[ANN] Instiki 0.6.0: Feeds, Exports, Safety, and Compatibility

ruby-talk
1

What’s new in Instiki 0.6.0?

···

============================

Instiki is back on fork-challenged platforms (hello Windows!) after a
short hiatus in the 0.5 release. It now also properly snapshots the
Madeleine database when running in Daemon mode. So hopefully we should
be working all around.

More interestingly, there’s a bunch of cool new features in Instiki.
You can export the entire web to HTML files that come bundled in a
pkzip (thanks rubyzip!), which works great for taking backups or
distributing a wiki. It’s also a half-decent CMS this way that you can
use to write documentation to all of those wonderful Ruby projects.

There’s also RSS feeds. Two flavors: Full content or just the
headlines. Unfortunately, there’s a few problems with international
characters like æåø that’ll render the XML invalid (so readers like
FeedReader chokes). Any help to get that working properly will be much
appriciated.

And thanks a ton to both Florian for a bunch of great patches and to
Why The Lucky for keeping RedCloth running at full force.

Full change list:

  • Fixed Windows compatibility [Florian]
  • Fixed bug that would prevent Madeleine from taking snapshots in
    Daemon mode
  • Added export entire web as HTML in a zip file
  • Added RSS feeds
  • Added proper getops support for the growing number of options
    [Florian]
  • Added safe mode that forbids style options in RedCloth [Florian]
  • Updated RedCloth to 2.0.5

Upcoming features (near- and far-future stuff mixed together):

  • Michael Granger is looking into getting Instiki running on BlueCloth
    – the Markdown syntax implementation for Ruby.
  • Polish. Lots of stuff in the backlog that needs polish.
  • Colors! Each web should get it’s own color.
  • More exporting features (fx: straight to FTP).
  • Dual-view wikis where an admin team can edit and everyone else see
    the export version with no edit links (but they can still search). This
    will really turn Instiki into something that could be used as a quick
    CMS.
  • Download the entire app and database and work on an instiki at home
    and then sync the changes back in.

Instiki is running its official website on Instiki itself:
http://instiki.nextangle.com

What is Instiki?

Admitted, it’s Yet Another Wiki Clone[1], but with a strong focus
on simplicity of installation and running:

Step 1. Download
Step 2. Run "instiki.rb"
Step 3. Chuckle… “There’s no step three!” ™

You’re now running a perfectly suitable wiki on port 2500
that’ll present you with a textarea for the home page on
http://localhost:2500.

Instiki lowers the barriers of interest for when you might consider
using a wiki. It’s so simple to get running that you’ll find yourself
using it for anything – taking notes, brainstorming, organizing a
gathering.

Instiki reserves a separate WikiSpace for each port number, so
you can run more than one wiki by keeping them on separate ports.
It also means that you can’t access the same wiki on another port
than the one you started it on (unless you move the directory in
storage).

Features:

  • Regular expression search: Find deep stuff really fast
  • Revisions: Follow the changes on every page from birth. Rollback to
    an earlier rev
  • Export to HTML in a zip: Take the entire wiki with you home or for
    reference
  • RSS feeds to track recently revised pages
  • Multiple webs: Create separate wikis with their own namespace
  • Password-protected webs: Keep it private
  • Authors: Each revision is associated with an author, so you can see
    who changed what
  • Reference tracker: Which other pages are pointing to the current?
  • Speed: Using Madelein for persistence (all pages are in memory)
  • Textile formatting[2]: By ways of RedCloth
  • Embedded webserver: Through WEBrick

Missing:

  • File attachments

Command-line options:
Run “ruby instiki.rb --help”

History:

