• "Wiki" is short for "wiki wiki", the Hawaiian for "Quick"
• The idea originates from Macintosh Hypercard, via Ward Cunningham
• In Ward's words, Wiki is "the simplest online database that could possibly work"
• A Wiki is basically a shared, online, persistent whiteboard

• Anyone can add content
  ... or change what is written
  ... or change the organisation of the content
• Whatever what you write is
  ... nicely presented
  ... remembered... and never forgotten

• led by TWiki:Main.PeterThoeny
• with over 100 regular contributors in many countries

• Examples: Disney, British Telecom, SAP, Wind River, Motorola, Epic Games
  

• Examples:
  https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/
  http://csci.mrs.umn.edu/twiki/view

• TWiki pages are fully revision controlled, so a record of every change to every page is kept

  r6 < r5 < r4

• The look-and-feel is highly configurable, through use of templates

A "plugins" interface eases customisation extension application integration

• A whiteboard
• A document repository
• A collaborative authoring environment
• A notebook / scrapbook
• A chat room

• A Content Management System (CMS) for websites
• A presentation development tool
• A Blog
• A database
• A project management system
• A tracking tool
• (truth is, we don't really know its limits!)

• A header
• A body
• A footer

• The header and the footer are generated by the system
• The body contains the text of the page, as entered by you

	MyCo.MyTopic	Webs: Myco | Main | TWiki | Sandbox
	Changes | Index | Search | Go

• Changes - gives you a list of recent changes
• Index - gives you a full index
• Search - takes you to a search page, where you can search all the text
• Go - lets you type in the name of a page you already know

	MyCo.MyTopic	Webs: Myco | Main | TWiki | Sandbox
	Changes | Index | Search | Go

• For example, we might have a web called "Enemies", where we keep all we know about our enemies, and another called "Friends"
• There's usually a safe play web called something like "Sandbox" or "Scratch", where you can create pages just to try things out
• And some admin areas, like "Main" and "System"

Edit | Attach | Diffs | r2 > r1 | More
Revision r1.2 - 13 Feb 2004 - 09:09 GMT - TWikiPresenter	Copyright © by the contributing authors. All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors. Ideas, requests, problems regarding Foswiki? Send feedback

• The Edit link takes you to an interactive page where you can change the page content
• The Attach link lets you attach files
• The other links invoke other, more complex, functions, mainly to do with revision tracking - they can safely be ignored for now

• You've read a page, and you disagree with it violently! It says:
  Everyone knows that the world is an OblateSpheroid
  But you know for a fact it is flat!
• You've clicked the edit link, and an edit page has appeared. But it doesn't look much like what was on the page before - it's full of strange hieroglyphics!

• Now what?

• The hieroglyphics are what's known as "TWiki Markup" or "formatting"
• They are a really simple way of telling the browser how you want the page to look
• You don't have to use them
  • TWiki understands pages in plain text just fine.
    
    Actually it is perfectly and absolutely flat
    
    appears as
    
    Actually it is perfectly and absolutely flat

• A full description of all the formatting can be found in the TextFormattingRules and TextFormattingFAQ?
• The best thing to do is just to type until you get stuck
  • then follow the link on the edit page to the help.

• ---+ indicates a heading. Add more +'s for a deeper heading.

  You type	You see
  ---+ This is a heading	This is a heading
  ---++ And so is this	And so is this

• %TOC% will insert a table of contents
  

• A blank line gives a paragraph break
  
• --- on a line of its own gives a horizontal bar
• Text in stars *like this* looks like this
  
• Text in underscores _like this_ looks like this
  
• Text in equals signs =like this= looks like this
  
• Bulleted lists use three spaces followed by an asterisk (*) at the start of the line
  • The depth of the bullet is given by the number of spaces, in multiples of three

• Numbered lists use a number in place of the *. The list is numbered automatically, so you can just use a 1

• You can create a table using vertical bars:

     | Cat | Feline |
     | Bear | Ursine |
     | Wolf | Lupine |

• appears as

  Cat	Feline
  Bear	Ursine
  Wolf	Lupine

• %RED% .... %ENDCOLOR% will change the colour of the enclosed text. Lots of colours are available (%RED%, %GREEN%, %BLUE% etc)

• One special hieroglyph that is very important is a BumpyWord
  • a word that starts with uppercase, then some lowercase, then more uppercase (a.k.a CamelCase)
• This has a special meaning to TWiki; if it matches the name of another topic, TWiki will automatically create a link to that page for you.
• If there is no such page, then the word is highlighted and a question mark is put after the word, LikeThis?
• If you click on the question mark, then TWiki will invite you to create that page.

