Sdi Desk

Another Wiki-like personal note-making application written in VbClassic.

Update 2012 : As of 2012 I have abandoned SdiDesk. My ongoing experiment with wiki-like tools has has now moved to support for WardCunningham's SmallestFederatedWiki. I am working on scripts to import SdiDesk pages to the SFW format, an SdiDesk markup plugin and a network diagramming plugin for SFW. You can find my work-in-progress here : http://github.com/interstar/ThoughtStorms

News of these activities is still published on my blog : http://smartdisorganized.blogspot.com/ and if you want to contact me about it, that would be the best place.

In September 2008 I had SdiDesk ported to VisualBasicDotNet. The GPL source-code of that is still here : http://code.google.com/p/sdidesk/source/checkout

I have never really worked on that version but it more or less worked when I tested it, if any VisualBasicDotNet programmers are feeling adventurous.

Everything below is left for historical interest only.

-- PhilJones

=== Historical Interest Only ===

Features :

Source code under GPL
UseMod-style markup : links made with WikiWords and square brackets
A very wiki way of working with a plaintext "source" and an HTML "presentation" view
Some basic diagramming (allows you to sketch a network of ideas which are links to further pages)
link types, (types shown in different colours)
(in progress) exporting an area of the notebook as a flat HTML (more formats planned)
backlinks
browser-like "back" and "forward" buttons
full text search (bit slow at the moment)
RecentChanges
Can link to resources on your local machine so a good way of collecting links to a bunch of xls or doc files that are scattered around your hard-disk.

The system uses the same markup as UseMod wiki which is a variant on this wiki. So markup like italic and bold work as expected. WikiWords make links to new pages try adding some on the StartPage, then follow the link to creating a new page. The buttons at the top of the window tend to do the same thing as similarly named links on web-based wikis.

The page you arrive at is called "StartPage". The name appears in the "navigation bar" at the top of the window. The words "new page" are just some default text for the body of the page. You currently can't change the name of the default page (it's always "StartPage")

The idea, as far as possible, is to hide the directory / file model from the user and replace it with a flat name-space of wiki-pages. I don't particularly like hierarchical file systems, I prefer wiki :-) Of course, that means there can only be one page with each name. When you change directory you are, in fact, creating a whole new and distinct notebook (or name-space). Note that things like RecentChanges and All'Pages are local to each book.

I am using the IE component which comes with VB. (When you save or preview a page and see it with titles and bullets etc. that actually is the IE component, rendering behind the scenes.) VB means Windows only, I'm afraid. (I know, sorry, sorry!)

My understanding is that this is just a wrapper around the libraries which are at the base of IE. I package this VB component with the program, but not the libraries themselves. So if you don't have IE on your machine you might not have the libraries at all.

I have to say, I haven't tested this, so it might be an incorrect assumption, but my guess is SdiDesk wouldn't work on a machine which didn't have IE.

More documentation is here : http://www.nooranch.com/sdidesk/wiki/wiki.cgi/SdiDeskDocumentation

Any other questions or problems, feel free to ask here or (better) on the SdiDesk wiki.

-- PhilJones

Phil what is your email address? Your wiki not working anymore and I do not want to contact you via the blog. Have you seen his http://nooranch.com/synaesmedia/ page?

Screenshots:

But editing the pages uses WikiMarkup like this

A network diagram

This looks interesting! Especially with the network diagram and external documents linking functionality. I would love to see a version with some of the basic pages included! -- SusanRoy

The lame reason I didn't provide a bunch of pages to get you started is I couldn't see how to use the standard VB PackageAndDeploymentWizard? to make subdirectories. So I couldn't include any in the installer. But it's very very easy to make pages.

Ordinary pages are just like wiki, make a link to a WikiWord, follow it, and you're there.
Network pages. Just click "New Net", (you'll get a blue screen to show you're in edit mode. then click on it to add some nodes. Give the page a name and save it. Then you'll find the nodes are links to further pages in the network.

Hope this helps

-- PhilJones

Can it work with Windows Mobile/Pocket PC?

- Sorry. I don't know this as I don't have a Pocket PC to try it with. I suspect it would need tweaking (screen resolution / some libraries). But the SourceCode comes with SdiDesk, so some enterprising person could find out very easily. -- PhilJones

Cool! Tried SdiDesk from a pendrive in the USB port of a machine in a cybercafe. Works fine. Though I had to make sure I had all the system files on the drive. -- PhilJones