Is "wiki" the current state-of-the-art for a "virtual whiteboard?"

Jim Hickstein jxh at jxh.com
Tue May 23 11:15:58 PDT 2006


David Wolfskill wrote:
> I've been asked to set up a very low-volume, restricted-access
> application that the requestors liken to a "virtual whiteboard."

I still like TWiki for this; I just upgraded to 4.0 (which purports to 
have WYSIWYG editing, but I haven't see it yet).  It can be set up to 
enforce identifying users before they can edit things, and it has RCS 
behind it, so it's suitable for places where the Wiki orthodoxy (let 
anyone do anything, and someone will correct it) makes people uncomfortable.

Strangely, the biggest problem it solves is the line-ending dilemma.  A 
text file will only work if (a) everyone is handy with a text editor 
(which many are not), and (b) they agree to pick one form of line ending 
-- CR or CRLF or LF -- and stick with it.  Going over the network with 
HTTP at once enforces this and makes the issue go away.  It's amazing 
how big this problem really is, and how neatly this solves it.

I hear some grumbling that editing the pre-HTML markup language is still 
"too hard", but WYSIWYG TWiki is supposed to fix that.  I'd take a look.



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