Gobby features a client-server architecture which supports multiple documents in one session, document synchronisation on request, password protection and an IRC-like chat for communication out of band.[5] Users can choose a colour to highlight the text they have written in a document. Gobby is fully Unicode-aware, provides syntax highlighting for most programming languages, and has basic Zeroconf support.[4]
A dedicated server called Sobby is also provided, together with a script which could format saved sessions for the web (e.g. to provide logs of meetings with a collaboratively prepared transcript).[6] The collaborative editing protocol is named Obby, and there are other implementations that use this protocol (e.g. Rudel,[7] a plugin for GNU Emacs). Gobby 0.5 replaces Sobby with a new server called infinoted.[8][9]
Version 0.4.0 featured fully encrypted connections and further usability enhancements.[4] Users have commented versions prior to 0.5.0 had some issues.[10]
Versions numbered 0.4.9x are preview releases for version 0.5.0. The most noticeable improvement is undo support,[11] using the adOPTed algorithm for concurrency control.[12]
Criticisms
While offering Unicode support it has been suggested the product is suitable for producing plaintext rather than formatted documents.[13]
