[gflex]

We use dropbox to share an outline file between a few dispersed people all of whom can edit the file. Sometimes our communication breaks down, and we have 2 people editing the file at the same time. We had hoped that the dropbox conflict detection process would spot these conflicting edits, but it doesnt. I dont know what information dropbox uses to spot conflicts, but whatever it uses, it blithely overwrites, destroying one person's updates. I suspect this may be related to the fact that the outline file is not really a file, but a folder in disguise. Do you have any suggestions as to how the conflicts might be avoided / spotted. Do you know of any "diff" that would enable us to highlight the difference between 2 versions? I suspect this problem could become even more prevalent with iCloud, and lion's autosave.

Of course the ideal solution to this problem would be if dropbox offered checkout or file locking, but they dont.

If you don't need embedded attachments, I don't think that the .oo3 file strictly needs to be a package (folder) - it can just be a flat xml text file.

(Look inside the package, copy the contents.xml file elsewhere, and rename it to give it the exension ".oo3" - I think you'll find that you can go on writing and saving it as a flat text file in this way)