Blended operational transformation for multi-user collaborative applications

A method for propagating document changes in a collaborative environment comprising:

• detecting an edit type associated with a document change made by a first user in the collaborative environment to a document;
• propagating the document change to a server using full operational transformation if the edit type has full operational transformation support;
• propagating the document change to the server using opaque operations if the edit type indicates that the document change has occurred in a particular area in the document but does not indicate details of the document change;
• and
• propagating the document change to the server using a binary sync if the edit type is completely opaque.

A system for propagating document changes in a collaborative environment comprising:

• a plurality of clients configured to provide edits to a base document;
• a server in communication with the configured clients to maintain the base document and an operation history for the base document;
• one or more processors configured to execute instructions stored in a memory, the instructions comprising:
• propagating to the server textual changes to the base document using full operational transformation;
• propagating to the server opaque changes to the base document using opaque objects, wherein the opaque changes comprise changes for which no operations exist;
• and
• propagating to the server unsupported changes to the base document using binary syncs.