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Personal wiki

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Tyroneking (talk | contribs) at 19:22, 9 December 2011 (Added Zim to list of Free software wiki systems). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

A personal wiki is a wiki maintained primarily for personal use. Personal wikis allow people to organize information on their desktop or mobile computing devices in a manner similar to community wikis, but without the need for collaboration by multiple users.

Personal wiki software can be broadly divided into multi-user wiki software with personal editions, and those wiki applications that are designed only for single users, not depending on a database engine and a web server. The first class includes wiki applications such as MoinMoin or TWiki, as these can be installed for standalone use as well. This may require installing additional software, for example a web server, a database management system, or a WAMP/LAMP software bundle. Nevertheless, this does not mean the wiki must be accessible to outside users.

Some personal wikis are public but password-protected, running either on their own webservers or hosted by third parties. This has the advantage that the personal space can be accessed and edited from any computer or PDA with a web browser.

Multi-user wiki software

Multi-user wiki applications with personal editions:

  • MoinMoin (written in Python) has a desktop edition.
  • TWiki (written in Perl) has TWiki for Windows Personal and Certified TWiki.
  • ScrewTurn Wiki (written in C#) has a Desktop Edition. It is intended only for Windows users.
  • DokuWiki (written in PHP) has Dokuwiki on a Stick and DesktopWiki – it works on plain text files and thus needs no database. Its syntax is similar to the one used by MediaWiki and makes sure the data files remain readable outside the wiki.

Single-user wiki software

ZuluPad Screen Shot, showing links, images, and toolbar

There are also wiki applications specifically designed for personal use. Their feature set often differs from traditional wikis; examples are:

  • Dynamic tree views of the wiki (These are useful because wikis built for personal usage are often small.)
  • Drag and drop support for images, text and video, mathematics
  • Use of OLE or Linkback to allow wikis to act as relational superstructures for multiple desktop type documents
  • Multimedia embedding, in particular wikis one can link to internal aspects of movies and sound tracks and store notes / comments
  • Macros and macros constructors. Also often support for alien macros so the wiki can act as a multi scripting macro system

Free software

WikidPad Screen shot

The following are personal wiki systems released under free software licences:

  • Gnote is a port of Tomboy to C++, not all plug-ins ported
  • Emacs is a text editor that, when used in the editing mode org-mode, can create documents that are interlinked, converted to HTML, and automatically uploaded to a web server.
  • TiddlyWiki is BSD license, single file, self-modifying HTML + JavaScript based personal wiki
  • Tomboy is a (LGPL) free software program for note-taking in a wiki-like manner. Simple editing and retrieval methods are provided. The program allows for easy organisation of any hierarchical data. The Tomboy project is hosted on GNOME CVS.
  • Vim can be used as a personal wiki via plugins.
  • WikidPad is a free, open-source standalone wiki notebook/outliner with many features, such as dynamic tree generation, topic tagging, auto-completion, full text searches, visual link tree, customizable interface, image and file control etc.
  • Zim, an Open-Source Desktop Wiki which interoperates well with common Distributed Version Control Systems.

Proprietary software

File:Connectedtext-tree.jpg
ConnectedText showing a treeview of the linking between pages
  • ConnectedText is a commercial Windows-based personal wiki system with many advanced features, including: full text searches, visual link tree, customizable interface, image and file control, CSS-based page display, exports to HTML and HTML Help, and plug-ins.
  • NotePub is an online notepad with wiki functionality and privacy settings on a note by note basis.
  • Ppcsoft iknow is a Windows based information manager and personal wiki system. Features WYSIWYG editing and a unique automatic linking between notes. 30 days trial and free edition available.
  • VoodooPad is a Mac based information manager and personal wiki system.

See also

References

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