Content Mangement System/Wiki for writing

[Peter.H.M.Brooks@gmail.com]

I'm looking for a good (ideally free), system for quite a big writing
job. There will be some collaboration, but it is mainly on one system.

I am keen to have easy to use indexing and cross-referencing as well as
excellent backup and recovery of data. I've looked at a few wiki
systems and they seem quite good, but don't support all that much
formatting.

I know things must have changed a lot in the last couple of years since
I last looked into this in detail.

Can you give me any pointers? I'm mainly using a Mac.

[larry@portcommodore.com]

Re: Content Mangement System/Wiki for writing


Peter.H.M.Brook s@gmail.com wrote:

I'm looking for a good (ideally free), system for quite a big writing
job. There will be some collaboration, but it is mainly on one system.
>
I am keen to have easy to use indexing and cross-referencing as well as
excellent backup and recovery of data. I've looked at a few wiki
systems and they seem quite good, but don't support all that much
formatting.
>
I know things must have changed a lot in the last couple of years since
I last looked into this in detail.
>
Can you give me any pointers? I'm mainly using a Mac.

Wikis were designed to be fast and simple, and also the documents more
or less portable so they don't go into much typographioc styling (this
is also a limitation of displaying with HTML, which does not support
tabs and the like.). But a Wiki is an excellent place to do the bulk
of the writing and editing and trhen finish by transporting to a more
versattile system.

As for shopping for Wikis, look at the Wiki Matrix, you can compare
features of many of the popular Wikis.

http://www.wikimatrix.org/

Larry

[Peter.H.M.Brooks@gmail.com]

Re: Content Mangement System/Wiki for writing


larry@portcommo dore.com wrote:

Peter.H.M.Brook s@gmail.com wrote:

I'm looking for a good (ideally free), system for quite a big writing
job. There will be some collaboration, but it is mainly on one system.

I am keen to have easy to use indexing and cross-referencing as well as
excellent backup and recovery of data. I've looked at a few wiki
systems and they seem quite good, but don't support all that much
formatting.

I know things must have changed a lot in the last couple of years since
I last looked into this in detail.

Can you give me any pointers? I'm mainly using a Mac.

>
Wikis were designed to be fast and simple, and also the documents more
or less portable so they don't go into much typographioc styling (this
is also a limitation of displaying with HTML, which does not support
tabs and the like.). But a Wiki is an excellent place to do the bulk
of the writing and editing and trhen finish by transporting to a more
versattile system.
>
As for shopping for Wikis, look at the Wiki Matrix, you can compare
features of many of the popular Wikis.
>

http://www.wikimatrix.org/

>

Thank you for that!

[Peter.H.M.Brooks@gmail.com]

Re: Content Mangement System/Wiki for writing


larry@portcommo dore.com wrote:

>
>
Wikis were designed to be fast and simple, and also the documents more
or less portable so they don't go into much typographioc styling (this
is also a limitation of displaying with HTML, which does not support
tabs and the like.). But a Wiki is an excellent place to do the bulk
of the writing and editing and trhen finish by transporting to a more
versattile system.
>

That link is very useful!

A couple of features that I don't see mentioned. I wonder if they exist
somewhere.

Is there a non-centralised or distributied wiki? When I'm collaborating
with other people, I'd like to share some pages or domains with them so
that they can load and work with them on demand (with just the pages
they want when they want them), but that I keep my definitive pages and
they keep theirs. Is this possible with any of these? I wouldn't mind
if the pages were even exchanged by e-mail, but a less cumbersome
method would be even nicer.

Also, connected, but slightly different. Are there any that support
setting up rules and scripts for pages? So, as in the above, you can
say that if a page is in this domain then it should be backed up on
your machine if it has changed or if it has an 'active' status and is
'high' priority then it should be shared everywhere even when not
demanded? That sort of thing?

I'm sure that it isn't too difficult to add these to an open souce
wiki, but I just wondered if there were some that make this simple and
not too error prone!

[larry@portcommodore.com]

Re: Content Mangement System/Wiki for writing


Peter.H.M.Brook s@gmail.com wrote:
[snip!]

