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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