Wiki Wiki Plans

Search. I've got some ideas for searching large pattern-bases that will probably show up here first.

Search. Results would be easier to scan if pages with similar finds were grouped together.

Delete. You can delete the text and you can delete the references. But you can't quite delete all traces of an unwanted page.

Rename. This is a SystemOfNames if there ever was one. I'm thinking a type-in field on the EditText page with it's own rename button is the right way to go. But how should I handle references?

Ignore them.
Change them all to the new name.
Answer back a search on the old name so you can change them.

-- WardCunningham

RalphJohnson points out... Rename should change all references. Popping up a list of the references so you can change them yourselves is useful, but mostly when you are splitting a reference. If you are just renaming it then you want the system to do it all for you. Note that global changes on a multiuser system raise many problems! What about all those pages whose source has been retrieved already?

I've almost got rename working... but I can't get past my PerlDatabaseIterationProblem. Any help would be much appreciated. -- WardCunningham

I think a choice about changing the references is appropriate. This is like renaming a method -- sometimes you want all the old senders to use the new method. Other times, you want the current method to have new name, so that the old name can have different behavior. When I misspell the name of a wiki link, I want all the references to change when I correct the spelling. When I decide that the text of the current wiki page is too detailed, I often want to insert another level of indirection. To do this, I'd like to rename the current page ("InterfacePattern?" to "DetailedInterfacePattern?"), then type new text for "InterfacePattern?". In the former, I want all references to change. In the latter, I want all references to stay unchanged. I need a choice! -- TomStambaugh (20 Dec 1995)

How about a Java version of Wiki instead of Perl? -- RichardKeene (11/20/98)

There are a few out there. I presume the main issue is whether or not Ward cares for Java and feels it's justified for Wiki. I'm facing a similar situation with data-moving, -manipulation and -massaging scripts written in Perl. My boss periodically asks if Perl is still the right language for them. Ironically, he just implemented a script an order of magnitude more complex than the others. It was the best candidate by far to go truly OO. -- KielHodges

I'm working on a Java version of Wiki, from time to time. I want it to do a lot more than this Wiki does - there's not much point in just replicating what Ward has already done. One potential problem is deployment. Far fewer ISPs allow Java servlets than allow Perl scripts. However, the number is increasing. As far as I know, the Java situation is much better than the Smalltalk one in this regard. How would you deploy a Smalltalk Wiki if you didn't have your own server? -- DaveHarris

CorwinLightWilliams and I are toying with the idea of making wiki Babelfish compatible, so any given page can be written in (Euro-)language X, and a user can read it in (Euro-)language Y. It would have to use cookies to dial in a default language, but should be rather easy. It should also make a wiki much more amusing because Babelfish isn't terribly accurate on translating. -- RyanDavis

What will this do? -- MarkDiggs

It will do something. :-) -- SteveWainstead

Regarding the reference question, you could have two options associated with the renaming operation. After the name of the page has been updated, one option would update all of the references within the database, while the other option would simply create a page using the old name, saying something like "Page renamed to <new name>."

The former would be more appropriate for spelling mistakes, while the latter would let people update links on referring pages as and when appropriate.

-- DavidMcNicol

Ward, any news? I just came across this page, which seems to have been around for a long, long time, but is an orphan. -- EarleMartin

CategoryWiki