  • 0.6.0: Fixed Windows compatibility [Florian]
    Fixed bug that would prevent Madeleine from taking snapshots
    in Daemon mode
    Added export entire web as HTML in a zip file
    Added RSS feeds
    Added proper getops support for the growing number of options
    [Florian]
    Added safe mode that forbids style options in RedCloth
    [Florian]
    Updated RedCloth to 2.0.5
  • 0.5.0: NOTE: 0.5.0 is NOT compatible with databases from earlier
    versions
    Added revisions
    Added multiple webs
    Added password protection for webs on multi-web setups
    Added the notion of authors (that are saved in a cookie)
    Added command-line option for not running as a Daemon on Unix
  • 0.3.1: Added option to escape wiki words with \
  • 0.3.0: Brought all files into common style (including Textile help on
    the edit page)
    Added page locking (if someone already is editing a page
    there’s a warning)
    Added daemon abilities on Unix (keep Instiki running after you
    close the terminal)
    Made port 2500 the default port, so Instiki can be launched by
    dobbelt-click
    Added Textile cache to speed-up rendering of large pages
    Made WikiWords look like "Wiki Words"
    Updated RedCloth to 2.0.4
  • 0.2.5: Upgraded to RedCloth 2.0.2 and Madeleine 0.6.1, which means the
    Windows problems are gone. Also fixed a problem with wikiwords
    that used part of other wikiwords.
  • 0.2.0: First public release

Download latest from:
http://
rubyforge.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=186

Visit the official Instiki wiki:
http://instiki.nextangle.com/

License is the same as Ruby’s

[1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?
WikiWikiClones
[2] Textile Syntax: http://www.textism.com/
tools/textile/

David Heinemeier Hansson,
david@loudthinking.com
http://www.loudthinking.com/

2

David Heinemeier Hansson wrote:

And thanks a ton to both Florian for a bunch of great patches and to
Why The Lucky for keeping RedCloth running at full force.

No problem. Glad I could help at a nice project. :slight_smile:

  • Added safe mode that forbids style options in RedCloth [Florian]

This will also disable user-specified HTML. ( is converted to
<plaintext>)

Regards,
Florian Gross

3

thanks for instiki.
Just one thing: it seem that rails.nextangle.com runs on intiki 0.6,
and is broken :confused:
from the home, click on actioncontroller, and you’ll get:

Internal Server Error
/data/home/david/instiki-0.6.0/libraries/redcloth.rb:681:in
glyphs_deep': undefined methodinclude?’ for nil:NilClass
WEBrick/1.3.1 (Ruby/1.8.0/2003-08-04) at rails.nextangle.com:2800

···

il Fri, 16 Apr 2004 07:05:41 +0900, David Heinemeier Hansson david@loudthinking.com ha scritto::

4

Excellent. Instiki is a truly awesome piece of software.

Is there any chance of a feature being added whereby you wouldn’t have
to use WikiCase to make links? Something along the lines of what
Wikipedia uses?

Bill

David Heinemeier Hansson david@loudthinking.com wrote in message news:054669D2-8F29-11D8-9F32-000A958E6254@loudthinking.com…

···

What’s new in Instiki 0.6.0?

Instiki is back on fork-challenged platforms (hello Windows!) after a
short hiatus in the 0.5 release. It now also properly snapshots the
Madeleine database when running in Daemon mode. So hopefully we should
be working all around.

More interestingly, there’s a bunch of cool new features in Instiki.
You can export the entire web to HTML files that come bundled in a
pkzip (thanks rubyzip!), which works great for taking backups or
distributing a wiki. It’s also a half-decent CMS this way that you can
use to write documentation to all of those wonderful Ruby projects.

There’s also RSS feeds. Two flavors: Full content or just the
headlines. Unfortunately, there’s a few problems with international
characters like æåø that’ll render the XML invalid (so readers like
FeedReader chokes). Any help to get that working properly will be much
appriciated.

And thanks a ton to both Florian for a bunch of great patches and to
Why The Lucky for keeping RedCloth running at full force.

