Note Wiki

NoteWiki is a lightweight standalone wiki written in VbClassic, an older but better version of VisualBasic. Editing is done directly on the text, with hyperlinks generated on the fly. It will probably run on any Windows platform.

http://mattryall.net/NoteWiki/

It comes with seed pages, and might be suitable for a LogBook or ProgrammersNotebook. Source code is included in the distribution. It's quite similar to NoteBook, but even more light-weight. Editing is modeless, similar to PepysWiki. (Notebook does not use modeless editing.)

NoteWiki implements all the primary WikiPrinciples, except indicating whether a link target exists or not. That is, there is no question mark if the link is empty. Ideally, it needs a way of displaying links with no page without changing the text of the page (which inserting a question mark does). At the moment, it's implemented with the screen as only a formatted copy of the text in the file. Perhaps a non-blue but still underlined link could be used? At the moment, it's fine as it is. We soon discover that the link is empty by ... checking its contents!

People using NoteWiki:

MattRyall
KevinFlude - took me about 2 minutes to get it started - is there anything this easy I can implement for a group over the internet?
ScottChastain
DonaldNoyes - I am currently making some revisions to this program which will make their appearance early in January 2012.

A description of NoteWiki

Screenshot of NoteWiki:

NoteWiki displays a plain, fixed-size window about 4.5in square. The title bar contains the name of the current page. The footing bar contains "Use Ctrl-Enter to follow hyperlinks, Ctrl-Backspace to see backlinks.".

You can also click on a link to change page. Ctrl-Backspace (or right-click of the mouse) pops up a 2in square window containing a scrollable list of the backlinks for the current page and the message "Hit Enter to go, Escape to cancel". You must use Enter or Escape (or close the popup) to continue.

General Comments

Please note that this wiki wins outright the EasiestInstallableWikiContest. Although it comes with seedpages and source code, these are unessential. All that's needed is the executable program - as soon as you type into the initial window, a Pages subdirectory is created (if it doesn't already exist) and page creation has begun. Pages are saved as you type (so type carefully).

This is simple enough to be a beautiful and effective tool at least for personal use. This gives a possibility to really concentrate on creating hypertext. Jumping of rows (perhaps due to constant saving?) when writing longer pages is a bug to be fixed. No more features are needed since you can install another kind of wiki. This is simple and just fine. In addition, rather much can be done by opening the resource (file) manager for handling pages. A little distrubing thing is that there is no left margin in the window (characters too close to the border). -- SamiMaatta

Opening many windows

Multiple NoteWiki windows can be open simultaneously. Try parallel reading! Or compare between three or four pages!

If you close all the NoteWiki windows, your last page is displayed when you restart NoteWiki. Except for hyperlinks, there are no formatting rules.

The underlining bug

A terrible bug (or feature?) causes the entire text of a page to be underlined and made to appear to be a link (though it isn't) if you change an existing hyperlink by typing a new character in the middle of it or deleting a character from it. I can't seem to replicate this problem on my version. What platform are you running on? Win 98SE.

Could reproduce the error on Win98. Create a new page and start typing without deleting the 'This...'. Start with a capital letter followed by small letters.

I have this bug a lot. on my Win98SE computer. It's a total pain if you want to use NoteWiki for more then 3 minutes. (About the time I start pulling my hair out.)

Windows Problems

FYI, NoteWiki doesn't work for me in Win2K. I get a "A file is missing or invalid" dialog box, complaining about some rich text editor file (.ocx) missing.(with XP I get this: Component "RICHTX32.OCX or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid.)

That is strange. It works for me in Win2K, but won't run in Windows 98 SE! I also have a problem with wikis that don't let you print out a page easily. I get tired of having to cut and paste text into a text editor, to print out a page.

To run in Windows 98(SE), NoteWiki must not be run in the root directory.

[the reported error (missing .ocx file) being sometimes reported and sometimes not says to me that the program is using the .ocx file but the quick install procedure doesn't install the file. The program works when some other previously installed app has installed the .OCX on the system in question. -- DaveParker]

I did see a failure due to some missing control or library on a Windows 2000 machine during initial testing, but couldn't work out what was the missing component. I'm pretty sure the only components that are used which may not be in a standard windows install are the following:

VisualBasic runtime
Rich text control (should be installed with Windows, since Wordpad uses it)
Microsoft Scripting runtime (msscrrun.dll)
VBScript RegularExpressions library (C:\Windows\System32\vbscript.dll\2 or \3)

If anyone could work out which of these need to be packaged in an installer, I'd be happy to fix one up. I don't have the software available (clean versions of Windows, VMWare, etc) to check it out myself. -- MattRyall

You just need to download file richtx32.ocx (easy to find in the InterNet), put it into \Windows\System32 directory and execute

  regsvr32.exe richtx32.ocx

// aamonster-dog-mail-dot-ru

Issues Log

Error: Dialog appears on startup: "Missing file or library". Application doesn't start.

Cause: I've recently discovered the incompatibility with one of the above errors. The regular expression DLL has different libraries inside it, and the index of the library that contains the regular expressions changes depending on your installation.

Workaround: On my current PC, I open the project in VB. Reselect the project reference for the regular expression library (under Project, References), untick the missing reference and rebuild.