• This lets you enter the names of topics you think should exist, but don't yet
  • You, or someone else, can always come along later and click on the question mark!

• BumpyWords automatically link to the target page
  • You can make these links easier to read using square brackets:
    • [[BumpyWords][bumpy words]] appears as bumpy words
• An ordinary URL pasted into text will appear as a link - http://www.google.com
  • You can also prettify URLs using square brackets:
    • [[http://www.google.com/][Google]] appears as Google
• Use %SEARCH. This is an interface to a sophisticated search engine that embeds the results of the search in your page. See TWikiVariables? for full details.

• There's lots more formatting available, see TextFormattingRules and TextFormattingFAQ?
• If you are a real masochist, you can even enter raw HTML tags!
• Important to disable unwanted formatting, use <nop>
  • <nop>_word_ appears as _word_

• Alternative ways:
  • Click on the question mark after a BumpyWord
  • Type in the name of the topic in the "Go:" box
  • Type in the name of the topic in the URL
• Any time you try to visit a page that doesn't exist, TWiki will invite you to create it.
• Make sure the names of topics are always BumpyWords.

• Attachments are files which have been uploaded and attached to a TWiki page using the 'Attach' function in the footer.

Attachment	Action	Size	Date	Who	Comment
myco.gif	manage	9.6 K	13 Feb 2004 - 18:41	MushroomMagicMan	Attached image file

• Attachments are simply files, in whatever format you want.
• TWiki recognises some file formats, notably image files (.gif)
  • Write %ATTACHURL%/myco.gif to see this:

• What can I edit?
  • Anything. But it's good etiquette to sign your contributions
  • If someone doesn't want you to edit a page, it's up to them to say so, clearly, on the page
• But what if somebody doesn't like my edits?
  • In TWiki, they can always recover the old revision and re-instantiate it if they really want to
  • Otherwise they should regard your changes as an opportunity for discussion
• Pages in wiki are (usually) in one of three "modes"
  • DocumentMode
  • ThreadMode
  • StructuredMode

• A page in DocumentMode usually comprises a contribution which is written in the third person and left unsigned.
• The piece of text is community property
  • It may have multiple and changing authors as it is updated to reflect the community consensus.

• Thread mode is a form of discussion where the community holds a conversation
• The discussion usually starts out with a statement, at the top of the page, that is subsequently discussed
• The page may be periodically "refactored" (edited) to remove some of the comments
  • As long as the comment is accurately reflected in what replaces it, nobody usually minds.
  • Remember to always maintain a complete list of contributors, though!

• ThreadMode is rather like an e-mail thread
  • Except that new comments are usually added to the end
• ThreadMode pages often get refactored into DocumentMode

• A page in StructuredMode follows some predefined structure for example
  • An agenda
  • A set of meeting minutes
  • A requirement description.
• Pages in StructuredMode will usually have rules governing how they are edited.

• A Wiki trick for grouping pages together
• Example: to group together a set of pages all relating to the weather:
  1. Create a page called 'CategoryWeather'
  2. Put a SEARCH that contains the word 'CategoryWeather' into it
     • %SEARCH{"CategoryWeather" nosearch="on" nosummary="on"}%
  3. Put the BumpyWord 'CategoryWeather' on all the pages relating to the weather
     (usually at the bottom, below a horizontal bar)

• ActionTrackerPlugin: Support action tags in topics, with automatic notification of action statuses %ACTION...
• CalendarPlugin: Show a monthly calendar with highlighted events %CALENDAR...%
• CommentPlugin: Support rapid entry of short comments (also known as blogging) %COMMENT...
• ChartPlugin: Create PNG or GIF charts to visualize data in TWiki tables %CHART...
• EditTablePlugin: Edit TWiki tables using edit fields and drop down boxes %EDITTABLE...
• InterwikiPlugin: Define shortcuts for links to common external sites

• RenderListPlugin: Render bullet lists in a variety of formats %RENDERLIST...
• SlideShowPlugin: Create web based presentations based on topics with headings %SLIDESHOWSTART...
• SpreadSheetPlugin: Add spreadsheet calculations like "$SUM( $ABOVE() )" to tables located in TWiki topics %CALC...
• TablePlugin: Control presentation and sorting of tables %TABLE...
• TWikiDrawPlugin: Add quick sketches to pages %DRAWING...

• This training was developed by TWiki:Main.CrawfordCurrie on behalf of Oxamer, one of the companies in the Oxford Gene Technology group.
• Valuable contributions were also received from the TWiki Open Source community; special mentions go to:
  • TWiki:Main.WalterMundt
  • TWiki:Main.SvenDowideit
• The latest version of this presentation is available at TWiki:TWiki.ATasteOfTWiki, where you can also provide feedback