An easy way to support ghostwriting is to just use the same editing color as the person you're ghostwriting for -- but this might not be reflected in the backend. So, the general question is: how to adopt/donate content to someone else?

And check in source of http://etherpad.org/ <-- to be assigned to redhog

(Like Mediawiki.)

(can someone explain this more?--)

"could be done by having read-only links be more random and then not require pad passwords (with ability to expire/remove them)"

Marking a string or block of text with a certain "property". Obvious examples exist, like underlining and italics, and user-specific colors, all exist. Some generalizations would be colorful underlining (a la MS Word). Highlighting a passage and put a comment in the margin is a more advanced version.

E.g. using MathJaX (see http://www.mathjax.org/?page_id=13 for a preview).

Note that some version of math support could also be done just using in-line images.

Sometimes people will want to edit offline, and sync/import content (cf. Git!).

Translate the Interface into many languages.

It would be good to have a way to run EtherPad on standard port numbers as a non-root user.

Especially once a bunch of these features are implemented, it would be good to have an online help system (cf. Emac's C-h k etc.).

Clean up the nasty html and id-based specialized css and replace by more generic stuff.

e.g. 'use monospaced font' etc.

Locally (or globally) hide, but do not clear/delete, authorship information.

It would be good to provide some form of bloc-wide authentication to prevent spamming/spoofing.

Compare Github's graph.

I can only imagine that (a) various forms of code highlighting; (b) inputting e.g. Chinese (c) ...

... is going to be an issue. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just reuse the code from Emacs that does this? :)

We should explore various kinds of anonymity, ranging from "don't type your name in the user list" (available now), to "colorless" editing for a more overtly anonymous feel.

It would be nice to control user access at the "pad" level as well as at the "bloc" level.

Be notified when a given pad changes.

RSS/Atom support for subscribing to changes.

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.

Have authorship information fade out (i.e., newer edits have stronger colors).

It would be nice to be able to get at the underlying XML (it is XML, right?)
so that we can edit it with an external editor. Exposing the clickstream (er,
keypress-stream) to other programs as a web service in real time would be
great!

For improved style and clean up of the HTML tags.

Simplify the css styles and the css compilation stuff.

This could start with simple things like support for rendering external images "inline",
then move on to more complicated things like magazine-style inset images.

A way to assign pads to a “class” and then preview the whole class? E.g. so that teachers can monitor the progress of documents in real time.

Enable attention-getting beeps or flashing to indicate when a Pad is being edited (similar to the behavior of GTalk etc.).

search within pad / search across multiple pads -- both unsupported at present.

A button that can be used to toggle (hide/show) non-bold text.

Currently browser/client based spell checkers don't work (either get them working or implement a new spell checker!).

Owned components (e.g whole sections, or certain formatting features, like a particular bulleted list).

Right now, Etherpad only has a sense of line numbers and scrolling up and down.
Add column numbers and left-right scrolling.

Would be good to backup the whole bloc or sections thereof in a format that is easy to download and redeploy elsewhere.

Maintaining separate authentication details in multiple sites is not very convenient. It would be useful to be able to support openid as a consumer, and perhaps have support for group mappings.

we should have more than one font.

Select/copy/paste/delete/rectangles.

Pads committing changes to a file in a git repo!

This needs browser-specific debugging.

Currently w/ Firefox, C-x/C-v stuff doesn't work, nor C-k/C-y using KeySnail, but cut/paste from the Edit menu does work; another KeySnail interoperability bug is that C-e, C-b and the like set the mark before cursor movement begins).

On Safari, Cmd-X/Cmd-V work like a charm (and maintaining author attribution colors).

Show timer indicating when each user last made an edit (e.g. editing now, 5 mins ago, 10 mins ago, a day ago, etc.).

Decorate text with "boxes" or "frames"; put many such boxes together to make tables.

We could have a Gtalk-like <... is typing> lookahead in the chat window, or show entered letters directly in "wave-like" fashion. Perhaps develop a downstream user option to switch between these modes?

We need better ways to clear offensive pads quickly (this will be true even when there is login/authentication).

MS Word-like ability to comment on sections of text.

Combined with a web-wide recent changes page, this would make it possible to see who was reading what right now across the whole web, and organize ‘swarming’ type behavior.

(Once we have basic wiki functionality working, the code to make it work like side-wiki should be an easy/obvious next step.)

• 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 setups)

Currently not supported...

Hey, if we can use Emacs as a client, we won't need reimplement a lot of the things it does so nicely. Cf. http://groups.google.com/group/wave-client-for-emacs-discuss/browse_thread/thread/3113b6b81fd209ee

Clear chat window, retaining the contents of the pad.

Delete text from the pad, retaining the name and history.

Support for Wiki-style #REDIRECT links.