!!! Introduction

Here is a page to try and organize ideas to extend SWDWiki and possibly other wiki to make them more useful and allow them to replace more traditional tools.

!!! Traditional tools
Here is a list of traditional tools that compete with Wikis:
* filesystem/shared network drive (or even local drive) (smb, nfs)
* spreadsheets
* database applications (catalogs etc.)
* document editor
* note taking application
* file versioning system (svn, git, webdav)
* mindmapping tools
* web server/publication system
* email
* search engine


!!! Current strong points

Currently a wiki already offers a lot of interesting features:
* document editing/publishing with multimedia attachments
* integrated versioning
* ability to attach any document
* full text search in all documents (and sometimes attachments)
* simple markup means it's easy to imitate a page you like
* good interaction with copy and paste


!!! Improvement ideas
!! Multiple wikis

Using a single wiki for everything is almost impossible, so it seems important to be able to run multiple wikis and move data from one to another.

One could bypass the wiki and synchronize pages through the backend filesystem (svn, rsync etc.)

One could present the wikis as a filesystem and run a synchronization tool on top to synchronize 2 wikis. This would make a webdav interface desirable.

!! Merging changes

When a user tries to save a page that just was edited by another user, the wiki usually returns an error.
Automatic merging seems more appropriate for large pages edited by multiple people. One could decide to apply the merge automatically when there is no conflict.

!! Branches

Wikis perform revision management of pages behind the scenes. To avoid conflicts and protect pages, typical wikis rely on user and access rights: only allow trusted user to edit and count on them to build something coherent.







!!! Related pages

* Programming
** [Wiki and Shell]
** [Wiki and programming]
** [Wiki Tools]
* Data
** [Wiki and filesystem]
** [Database and Wiki]
* Representation
** [Mindmap and Wiki]
** [Wiki and SVG]