Recdit is a text editor that provides several unique features. Firstly the text is laid out horizontally, in pages of an optimal readable size. This helps and enables a better comprehension of the document as a whole, and makes use of the pattern recognition our brains are good at. Secondly it provides a complete history of what was typed. This is in addition to undo, and allows the complete preview of the entire document's creation and authorship. Each document change is recorded and it is possible to scrub back and forth through the document viewing its creation.
The authorship of each change is recorded and highlighted in fading colours that disappear with time. This provides a unique and possibly useful method for collaborative authorship. The ability to pick up a document and see where you, or another, left it last time they were editing, to be able to scrub back in the history to see the last few minutes or even the initial stages of planning the document; can possibly greatly help writing.
Recdit also supports concurrent collaborative editing of the same document. I am using a server running continuously to write my PhD thesis, and can access it from any location.
Recdit Application (124Kb)
The Recdit text editor application.
Example document: UIST Paper (900Kb)
A 2007 UIST paper about Recdit, written in Recdit. The entire authoring process can be reviewed in a slightly voyeuristic fashion!
PDF UIST Paper (500Kb)
The PDF version of the above paper!
Demonstration movie (7Mb)
A short movie showing what Recdit can do.