How does the protocol works?

[stefbon]

Hi,

I'm working an a set of software to enable users on Linux to work better together, especially in an office environment.

Central in my project are secure connections based on SSH,
automatically created using DNS-SD, OpenSSH servers and my own ssh
library. Through these connections between workstation and server, a
variety of services are possible:

• known is file transfer using SFTP. This works already using my own
  sftp implementation and FUSE.
• backup of user defined files, complete with a FUSE fs to view and
  possibly restore a previous version
• access to services on server via a secure connection like a printer
  spooler (CUPS) and a database
• communicate with other users via text chat or video chat in public
  and private channels.
• remote desktop using NX.

To make this work a lot of work has to be done (a Certificate
Authority, an own fileserver), although of the backup I already had a
working version (using BTRFS for versioning and sqlite to store
various differences/versions).

See:

https://osns.net/
https://github.com/stefbon/OSNS

I also want to add the abilty to work on documents stored on the
server, together. I've done research and found:

• QT has a nice C++ class QTextDocument (and the relatives) as backend
  on the server
• QT provides also a class to write a document to ODF, but
  unfortunately no reading.

What is needed is an open document network protocol which enables a
client to communicate with the server/backend as if it's a local
document.

In de following post on the Qt Forum I've explained some more:

https://forum.qt.io/topic/134374/questions-reading-and-writing-office-documents

So I want to work on an Open Document Network Format (ODNF), and
looking for a way to do that. Now as someone suggested on the qt forum your project. I think it's very interesting, and I very much want to know how the network protocol works, for example how the simple editor commands like insert text and navigation are implemented in the network protocol.

Stef Bon

[q2dg]

I think such information is important and should be placed in wiki