Full change list:

  • Fixed Windows compatibility [Florian]
  • Fixed bug that would prevent Madeleine from taking snapshots in
    Daemon mode
  • Added export entire web as HTML in a zip file
  • Added RSS feeds
  • Added proper getops support for the growing number of options
    [Florian]
  • Added safe mode that forbids style options in RedCloth [Florian]
  • Updated RedCloth to 2.0.5

Upcoming features (near- and far-future stuff mixed together):

  • Michael Granger is looking into getting Instiki running on BlueCloth
    – the Markdown syntax implementation for Ruby.
  • Polish. Lots of stuff in the backlog that needs polish.
  • Colors! Each web should get it’s own color.
  • More exporting features (fx: straight to FTP).
  • Dual-view wikis where an admin team can edit and everyone else see
    the export version with no edit links (but they can still search). This
    will really turn Instiki into something that could be used as a quick
    CMS.
  • Download the entire app and database and work on an instiki at home
    and then sync the changes back in.

Instiki is running its official website on Instiki itself:
http://instiki.nextangle.com

What is Instiki?

Admitted, it’s Yet Another Wiki Clone[1], but with a strong focus
on simplicity of installation and running:

Step 1. Download
Step 2. Run “instiki.rb”
Step 3. Chuckle… “There’s no step three!” ™

You’re now running a perfectly suitable wiki on port 2500
that’ll present you with a textarea for the home page on
http://localhost:2500.

Instiki lowers the barriers of interest for when you might consider
using a wiki. It’s so simple to get running that you’ll find yourself
using it for anything – taking notes, brainstorming, organizing a
gathering.

Instiki reserves a separate WikiSpace for each port number, so
you can run more than one wiki by keeping them on separate ports.
It also means that you can’t access the same wiki on another port
than the one you started it on (unless you move the directory in
storage).

Features:

  • Regular expression search: Find deep stuff really fast
  • Revisions: Follow the changes on every page from birth. Rollback to
    an earlier rev
  • Export to HTML in a zip: Take the entire wiki with you home or for
    reference
  • RSS feeds to track recently revised pages
  • Multiple webs: Create separate wikis with their own namespace
  • Password-protected webs: Keep it private
  • Authors: Each revision is associated with an author, so you can see
    who changed what
  • Reference tracker: Which other pages are pointing to the current?
  • Speed: Using Madelein for persistence (all pages are in memory)
  • Textile formatting[2]: By ways of RedCloth
  • Embedded webserver: Through WEBrick

Missing:

  • File attachments

Command-line options:
Run “ruby instiki.rb --help”

History:

  • 0.6.0: Fixed Windows compatibility [Florian]
    Fixed bug that would prevent Madeleine from taking snapshots
    in Daemon mode
    Added export entire web as HTML in a zip file
    Added RSS feeds
    Added proper getops support for the growing number of options
    [Florian]
    Added safe mode that forbids style options in RedCloth
    [Florian]
    Updated RedCloth to 2.0.5
  • 0.5.0: NOTE: 0.5.0 is NOT compatible with databases from earlier
    versions
    Added revisions
    Added multiple webs
    Added password protection for webs on multi-web setups
    Added the notion of authors (that are saved in a cookie)
    Added command-line option for not running as a Daemon on Unix
  • 0.3.1: Added option to escape wiki words with \
  • 0.3.0: Brought all files into common style (including Textile help on
    the edit page)
    Added page locking (if someone already is editing a page
    there’s a warning)
    Added daemon abilities on Unix (keep Instiki running after you
    close the terminal)
    Made port 2500 the default port, so Instiki can be launched by
    dobbelt-click
    Added Textile cache to speed-up rendering of large pages
    Made WikiWords look like “Wiki Words”
    Updated RedCloth to 2.0.4
  • 0.2.5: Upgraded to RedCloth 2.0.2 and Madeleine 0.6.1, which means the
    Windows problems are gone. Also fixed a problem with wikiwords
    that used part of other wikiwords.
  • 0.2.0: First public release

Download latest from:
http://
rubyforge.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=186

