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i was asked by good friend to design a simple way of being able to have multiple clients edit and share one document.

the example he would like me to use is just a simple list. the idea is that if he is logged in on one computer, using this application, he can make changes to this list and when he logs out he can go to another computer/boot into another OS and using this client, he can connect to the document server, which will show the updated file on screen.

i was thinking of being able to do this in Java (its a language im learning to pick up, and i thought why not use the opportunity to expand upon my java skills?) but this may need to work on slow machines and if he is happy with what i am able to demonstrate, then he may want web based expandability.

do you know of any already made tools that do this (preferably open source... and Linux frendly)

from what i see, i have a few ways of doing this...

1) entirely web based but i want to have browser independence.
2) a client that is basically a very stripped down web browser that can modify plain text only.
3) a proprietary document format that can be opened with a proprietary client that connects to server using TCP/IP but a proprietary data format

any other ideas?

EDIT:: incase i wasnt clear enough, for demonstration purposes, hers all that it would need to do.

say that this would be a windows/Linux environment (the guy that wants me to demmo this dosent have any plans to add mac support, maby web support eventually)

the ideas is that you launch the application, supply it with the user name and password and it will connect to the server and fetch the document and store it locally. the changes are stored locally until either the client times out or the user logs out. in which case, the server is sent the changes and the local file is deleted.

then the same process could be repeated on a different OS on the same computer or on a different computer altogether.