Personal Wikis

A Personal Wiki is a non-collaborative Wiki-like application that lets a single individual browse, edit, search, and link together his own personal collection of pages. At present there are at least four applications of this kind written in TCL/TK and downloadable:


Comments

The original idea of a wiki is to provide a quick and convenient way to edit web pages in situ, with a very simple syntax for markup and hyperlinks. Personal Wikis don't have to be literal collections of web pages, but without the simple markup and hyperlinking the term "wiki" ceases to apply. unperson deleted Tkoutline and Minkowsky from the above list since they don't have the hyperlinking feature.

The comments were:

  • Tkoutline doesn't have search capabilities, but it does allow browsing, editing, and linking of collections of pages. In this case the pages are outlines. Also, there is no distinction between edit mode and browse mode.
  • Minkowsky is a task, appointment and an address manager.

I believe there has been a confusion between Personal wikis and PIMs (Personal Information managers)


Larry Smith: Much as I hate to suggest using software outside of the Tcl world, I really do think that TiddlyWikis [L1 ] are just about the best tool I've seen for this application. I personally use GTDTiddlyWiki [L2 ]. EMJ But there is a variant (TsWiki [L3 ]) which has a TCL/Sqlite server-side.


2004.12.20 WJR Hi - I'm looking for a Tcl/Tk-based addressbook or PIM. Any recommendations? Thanks!

Addressbook should fit the bill nicely.

For a PIM wiki like, I recommend this very wiki we are writing on: Wikit. It works great! Like many have done, you can download it and install it on your hard drive.

NoteBook App programmed by Will Duquette can also do the work brilliantly (stand alone no browser required).

ProjectForum's demo version programmed by Mark Roseman is excellent also as a PIM (it works with the browser; it comes with a dedicated server and like Tkoutline and Notebook App it is operational out of the box! This means no installation is needed!). The beauty of it is that it gives you an internet look and feel while you are working offline.. The colours are pretty... Excellent package...

LV However, most PIMs include some degree of management functionality for the personal information. The wiki doesn't really do much - it provides one search capability. However, it doesn't provide, for instance, the ability to sort ones addresses in various manners, etc.

Certainly one can easily use a wiki to collect various pieces of personal information, and then create some coarse degree of hyperlinking between pages. Which makes it functional, and free. That's not a bad way to start. Then perhaps after you've figured out what other features you need, or at least want, you can either look into enhancing the software or locating a more featureful package.


Personal wikis in other languages

For a very very complete list of wiki engines available for download in all sorts of programming languages, click here: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiEngines . We are talking here of internet and personal wikis.

For a list of personal wikis written in all programming languages, click here: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PersonalWiki .

---> If you'd like to change the look of your personal wiki yourself and if you know a little HTML, Eddies Wiki 1.1 is the big favourite in this arena. Download it from http://tinyted.net . More info here: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EddiesWiki . Eddies Wiki (also called Wiki Server) is written in C++; like ProjectForum it comes with a server and only a browser is required.

Eddies Wiki enables a user to create his own html pages. But this is its only strength compared to ProjectForum which is better in all other aspects and particularly in the management of the entry to the browser in the beginning: with Eddies's wiki, we have to do two operations to enter the program: open the server and open the browser. Mark Roseman's software does the operation in one instance. Roseman programmed the server part very well. Also you can open many ProjectForums at the time but only one Eddies Wiki....

A disadvantage to ProjectForum, it does not create single pages but regroups them in a group data, like Notebook does. This is just not a good idea... Eddies Wiki makes single pages...

So all in all, if making your HTML page is not an issue (or if you don't know any HTML anyway!), and if you don't mind having a huge database with many pages instead of many smaller pages, go with ProjectForum.

Otherwise, if you don't mind a certain complexity in opening the software everytime and if you are OK with the idea of opening one version at a time, go with Eddie Edwards' Eddies' wiki....

---> WxWidgets was used by RyanNorton to make an excellent cross-platform personal wiki: http://sourceforge.net/projects/wxprojects (based on Eddies Wiki)

If you want an editor that hyperlinks, go with Notebook. It's excellent. If you know how to code in Tcl/Tk you can even add your own features.

Enjoy wiki!