Contents
    About
    Dependencies


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About
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ConcurrenTree is a concurrency solution that does the heavy lifting for you.
It was originally called OT+, but has diverged so much from OT that the name
was beginning to be deceptive.

Designed for distributed networks where there is no guarantee that Machine A
and Machine B have even vaguely similar pictures of a document, CTree is a new
and revolutionary concurrency model that can resolve just about anything. It
includes formatting standards, a protocol for network sync/introduction, and
some example code showing you how to write clients in Javascript.

Why start from scratch, when there's already OT? Well, nothing's stopping you
from using OT if you have stiff memory constraints, as in theory memory usage
is not CTree's strong suite. However, OT has a lot of conceptual problems: it
forces you to track the state of a server in order to submit customized ops,
it uses complex and arcane algorithms that require advanced theorem proving
programs to test, and there is no standard set of those algorithms (meaning
my OT doesn't speak the same language as your OT unless we spend days of work
minimum making sure our algorithms are functionally equivalent, and when I say
days, I'm assuming each of us have half a dozen well-paid competent workers).

CTrees solve all these problems and more. There is no state-tracking, because
any operation can be safely submitted to any peer. And because of that, there's
no need for obtuse and ill-defined algorithms. And because of that, we've
been able to make a simple system with clearly defined correct ways to process
data, no ambiguity or fuzziness here, making it easy to port the model to other
programming languages without wondering constantly whether you're doing it
right. The right way makes sense, you can trust your gut.

This code is under heavy construction, and it's important to understand what
CTree is and is not, so you don't end up waiting for features that are not
going to be added. For example, authentication. The protocol being designed
for ConcurrenTree includes operation signing but leaves the majority of auth
to the larger project implementing CTree to do stuff. CTree is not so much its
own thing, as it is something that's embedded in other projects as a simple
backend that handles all your network concurrency.

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Dependencies
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python
pycrypto (2.3): https://www.dlitz.net/software/pycrypto/