Wiki -- Why?

Posted by Manfred
Sep 6, 2006 at 02:06 PM

As some people pinted out already in the forum, if WYSYWYG is what is most important to you, then a Wiki or Wiki-like software (like ConnectedText) makes not much sense. The strengths of such applications lie elsewhere.

1. They allow very easy hyperlinks (as pointed out by someone else already). And this can be very useful for organising materials (on the fly and more permanently).
2. They allow sophisticated searches. This is especially true of ConnectedText. I do not see that “organizing” and “searching” compete with one another. Searching allows a different and valuable view on the data than organizing. A wiki is a database application in the end. (But I agree that one- and two-pane outliners fall into this category too.)

More importantly, however, there is a fundamental difference between WYSYWYG and what may be called “structured text” (actually, the name is used by a particular application, see http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Articles/STX, for instance). But it can also be used as “a general name for various kinds of simple markup. It refers to a method of creating typographically or semantically rich plain text files, using only ASCII characters found on most keyboards, that can, if needed, be translated into more traditional markup languages. They are usually formatted on the fly by a program such as Web Browsers, formatted and printed, or compiled into a file such as a PDF.” (See http://wiki.43folders.com/index.php/Category:Structured_Text.) DocBook and LaTeX are perhaps the best examples of structured text. Wikis implement a sub-set of the more complicated structured text languages. Why is this of interest to the non WYSYWIG crowd?

1. Structured text is text; or if it isn’t text, it can easily be transformed into text (without loss of the formatting and linking information). It can easily be rendered as HTML.
2. Structured Text is format-independent.
3. Structured Text incorporates semantic information.

More might be said on behalf of wikis (as I have done in the past). I just want to say: yes, Daly, you are right, Wikis are an a fairly radical ALTERNATIVE to WYSYWYG. If you are comfortable with what WYSYWYG applications offer (and do not anticipate such needs as structured text may meet), you should stick with them. If you are looking for more, Wikis might be an alternative.

Manfred