ClusterWiki

Last edit January 4, 2007

A PerlLanguage WikiEngine by BoLeuf, similar to QuickiWiki, except that it allows multiple wikis to run from the same code base. New wikis are defined by copying & customizing a generic gateway script that calls the main library wiki.lib, which handles the real work of serving/editing pages.

Included in the book TheWikiWay by BoLeuf and WardCunningham, but that version has munged line endings. A fixed version is downloadable from http://leuf.net/ww/tww?WikiWaySources.

Features

Standard WikiWord links (no FreeLinks)
BackLinks and RecentChanges
TabFreeMarkup
Raw HTML blocks
WantedPages
Forward links (add '<<A' to page B, and a link to B is appended to A; handy for categorizing and building RoadMaps)
Page section headings automatically indexed at the top of page
Pages stored as text files
Page templates - one per wiki
VersionControl via RevisionControlSystem if desired
A number of configurable options, but most don't need tweaking
Free for non-commercial use

Getting ClusterWiki running on a Windows box takes some work (figuring out path names, etc), but once it's configured it just keeps on running. Setting up additional wikis is a snap.

RCS note: on WindowsTwoThousand (and, I assume, WindowsNt/WindowsXp), you may have to run your Web server process as the same user who has the locks in RCS's ",v" files. If not, RCS could fail silently. This problem does not occur on WindowsNinetyFive, and doesn't always happen on Win2K. (This may be a problem with user/file permissions, rather than RCS or ClusterWiki itself.)

Alternate Text Formatting Rules

To take full advantage of ClusterWiki, you'll have to read TheWikiWay or the source code. Doing so reveals some alternate TextFormattingRules, as well as the way to delete a page.

Some formatting rules:

three different ways to created a numbered list item: 1. 1) #
tables with cells delimited by ||
three levels of headings (!!one !!!two !!!!three); each page has an index of headings at the top
double-bracketed links become numbered [[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WelcomeVisitors]] -> [1]
buttons for search, page rename, WantedPages, etc.
starting a line with "" makes it a block quote
starting a line with > makes it a citation
escape markup processing by bracketing text with [esc]...[/esc] (good for code samples; you can also use [sic]...[/sic] or [literal]...[/literal])
raw HTML can be added between <html>...</html> delimiters

To delete a page on ClusterWiki, rename it to "KILLpageNOW".

Testimonials

Every time I want to add a feature to ClusterWiki -- e.g., the ability to use raw HTML -- a HappyCollision occurs. Also, it took just 47 lines to add support for GraphViz, GnuPlot, and LaTex. It's easy to extend this feature to other programs that take a text description and return an image.

CategoryWikiImplementation