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= Welcome to Kwiki 2.0 |
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Kwiki is wiki software that is especially popular in the Perl community. |
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It is of course written in Perl, but you don't need to be fluent in Perl |
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or even know what Perl is to start using a Kwiki wiki today. |
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One of the main advantages of Kwiki over other wiki software is that it |
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is comprised of lots of little software parts called plugins. There are |
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nearly 200 Kwiki plugins, with the number growing every day. |
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A plugin can change a Kwiki installation in any number of ways. The |
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effect can range from being simple as changing a color scheme to complex |
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as turning the wiki into a blog. |
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In practice, Kwiki installations end up looking and behaving very |
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different from each other, because a given installation is defined by |
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the set of plugins that the owner of the wiki is using. |
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There are plugins for almost anything you can think of, and even things |
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you probably haven't. If Kwiki doesn't have something you need, it isn't |
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too hard for you to write a plugin for yourself. Find a friendly Kwiki |
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hacker if you need help getting started. |
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== The Kwiki Vision |
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Kwiki is a great solution for those people who just want to install and |
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easily maintain a wiki site. But Kwiki is much more than that... |
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The vision of Kwiki is to be a software environment where |
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programmers can add to the framework as easily as a person would |
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edit a page on a wiki. |
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In an abstract sense, you can think of the Kwiki project as a wiki, and |
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each Kwiki plugin as a wiki page. Even though these plugins aren't open |
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for /everybody/ to edit, there is a strong sense of trust in the |
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community. Anyone who is interested (and generally trustworthy) can get |
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commit access to the project just by asking. |
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Kwiki encourages experimentation. No idea is too weird for Kwiki. There |
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are no inherent rules to follow. This makes Kwiki a hacker's playground. |
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Just be careful, or somebody might get an eye poked out. |
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Finally Kwiki doesn't make judgments on "Wiki Concepts". For instance, |
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Kwiki does not prefer CamelCaseLinks over [Free Links], or a file system |
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database over an RDBMS. Kwiki supports them all, with plugins for |
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everything. You could probably clone, say, MediaWiki (the Wikipedia wiki |
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software), using the right combination of Kwiki plugins. |
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The point is, if there is something about Kwiki that you don't |
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like, you don't need to convince the Kwiki community to change. |
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Just write a plugin! |
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