tcl wiki package project

The goal of this project is to create a tcl package for manipulating wikitext (is there an official term for text marked up in the wiki style?). RS: I informally call it WikiML. Agreed, it is not SGML-derived as the other *ML, but it is a Markup Language.


The main objectives are:

  • create a proper, well written and well documented tcl package
  • be able to convert wikitext into HTML
  • be able to render wikitext in a tk text widget

Other ideas we could consider:

  • convert wikitext to XML
  • convert wikitext to man page format, and visa versa (wouldn't it be cool to have all tcl man pages in a wiki format, so you could add your own comments?)

I'd like also to combine wiki with mindmapping, even better with concept mapping. I'd call the resulting marriage "WikiMaps" :-) --dma

I'll admit I (Bryan) have ulterior motives. I'm thinking of implementing a wiki based on Vignette's StoryServer product, and need a library to handle the rendering of the text. BUT... Jean-Claude and I thought it might be nice to have a standard library that could be used by my wiki and the official Tcler's Wiki, and any other projects where a wiki solution would be useful (perhaps as embedded docs for tcl based applications).

Join in and discuss (or write the code for) the following:

JC: All scripts in WiKit are hereby made freely available for adoption, cannibalization, and other rituals...


DKF: Hmm. It would be difficult to convert wikitext to XML since the meaning is already lost. Indeed, I would suspect that it only makes sense to convert it into formats that don't attach (much) meaning to formatting since there is not that much meaning implicit in there. The meaning is all contextual.

LV: I suspect that the author had in mind a syntactical conversion to XML rather than a semantical translation. I am uncertain how much use having text converted to "<bold>stuff<bold/><italic>and more <italic/>" etc would be though...


Edrx: I've placed my notes on basic TclWiki hacking (i.e., about installing a TclWiki locally and making it execute arbitrary Tcl code, to inspect its variables and other fun stuff) at http://angg.twu.net/e/wiki.e.html#ewiki - the notes are rather messy, though...


Appears that the last two bullets above have had their contents clobbered - could someone with ability to access the past versions of these pages return them?

This - the Diff - is exactly one very important feature of other wikis missing in WiKit. --dma


-EE (2001/Jun/14) Can someone please tell me how one goes about retrieving an old version of a page from the wikit? (And point me at a more appropriate page to ask/answer the question on? Or point me to where the question is already answered?)

-EE (2001/Jun/18) Well, I've taken some time out to look into this, and have figured out how to access the archive of a Wikit. Unfortunately, the two bullets above which have had their contents clobbered do NOT have any old versions of them in the archive. Odd, that... Only thing I can think of is that the pages somehow got clobbered without ever having been edited following initial page creation. (Either that, or they never had anything put INTO them at initial page creation...)