From: Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@...>
Date: 2006-10-23T04:56:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Recommendations for a Ruby Wiki, preferably with bidi support?

Bret Pettichord wrote:
> Both projects seem to be struggling with the backend technology.
> Instiki used Madeliene. One of the great things about this was that it
> made instiki a two step install on Windows and often a one-step install
> on Mac and Linux (when ruby was already installed).
> 
> Apparently, Madeleine has stability problems and both projects have,
> separately been moving to use different, more SQL based backend
> technology. But this signficantly complicates the install.
> 
> Anyhow, i'm using a version of Pimki that still uses Madeleine and i am
> happy with it. I try to install the newer versions of both tools, but
> found the complications involved not worth the trouble.
> 
> I'd love to see some more community organize around one of these tools,
> help resolve the issues with persistence, and make the wiki technology
> easier to extend without forking. Since this is a Rails-based wiki, i
> would think that there would be a lot of interest and knowledge that
> could be brought to bear.

If I were developing a wiki, I'd try using something like my FSDB[1] lib 
(or maybe KirbyBase[2], which I don't know well), which uses the file 
system for persistence, and is pure ruby. Then you can use whatever 
revision control system you want on those files (the file granularity is 
small and controllable), and the same goes for backups, journaling, 
indexing, etc. And at the end of the proverbial day what you've got on 
disk is a file hierarchy of wiki entries (plus heterogeneously formatted 
files, if you want) which can survive the toolset you used to access them.

The limitations[3] of Madeleine always scared me off.

[1] http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/fsdb
[2] http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/kirbybase
[3] http://madeleine.rubyforge.org/docs/designRules.html

A minor irony: the synopsis for fsdb uses the string "A la recherche du 
temps perdu" in an example. This was never intended as a reference to 
Madeleine, I promise ;)

-- 
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407