
• “Ghostwriting” within someone else’s content (?)
• Owned document structures (e.g sections or bulleted lists)? (maybe)
• REPL support (as in MUD style!?!) [In other words: the user or users can type into one area of the page, and submit the text they record for generalized “evaluation”. In a CHAT system, the result of that evaluation is to broadcast the message to all clients. In a MUD system, further processing can occur before the broadcast event. There are both traditional text-based and more recent map-based RPGs and MMORGs to think about. It’s all based on a REPL.]
• Branching Time Slider?!?
• pop-up or some other form of online help
• Support for Wiki-style #REDIRECT
• * Emacs-style bindings
• Ability to turn off public landing page (or the pages it links to) — right now requires hacks

EASY-ISH (or at least things that seem definitely worthwhile)

• Wordcount and perhaps other statistics in the sidebar.
• Ability to measure the contribution of specific users as a percentage (possible uses are inside the classroom where I personally see the most potential for Etherpad) this would assist teachers to assess contribution to group work
• Indication of difference since last saved version (just some crude metric; edit distance perhaps, or just word count for each version).

SKY-PIE (or things that may not actually be a good idea or worthwhile)

• List of recently visited etherpads in the sidebar, using cookies.
• Growl notifications of changes.
• Would love a way to clone a pad, preserving revision history but especially the colors for who edited what.
  (This comes up when we pick a name for a pad that we decide isn’t secure enough.)
• I’d like a “copy this pad” button, even for read-only pads, where the pad that got copied retains a list of links to copies. This allows people to continue working on readonly stuff, effectively forking it, w/o disturbing the original, but still having their copies findable by people who know about the original.+1

• RSS for updates to pads — nothing fancy, just to remind you to go look at a pad again if it’s been changing.
• (Cain): Is it possible to have the RSS feed highlight changes since the last version you contributed to? the last time you contributed would have to be stored somewhere, then the old version pulled from archive, but PHP could generate a kind of dynamic RSS couldn’t it, which highlights changes since you last contribute?
• API to fetch the text, append, prepend, search&replace text.
• For previous versions, in addition to “view” and “restore”, how about “diff against current version”.
• I don’t like the rich text buttons and the zoom/font both stealing screen real estate.
• etherpad.com/ep/pad/export/foo/latest?format=txt —> etherpad.com/export/txt/foo or something
• Make it work on android phones (at least to view and scroll). View does, just edit doesn’t
• (Cain): Support for iPad (this could be huge) I would certainly be up for donating all my time to get EtherPad to this end, would be fantastic. (Ah, EtherPad/Ipad — cool combo, at least name-wise: I wonder how it would feel, keyboard-wise.)