chiq_chaq is a WikiClone designed for easy localization and friendliness towards non-technical users. I wrote the server side in Perl, and my husband RoySharon? did the client side (graphic design and DHTML/JavaScript/CSS/XML/XSL stuff).
- There is rather a lot of JavaScript and some IE-only stuff, which is unfortunate, but the basics are usable in most browsers and all the client-side stuff is templated so you can throw it away and sub your own.
- Actually the new version 1.5 works on Mozila 1.2 just fine.
There's an active site in Hebrew at
http://www.beofen-tv.co.il/cgi-bin/chiq.pl and a sample site in English at
http://www.beofen-tv.co.il/cgi-bin/chiq.pl?group=eng. The source is available at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/chiqchaq/ .
BTW, in Hebrew chiq-chaq means "quickly"...
Here are some features:
- Locale aware (for link words and for time and date format). Existing localizations for English, German and Hebrew.
- Uses words_separated_by_underscores for link pattern (for languages that do not have lower and upper case, like Hebrew, Arabic, Kanji, etc.).
- Cool RecentChanges page, where you can select the number of days to show, sort by almost any field, filter, hide changes you have seen, and more.
- Has a textarea in the bottom of each page, to quickly append text.
- A "section" structure supports thread mode.
- Formatting options include bold and italic text, multi-level bulleted and numbered lists, headings, superscripts and subscripts, greeks, source code highlighting.
- Inter-wiki linking.
- Can display random "teasers" at the top of each page. (quote-of-the-day, where the quotes are from other pages in the site.)
- Live statistics engine.
- Protect email addresses from crawlers by selectively mangling them.
- Access to previous versions of the page.
- Has skins (page templates) to customize page design.
- Heavy use of CSS, to make graphic design easier.
- Active content plug-ins enable dynamic page content.
- Multiple wikis.
- Works on both Unix and Windows NT.
--
YonatSharon
- Has a textarea in the bottom of each page, to quickly append text.
- This might be an AntiPattern, creating more ThreadMess and less careful contribution. Please let us know what happens.
- I don't think chiq_chaq is any more or any less messy than other wikis. It seems some people only edit what they themselves wrote, and others take more responsibility and refactor and summarize threaded pages. I think this is not so much a technological issue as a sociological one.
- With a bit more development/hacking, this feature could make it a nice wiki/forum hybrid. I'm thinking of rolling it out for a particular site such that anyone can Add but only the site owner can Edit. This is probably anathema to "proper" Wikizens but I bet a lot of sites would go for it. However the features aren't adequate yet for this purpose.
- I don't agree that it is an AntiPattern. I think WikiUserInterface could use some more patterns. After all isn't the "add comment" feature, just an affordance to the general wiki custom of adding a horizontal line and a comment. -- SarahAllen
CategoryWikiImplementation
Chiq Chaq