Martin Gradwell

Much of my career has been maintaining legacy Cobol code on IBM mainframes, but I've always had computers at home to play with the other stuff. My first computer was a Sinclair ZX80, then ZX81, Spectrum, QL, AcornArchimedes, Amiga, PC, PC, PC..

I wrote what was essentially a Wiki (without realizing that that was what it was) on the QL. No collaborative features, obviously, but lots of hyperlinking. Automatic linking to any heading identified by the presence of a paragraph marker character(#182) at the start of the line. No need to manually smash words together, or to have headings only at the tops of pages. I ported it to the Archimedes, but only the burglars know what ultimately became of that version.

I ported it again to other subsequent machines, and found it useful for understanding the work I was being paid to do. Then I thought of developing it to the point where it would be marketable commercially, but that was harder than it looked. Unlike earlier machines, the PC seemed to actively fight against the developer. What worked on one PC wouldn't on another, for inexplicable reasons.

When I discovered the internet, I searched for other programs which might do the same stuff as mine did, but I never thought of searching for the word "wiki". Consequently I only discovered wiki recently, when wikipedia was mentioned in a usenet newsgroup that I was following.

Martin Gradwell, mtgradwell@btinternet.com

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