Don't ignore, but just like I expect my car to not start of I don't have my foot where it is supposed to be, I'd expect there editor to indicate to me that my edit could not go through.
And I think I wasn't clear. Collaborative editors at the character level feel like the solution that is a misfire. Doing the same things at a higher level of abstraction works. Merge in document changes in remote sections. Code merges with git work reasonably. None are bullet proof, and I expect conflicts at a level lower than paragraph to almost always need an audit. Certainly lower than the line level.
This is how google docs works and this problem doesn’t come up much in practice. The reason is that usually when you’re collaboratively editing a document you do so in real-time. If we both see one another’s cursor on the same content, we pay extra attention and make sure our edits make sense.
For offline edits (eg multiple developers working on independent features in a codebase), generating merge conflicts is probably more appropriate. OT and CRDTs can be written that generate merge conflicts in cases like this - it’s an implementation detail. It’s just that most algorithms are written first and foremost with real-time collaborative editing in mind. And again, in the real-time collaborative editing case, merge conflicts aren’t what users want.
I recently did realtime collaborative editing of the same file with a Visual Studio Code plugin and have also often used Google Docs and its really not an issue in practice. If it were to suddenly stop me to notify me that there was a conflict, that would be a very jarring and unpleasant workflow.
As josephg says, you don’t want merge conflicts in realtime editing and for offline editing, a git merge conflict resolution style is probably more appropriate.
And I think I wasn't clear. Collaborative editors at the character level feel like the solution that is a misfire. Doing the same things at a higher level of abstraction works. Merge in document changes in remote sections. Code merges with git work reasonably. None are bullet proof, and I expect conflicts at a level lower than paragraph to almost always need an audit. Certainly lower than the line level.