US Patent 10051020 Real-time distributed coauthoring via vector clock translations

Systems and methods for improving real-time coauthoring in a distributed environment without a central document manager are disclosed herein. Due to communication being non-instantaneous, the state of a document on an endpoint may differ from the state of the document on an editor at the time that an edit is made. The different states, however, may be reconcilable via a vector clock translation. Each coauthor may maintain an array of vector clocks to track the state of the document for each coauthor. The vector clocks may be included when transmitting indications of edits so that an endpoint in a modified state can translate the edit to comply with the modified state of the document. Translating edits enables more edits to be implement in real-time than otherwise possible in a distributed environment without a central document manager.