Fix: Any ideas?

Moved from WishList

NoteWiki Wish List

It would be useful if you could set up a simple format. I'd like each page to have a link back to the top page and would be nice to be able to automatically set up links to major sections.

I used textinserter by burrotech a utility to insert text - set up my top menu and one click on the button and you have a navigation system - now I need to find a batch text changer to be able to update and change the top menu throughout all files

Print feature?
Search feature?
Resizable Window?
Tabbed Windows (MDI)?
Export feature - so can set up trial wiki on own computer then export text to web based wiki
come to think about it could this notewiki be made so that I could host internet based wiki so I can share stuff with work colleagues
copy/paste?

A few suggestions

To be able to have a full page
I like the concept of the title bar. How about making an icon toolbar on top of the title toolbar? You'd put on this toolbar:
- The book you have now on the left of the title (to close the program)
- A sort of house icon (to get to start page)
- A left arrow
- An icon for back links (it would open the backlinks window)
- An icon for hyperlinks.
Also the backlinks box on the right click of the mouse is a great idea! Can't you make access to a back link work on a single click of the mouse?
When I click on a link, the mouse cursor has a funny shape. It should be an arrow. The arrow works when I do the right click of the mouse to have back-links though. Can you modify that?
Ctrl Enter does not seem to work (hyperlinks)
Finally this constant flickering is a pain in the neck. Here is how I think the problem could be solved. When we have created a file, we'll click on some button MakeFile? for example and this will activate the flickering for a few seconds.

Version History (New version mods and list of bugs they fix)

It would be useful if you could set up a simple format. I'd like each page to have a link back to the top page and would be nice to be able to automatically set up links to major sections.

Try this modification to page.cls It adds a link to FrontPage to any page viewed as the last line of the page:

 1 Public Function GetText?() As String
 2 If (Right$(Text, 9) <> "FrontPage") Then
 3     GetText? = Text + vbCrLf + "FrontPage"
 4   Else
 5     GetText? = Text
 6 End If
 End Function

Substituting for lines indicated - Will add two links instead of one at the end of page:

2 If(Right$(Text,23) <> "FrontPage MajorSections?") Then 3 GetText? Text + vbcrlf + "FrontPage MajorSections?"

A side-effect of this addition to each viewed page is that the back links on FrontPage will list all pages in the wiki in a combo box (that have the FrontPage added to it via this method) -- DonaldNoyes

This is cool. Is there a way you could compile it for windows 3x? How did you code the WikiWords? Would it work in VB2? I'm interested in using something like this on an old computer.

I loved NoteWiki at first, but it very rapidly became completely unusable, and possibly motion-sickness inducing. Am I the only Windows XP user who has a problem with the screen flickering (wrong word-- really going completely spastic!) seeming for some reason to be trying to cycle through each link on a page, with speed increasing as the page gets larger.

Just can't use it any more. A pity. Nice thing that I can retrieve the info from the pages so easily though.

Is there a fix?

I don't think anyone has done anything about this. It can be done.

I have been working on NoteWiki and a new version of NoteWiki will soon be released (probably just after the first of the year 2012) It will deal with the concerns, problems, wishes, expressed on this page and will run under WindowsSeven. It will be called NoteWiki2012.

For what it will look like and where you will be able to download it:
- http://donaldr.noyes.com/NoteWiki/Versions/2012v0101.htm

-- DonaldNoyes.20111217

Nothing there 2011/11/12; is it WikiTomorrow yet? I was interested in trying this out.

Hi Matt,

What license is NoteWiki released under? I was thinking of stealing some of your regex code for SdiDesk. (SdiDesk does a lot of this stuff manually, which is ten times as long and fifty times as painful). But I won't if the license is incompatible. SdiDesk is released under the GeneralPublicLicense. Cheers -- PhilJones

He has updated his site and included license information -- DonaldNoyes.20111217

Hello i tried to run NoteWiki from a USB Memory Stick. I only get following error message: "NoteWiki: Run-time error '5' Invalid procedure call or argument", although copying the file to the hard disk works. Any ideas? Thanks for the programm and the information, alewa

Greetings All,

I have taken the NoteWiki code and ported it to c#. I also added things like screen resizing and copy and paste. I would like to release the results under an attribution CC license (with Matt's Name top of the list. Are there other contributors to the original code?). I would like to continue building it. I have started to play around with things like export to html/xml/formatted text(rtf). I also have started to implement a spell checker using NetSpell?.

Matt please contact me at shane.knysh at YonerDotCom?.

ShaneKnysh?

Now to get it ported to an iPAQ 4705 Windows 2003 based PPC. I like it. Bruce

This comment references the last 2 notes (USB Drive & C#). I am NOT familiar with VBClassic, but I do know that VB is dependent on the VB runtime. In a similar fashion, C# is dependent on the .NET Framework. In my experience, a C# application will NOT run off an external device (or off another computer on the network). The older tools (Visual C++ 6.0) allowed you to run off an external location (USB or Network), but were often only compatible with the Operating System that they were compiled under. It all boils down to where the code that talks to the OS is. Platform Independence is driving the new movement to interpreted languages (C# and Java), but the downside is you'll probably have to copy it locally, just like the old VB.