New FARR wiki: BookOnAStick

[oblivion]

There are two standalone wikis in the world that I'm very fond of: WikiOnAStick and BookOnAStick. The latter is based on the former: a bit like the relationship between the wikis already built into FARR.

With mouser's help, I've put together a package that you can use to add BOAS to FARR. (It can't be automated, sadly.) I will do something similar with WOAS, when time permits...

Note first, however, that BOAS' author uses Linux and Firefox. There are some issues with Internet Explorer, not least of which is the fact that the icons that BOAS uses (and the opening screen refers to) appear as text links. The pencil icon is the word "edit".

The next version of BOAS will be based on a version of WOAS that fixes most or all of these issues; a pre-release of WOAS that pretty much works is already available but BOAS' author is waiting until "pretty much" is removed from that phrase.

BOAS is licensed under v2 of the GPL. I've probably taken a few liberties repackaging it in this way but the original is untouched and all credits are contained therein. (It's self-modifying HTML so it's its own source code, if you see what I mean.)

This WILL be updated. However, I'd like to hear how others get on with it.

[oblivion]

A couple of other issues, while I think of it.

One of the more useful things in BOAS (in my view, anyway) is the diary. (Every writer is supposed to keep a journal, and that's a Good Thing to use.)

First, it's hidden under utilities. So put yourself a link somewhere -- in the menu, perhaps -- that looks like this:

[[Utility::Diary|Open Diary page]]

If you're VERY brave, you can edit the menu and add this to the top of the page:

<input class="menu_button_full" value="DIARY" onclick="go_to('Utility::Diary')" type="submit" />

(More info on this is in Help::Links) This adds a full-width button to the bottom of the menu.

Now: what that page does is allows you to create a page, named for today, in the Diary:: namespace.

Another useful link, if you want to be able to read back your diary entries, is [[Diary::]] which just produces a list of all the pages in that namespace -- in other words, all your diary entries.

You may also notice that the "help" button's gone a bit mad in the editing screen. I may have a fix for that, but I haven't tested it yet, so bear with me...

Of course, what BOAS is all about is a resource for helping you to write the bestselling novel you have lurking within you. There's lots of stuff geared towards that that I haven't touched on, mostly because a lot of it is already in there.

What I particularly like about this, though, is that it's nearly instant. I prefer how it works in Firefox, but it takes longer to load Firefox than just using the boas alias inside FARR.

I don't, by the way, claim any credit for any of this. Just evangelising... BOAS' author, Little Girl, has been extremely helpful and informative and I'm just passing bits and pieces on...

[mouser]

Damn i missed having the first reply.. but then you cheated me out of it!

Anyway -- great work on this and thanks for sharing it! 

[oblivion]

Damn i missed having the first reply.. but then you cheated me out of it!

-mouser (February 27, 2012, 01:35 PM)

I posted it in a hurry and a bit of a guilt trip this morning -- after all, I've had it in one piece for a week! -- and then it occurred to me that I ought to add a bit of extra info for people who might find it a bit odd/inexplicable/not-tiddly-ish or whatever...

I'm not about to modify the source, for obvious reasons, but I'll pass on things I've tested and found helpful once I've, er, tested them and found them helpful.

But I think BOAS is a wonderful piece of work and the speed it appears in FARR is a credit to you as well as Little Girl. The only thing I did here is played around a bit, did some testing, and made an icon!

[oblivion]

I'm now almost certain that some aspects of this -- in particular, the ability to edit the CSS and try to fix the full-width Help button -- may be irretrievably broken until the next version of WikiOnAStick appears. Note that this is specifically relevant to the implementation within FARR; in Firefox, it all works as it should. Not that that's much help to a FARR addon.

However, that's still a relatively minor consideration. It works pretty much as designed, it's still useful as it is, it just resists customisation beyond a certain minimum level.

[40hz]

@oblivion - have you tried getting it to work with Zim Desktop Wiki or WikiPad?

Both work similarly to WOAS in that there's no database. Just plain text files storing the information plus markup. And both are open source so you can get at the underlying code.
 

[wraith808]

^ Thanks for the heads up on Zim Desktop Wiki.  Looks like it might be an addition to my toolset! 

[oblivion]

@oblivion - have you tried getting it to work with Zim Desktop Wiki or WikiPad?

Both work similarly to WOAS in that there's no database. Just plain text files storing the information plus markup. And both are open source so you can get at the underlying code.
 

-40hz (February 29, 2012, 07:18 PM)

I've used WikidPad, Zim's new to me.

BOAS, for all its limitations, is interesting because it's not an application, it's a document that's rendered by the browser capabilities of FARR. I don't think I can make either of those applications run inside FARR because, effectively, they look like they HAVE to be external applications. So there's nothing to stop FARR from invoking them in the same way that FARR invokes any other application, but for sheer speed, the inbuilt wikis are going to tend to outperform other applications.

The other thing I like about BOAS is it's got specific stuff -- structures, links -- that makes it of specific interest to writers (or wannabe writers!)

I'll play with Zim, though -- it looks interesting (and helpfully available for multiple platforms!)