Wiki -- Why?

Posted by Wes Perdue
Sep 1, 2006 at 07:06 PM

Daly,

That’s an excellent question. I think the best answer for me is a wiki’s lack of structure. I use WikidPad for certain types of information. I like how the structure isn’t strictly tree-based even though it shows the hierarchy in a tree. I also like how the structure naturally develops as the database grows. It’s much less restrictive than an outliner, and the automatic linking is nice to have.

I very much want to like ConnectedText, as it seems so feature-rich. But I always seem to use WikidPad. I think it’s because I don’t like having to switch between viewing mode and editing mode. That’s required in ConnectedText, as you can’t navigate hyperlinks in edit mode.

WikidPad has both an edit mode and a view mode, but I almost never need to use the view mode, as hyperlinks are navigable in edit mode.

Thanks to Chriss’ recommendation, I’ve found that ZuluPad has only an edit mode, and automatically links hyperlinks. I’m going to give it a try. Its one big advantage versus WikidPad is word wrap. A lack of automatic word wrap in WikidPad is to me one of its biggest weaknesses, and makes it difficult to use for long-format text creation.

I’ve found that certain projects or databases lend themselves better to outliners, and others lend themselves better to the free-form Wiki-style applications.

I remember a while back that Manfred Kuehn made a very good defense of the use of ConnectedText as a general-purpose PIM in the outliners-pims Yahoo group.

Regards,
Wes