Etherpad rocks. Just today I was thinking that it would be great to be able to use it as a platform - e.g. imagine a real time wiki.

Ouch. Bummer it's Java.

As a plain old lamp kinda guy, I wouldn't know the first about servicing Java requests. (Not just running a simple server like the docs recommend.) How hard is it?

To run EtherPad, why would you need to do more than their suggested command line:

  root@localhost$  java -Xmx512M -jar enterprise-etherpad-1.0b4.jar

???

As a LAMP guy, you could surely use mod_rewrite to map that EtherPad server to whatever other urlspace you'd like.

You'll need mod_proxy as well to forward the request from a LAMP stack

>> "As a plain old lamp kinda guy, I wouldn't know the first about servicing Java requests."

Lamp wouldn't know the first thing about doing a real time 'comet' service like this ;)

How did you overcome NIH syndrome? my first reaction was to reach for Richard Stevens' volumes and write Etherpad over BSD sockets; a mix between (y)talk and nano (note to self, read up on the various buffer management strategies, roll a little transaction layer and shelf this project under "I'm sure I can do that with an emacs mode ..")

why pay for something like this when you can download MoonEdit for free ( http://moonedit.com )

just saying.

Because it's better (using it has fewer steps, the interface is like other web apps, it doesn't require you to pick one of the desktop PCs as a server and tell people the IP address, and it saves as you go so anyone closing their browser will not lose work).

just saying.

Java - check

"Enterprise" in the binary's name - check

:)