Is there a non-centralised or distributied wiki? When I'm collaborating
with other people, I'd like to share some pages or domains with them so
that they can load and work with them on demand (with just the pages
they want when they want them), but that I keep my definitive pages and
they keep theirs. Is this possible with any of these? I wouldn't mind
if the pages were even exchanged by e-mail, but a less cumbersome
method would be even nicer.
>
Also, connected, but slightly different. Are there any that support
setting up rules and scripts for pages? So, as in the above, you can
say that if a page is in this domain then it should be backed up on
your machine if it has changed or if it has an 'active' status and is
'high' priority then it should be shared everywhere even when not
demanded? That sort of thing?
>
I'm sure that it isn't too difficult to add these to an open souce
wiki, but I just wondered if there were some that make this simple and
not too error prone!

Ok, I'll answer this but we are going off-topic from PHP here, further
questions should be to some wiki related site.

Distributed? Not sure why you need that, but the feature you want to
look for is probably "inter-wiki" or maybe something with access levels
or groups (take a look at Twiki, it has some of that stuff).

the second question is pretty odd, I think you may be mis-interpreting
how wikis work you run the Wiki on a webserver not your home computer
(unless it IS your webserver) then potentially everyone will have
access to it that access the internet (providing they have the
password, etc if you have a restricted access system, which is what I
think you are looking for.) So you don't really "uplaod" or exchange
anything everything is done all on the site, kind of like the
newsgroups here except others may be able to edit what I wrote.

As I said, you are now on the relm of Wikis more than PHP, Looking at
the Wiki Matrix, it does have a fourum, I'd post your questions there.

Good Luck
Larry

[Peter.H.M.Brooks@gmail.com]

Re: Content Mangement System/Wiki for writing


larry@portcommo dore.com wrote:

>
the second question is pretty odd, I think you may be mis-interpreting
how wikis work you run the Wiki on a webserver not your home computer
(unless it IS your webserver) then potentially everyone will have
access to it that access the internet (providing they have the
password, etc if you have a restricted access system, which is what I
think you are looking for.) So you don't really "uplaod" or exchange
anything everything is done all on the site, kind of like the
newsgroups here except others may be able to edit what I wrote.
>
As I said, you are now on the relm of Wikis more than PHP, Looking at
the Wiki Matrix, it does have a fourum, I'd post your questions there.
>

Thank you - yes, I understand that it sounds odd. It's an extension of
the basic idea - a bit like using mozilla as an engine to do something
other than write a browser or e-mail application with. I've seen
something along these lines, but not much.

I wrote to these groups because there isn't, strangely, a usenet group
on wikis! It might be a tribute to wikis themselves as good discussion
areas, or an indication of the ossification of usenet that makes it too
difficult to start a new group on an important area or wikis might
simply be a manifestation of various things that don't deserve their
own forum in usenet (or something else, or course).

I'll go to the Wiki Matrix forum, thanks again for the idea - I might
ask about the lack of a Usenet wiki forum too...

[Klaus Brune]

Re: Content Mangement System/Wiki for writing

In article <1157807615.619 406.101520@e3g2 000cwe.googlegr oups.com>,
Peter.H.M.Brook s@gmail.com says...

I'm looking for a good (ideally free), system for quite a big writing
job. There will be some collaboration, but it is mainly on one system.
>
I am keen to have easy to use indexing and cross-referencing as well as
excellent backup and recovery of data. I've looked at a few wiki
systems and they seem quite good, but don't support all that much
formatting.
>
I know things must have changed a lot in the last couple of years since
I last looked into this in detail.
>
Can you give me any pointers? I'm mainly using a Mac.
>
>

I highly HIGHLY recommend WikkaWiki. What originally sold me on it is
the support for FreeMind MindMapping, but it has exellent support for
putting all kinds of source code (Perl, PHP, XML, HTML, Apache .htaccess
directives, and the list goes on) complete with syntax highlighting and
a button so people can "grab" (download) the code, plus you can force a
filename for the download, and enable/disable auto line numbering.

Here's the main site...

http://wikkawiki.org

And my own Wiki, for answering programming and web design questions
mainly...

http://www.gunthersoft.com/wiki

And I guess it's not TOO off topic, as WikkaWiki is PHP-driven, and
looking at the source code gives some great ideas for the architecture
of a large PHP application. And speaking of large, as far as Wikis go,
WikkaWiki is LIGHTWEIGHT, if that's an issue.

- Klaus