Tue, Jan 06, 2004
Blog Backlinks Enabled on PurpleWiki
#
If you view the BackLinks on any of my
Wiki pages, it will now display
BackLinks from both the Wiki and also this blog. For example, if you
view the backlinks to "DougEngelbart", you will see a list of all of my Wiki
pages and blog entries that mention Doug. (SG)
The beautiful thing about this feature is that it maintains context
for all of the different concepts described on my Wiki. I list
several Patterns on my Wiki, with some level of detail on each
page. But when you look at the BackLinks to those Patterns, you
see a list of all the stories where the Patterns are mentioned. I
tell the stories as I have before, and the tool explicitly ties the
concept to the stories that describe the context. That's
augmentation! As ChrisDent
said, it "makes the universe bigger." (SH)
My essay, WikisAsTopicMaps, describes this phenomenon in further (and
slightly more technical) detail. (SI)
How this feature finally became implemented is a wonderful example of
what makes OpenSource so great. We've wanted it for a while, but
didn't have time to implement it. Last month, I started thinking more
seriously about implementing the feature, because I wanted to
demonstrate it to some potential clients. Unfortunately, I was
swamped, and didn't have time to do it myself. (SK)
DavidFannin? to the rescue. David had installed PurpleWiki and the
MovableType plugin, and liked it. However, he also wanted the
BackLink feature. So, he wrote it, and
contributed it back to us. Neither Chris nor I nor anyone else in
the small PurpleWiki community knew David beforehand, but as you can
imagine, we welcomed his contribution. (SL)
David's patch was just a hack. Chris had
some ideas for refactoring the PurpleWiki code to better integrate
this feature. So, he
implemented them, and
released a preview of the code. Chris's refactoring made it very
easy for me to write
a similar plugin for blosxom. Suddenly, we had the feature I had
been pining for. (SM)
As an aside, I had grander plans for how to implement this feature,
and those plans haven't gone away. (See my
notes on TPVortex for a
preview.) The important thing is, David and Chris's approach worked.
It may not do all of the whiz bang things I eventually want it to do,
but it does what I want it to do right now. More importantly, it may
very well inspire others to implement some of the grander ideas.
ReleaseEarlyAndOften? is an extremely important pattern of OpenSource
development, because it enables collaboration, which accelerates the
implementation and dissemination of ideas. (SN)
Precedence (SO)
Ours is not the first integrated Wiki and blog. Notable precedents
include KWiki and BillSeitz's WikiLog. These tools all had the
integrated BackLinks feature before we did. (SP)
The key difference between these tools and ours is that they require
you to use a single tool. You have to use KWiki as both your
blogging tool and Wiki to get all of the features. Our approach
integrates PurpleWiki with MovableType, blosxom, and conceivably any other blogging tool. This is consistent
with our overall philosophy of improving interoperability between
tools using DougEngelbart's ideas as a unifying framework. (SQ)
We've only taken baby steps so far. We plan bigger and better things.
More importantly, we want to encourage other tool developers to adopt
a similar approach, and to collaborate with each other to do so. (SR)
/tech/purple |
Posted at 9:03pm
EEK Speaks
A blog about collaboration, community-building, and the various
goings-on at Blue Oxen
Associates, with occasional digressions on food and other vital
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