Wither WYSIWYG Wiki Writing?

September 14, 2006 11:12 AM

Does anybody know of a one-page WYSIWYG wiki application?

It shouldn't be too difficult to create one, of course, but I'm hoping it already exists. Here's what I need: No ability to create new pages using WikiWords, a WYSIWYG or edit-in-place UI that lets anyone edit the content on the page, the ability to easily customize the layout to be very simple, the ability to roll back edits, and an easy environment for running it on my own server in PHP or Perl.

Here's what I don't want: to "just remove features from MediaWiki", or "can't you use Writely/Google Notebook/etc. for this"?, the need to get a web host that supports Ruby on Rails, anything that doesn't also work in IE.

Nice to have: some sort of authentication for edits, a pretty UI or template by default, a good community of other users who are building on the app as well.

Basically, I want to be able to have people collaborate on creating a single document without having to know HTML or (worse) a proprietary wiki markup language, without having to install anything, and without all the cruft that makes wikis so complicated.

posted by anildash to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

TiddlyWiki is about as easy as collaborative wikis go, and has some features you are looking for, including the "one-page" design approach. You may need to engineer the WYSIWYG toolbar, but there's a dev site that can help you out.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:20 AM on September 14, 2006

Is the fact that Writeboard doesn't work in IE 5.x a dealbreaker? Otherwise I'd also suggest TiddlyWiki or check out the wikimatrix if you wind up in a jam.
posted by jessamyn at 12:15 PM on September 14, 2006

Can I ask why writely wouldn't do what you want?
posted by empath at 12:51 PM on September 14, 2006

I second TiddlyWiki. It can be tweaked to auto-escape WikiWords and with the WikiBar plug-in is fairly WYSIWYG.
posted by ktrey at 1:16 PM on September 14, 2006

Writeboard probably isn't useful for you since it uses markup instead of wysiwyg. Writely sounds like your best bet - with the benefit (?) that multiple users can be editing the same document at the same time. Plus it has a very word-processor-like interface.

QwikiWiki is probably the simplest wiki I've ever used - the edit box has a series of buttons for bold, italic etc. but isn't wysiwyg: it just adds the relevant markup into the text box. It's not perfect but would probably be the best bet for starting to hack something together.

I realise you said "no hacking mediawiki" but, for the benefit of others, you can add a wysiwyg editor into mediawiki pretty easily.
posted by blag at 4:32 PM on September 14, 2006

Response by poster: "Can I ask why writely wouldn't do what you want?"

Yep, sorry to be a hardass about that... Writely being hosted is a dealbreaker. Otherwise, it'd be great. :) Basically, I don't even want login, just a page where everybody who vists can change the page.
posted by anildash at 4:42 PM on September 14, 2006

Weird... you'd think something like this (a really really simple wiki) would already exist. It's a shame you don't work for an organisation which employs shitloads of talented developers...
posted by blag at 4:51 PM on September 14, 2006 [1 favorite]

I much prefer Wiki on a Stick over TiddlyWiki, having tried both... WoaS seems much simpler. It can be uploaded to a website.
posted by IndigoRain at 9:01 PM on September 14, 2006