Evaluating CRDTs for real-time document editing

Abstract

Nowadays, real-time editing systems are catching on. Tools such as Etherpad or Google Docs enable multiple authors at dispersed locations to collaboratively write shared documents. In such systems, a replication mechanism is required to ensure consistency when merging concurrent changes performed on the same document. Current editing systems make use of operational transformation (OT), a traditional replication mechanism for concurrent document editing.