Re: Anyone using Wiki for collaboration?

Subject: Re: Anyone using Wiki for collaboration?
From: Chris <cud -at- telecable -dot- es>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 10:05:34 +0200


I think I built something that would qualify as a WIKI (perhaps embryonic) in '96. It was used to distribute project docs. To add to it you just had to put your docs in the file tree. It also used something as simple as the "ls" command to fake searches... Based on the orderly structure of the file tree, you could search for a topic within one project, within all projects, within one dept for one or all projects, all depts for one or all projects, etc. It was all Perl-based CGI, very simple, and required no attention to function well. It had auto-updated lists of keywords for each "level" in the tree (Project, Dept., Feature, etc.). You made selections in each list, and viola, a list of hits. The only problem was a potential proliferation of keywords, which could make it unwieldy. I controlled the top levels of the tree, but anybody could create a lower level, the name of which was a keyword.

One problem was accessing the actual files to revise them. As you know, HTTP returns a copy of the file, not the real thing. So you would have to jump through hoops to get changes into the source file. For us the problem was easily overcome - we were all on FrameMaker, so I (optionally) generated a MIF hypertext doc of all the "search" hits. These hits were links to the actual files, so clicking them opened the real source, you could edit, then save.
Definitely, this is the way to distribute project docs... Access for all, minimum effort for the authors.

--
Chris Despopoulos, maker of CudSpan Freeware...
Plugins to Enhance FrameMaker & FrameMaker+SGML
http://www.telecable.es/personales/cud/
cud -at- telecable -dot- es



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