Visit the official Instiki wiki:
http://instiki.nextangle.com/

License is the same as Ruby’s

[1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?
WikiWikiClones
[2] Textile Syntax: http://www.textism.com/
tools/textile/

5

Hmm. When I run “ruby instiki.rb 60” with 0.6.0 I get

[2004-04-16 12:29:43] WARN TCPServer Error: Address already in use -
bind(2)
[2004-04-16 12:29:43] WARN TCPServer Error: Address already in use -
bind(2)
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/server.rb:91:in `listen’: Address already in
use - bind(2) (Errno::EADDRINUSE)

The same command with 0.5.0 works fine. I killed instiki before
attempting to run 0.6.0, so there should be nothing running on that
port.

David Heinemeier Hansson david@loudthinking.com wrote in message news:054669D2-8F29-11D8-9F32-000A958E6254@loudthinking.com…

···

What’s new in Instiki 0.6.0?

Instiki is back on fork-challenged platforms (hello Windows!) after a
short hiatus in the 0.5 release. It now also properly snapshots the
Madeleine database when running in Daemon mode. So hopefully we should
be working all around.

More interestingly, there’s a bunch of cool new features in Instiki.
You can export the entire web to HTML files that come bundled in a
pkzip (thanks rubyzip!), which works great for taking backups or
distributing a wiki. It’s also a half-decent CMS this way that you can
use to write documentation to all of those wonderful Ruby projects.

There’s also RSS feeds. Two flavors: Full content or just the
headlines. Unfortunately, there’s a few problems with international
characters like æåø that’ll render the XML invalid (so readers like
FeedReader chokes). Any help to get that working properly will be much
appriciated.

And thanks a ton to both Florian for a bunch of great patches and to
Why The Lucky for keeping RedCloth running at full force.

Full change list:

  • Fixed Windows compatibility [Florian]
  • Fixed bug that would prevent Madeleine from taking snapshots in
    Daemon mode
  • Added export entire web as HTML in a zip file
  • Added RSS feeds
  • Added proper getops support for the growing number of options
    [Florian]
  • Added safe mode that forbids style options in RedCloth [Florian]
  • Updated RedCloth to 2.0.5

Upcoming features (near- and far-future stuff mixed together):

  • Michael Granger is looking into getting Instiki running on BlueCloth
    – the Markdown syntax implementation for Ruby.
  • Polish. Lots of stuff in the backlog that needs polish.
  • Colors! Each web should get it’s own color.
  • More exporting features (fx: straight to FTP).
  • Dual-view wikis where an admin team can edit and everyone else see
    the export version with no edit links (but they can still search). This
    will really turn Instiki into something that could be used as a quick
    CMS.
  • Download the entire app and database and work on an instiki at home
    and then sync the changes back in.

Instiki is running its official website on Instiki itself:
http://instiki.nextangle.com

What is Instiki?

Admitted, it’s Yet Another Wiki Clone[1], but with a strong focus
on simplicity of installation and running:

Step 1. Download
Step 2. Run “instiki.rb”
Step 3. Chuckle… “There’s no step three!” ™

You’re now running a perfectly suitable wiki on port 2500
that’ll present you with a textarea for the home page on
http://localhost:2500.

Instiki lowers the barriers of interest for when you might consider
using a wiki. It’s so simple to get running that you’ll find yourself
using it for anything – taking notes, brainstorming, organizing a
gathering.

Instiki reserves a separate WikiSpace for each port number, so
you can run more than one wiki by keeping them on separate ports.
It also means that you can’t access the same wiki on another port
than the one you started it on (unless you move the directory in
storage).

