FileSystem Based Wiki

Building a filesystem based wiki

What

• The idea of building a filesystem-based wiki was inspired by AndyGlew from http://c2.com/cgi/wiki/?FilesystemBasedWiki
• The main feature about filesystem-based wiki:
  1. No Web server
  2. No Database
  3. Cross-platform
  4. Portable
  5. Raw pages stored as individual text files
  6. Simple wiki markup

How

• Building a filesystem-based wiki
  1. Store raw pages as plain text files.
  2. Since each wiki page is just a text file,searching,editing,organizing will be easy in most operation systems.
     1. Search wiki content using os built-in search engine or any desktop search engine.
     2. Edit wiki page using os built-in editor or any professional text editor.
     3. Organize wiki pages in folders,or other third-party tools.
  3. Only problem is viewing,the browser will not render wiki markup automatically.
     • For that reason,I wrote a firefox addon called Wiki4X for wiki->html need.
  4. With ViewSourceWith addon,editing is much more convenient.
  5. With portable firefox,filesystem-based wiki will be portable too.
  6. It's not totally ubiquity, but it just works for me.

Why

• Lightweight
  • For personal use, database+webserver solution is too heavy.
  • It's portable,cross-platform , it can live in a USB flash drive.

• Extensibility
  • Third-party tools that work for text file will work for filesystem-based wiki too,such as:
    • Version Control tools like svn,cvs,git, way for collaboration.
    • Converter Tools/Scripts,raw pages will be able to publish as html pages.
    • Imaginative play, extensibility will be infinite