Features:

  • Regular expression search: Find deep stuff really fast
  • Revisions: Follow the changes on every page from birth. Rollback to
    an earlier rev
  • Export to HTML in a zip: Take the entire wiki with you home or for
    reference
  • RSS feeds to track recently revised pages
  • Multiple webs: Create separate wikis with their own namespace
  • Password-protected webs: Keep it private
  • Authors: Each revision is associated with an author, so you can see
    who changed what
  • Reference tracker: Which other pages are pointing to the current?
  • Speed: Using Madelein for persistence (all pages are in memory)
  • Textile formatting[2]: By ways of RedCloth
  • Embedded webserver: Through WEBrick

Missing:

  • File attachments

Command-line options:
Run “ruby instiki.rb --help”

History:

  • 0.6.0: Fixed Windows compatibility [Florian]
    Fixed bug that would prevent Madeleine from taking snapshots
    in Daemon mode
    Added export entire web as HTML in a zip file
    Added RSS feeds
    Added proper getops support for the growing number of options
    [Florian]
    Added safe mode that forbids style options in RedCloth
    [Florian]
    Updated RedCloth to 2.0.5
  • 0.5.0: NOTE: 0.5.0 is NOT compatible with databases from earlier
    versions
    Added revisions
    Added multiple webs
    Added password protection for webs on multi-web setups
    Added the notion of authors (that are saved in a cookie)
    Added command-line option for not running as a Daemon on Unix
  • 0.3.1: Added option to escape wiki words with \
  • 0.3.0: Brought all files into common style (including Textile help on
    the edit page)
    Added page locking (if someone already is editing a page
    there’s a warning)
    Added daemon abilities on Unix (keep Instiki running after you
    close the terminal)
    Made port 2500 the default port, so Instiki can be launched by
    dobbelt-click
    Added Textile cache to speed-up rendering of large pages
    Made WikiWords look like “Wiki Words”
    Updated RedCloth to 2.0.4
  • 0.2.5: Upgraded to RedCloth 2.0.2 and Madeleine 0.6.1, which means the
    Windows problems are gone. Also fixed a problem with wikiwords
    that used part of other wikiwords.
  • 0.2.0: First public release

Download latest from:
http://
rubyforge.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=186

Visit the official Instiki wiki:
http://instiki.nextangle.com/

License is the same as Ruby’s

[1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?
WikiWikiClones
[2] Textile Syntax: http://www.textism.com/
tools/textile/

6

Please find a patch providing RDoc support to Instiki at
http://thekode.net/misc/instiki-rdoc-support.patch

Once applied, the --rdoc option will enable RDoc markup on all of the
wiki.

If you defined a metadata model, it would be trivial to select the
markup language on a node basis.

Some screenshots:

http://thekode.net/misc/instiki-sc01.png
http://thekode.net/misc/instiki-sc02.png

···

On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 07:05:41AM +0900, David Heinemeier Hansson wrote:

Upcoming features (near- and far-future stuff mixed together):

  • Michael Granger is looking into getting Instiki running on BlueCloth
    – the Markdown syntax implementation for Ruby.

–
Running Debian GNU/Linux Sid (unstable)
batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com

The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children.
– Linus Torvalds

7

If you dislike using WikiWords and would prefer to explicitly create
links to wiki pages, look at the following def:

def self.find(text)
(text.scan(/[^\\]\b([A-Z][a-z]+[A-Z]\w+)\b/) <<
text.scan(/[[(\w+)]]/)).flatten.uniq.
collect { |wiki_word| wiki_word.strip }
end

This replaces the definition in apps/models/wiki_words.rb. It enables
you to use both WikiWords and the linking style (e.g. [[a page]]) used
in places like Wikipedia. You can use one or the other if you’d like.
Hope this is useful

Bill Atkins

David Heinemeier Hansson david@loudthinking.com wrote in message news:054669D2-8F29-11D8-9F32-000A958E6254@loudthinking.com…

···

What’s new in Instiki 0.6.0?

Instiki is back on fork-challenged platforms (hello Windows!) after a
short hiatus in the 0.5 release. It now also properly snapshots the
Madeleine database when running in Daemon mode. So hopefully we should
be working all around.

More interestingly, there’s a bunch of cool new features in Instiki.
You can export the entire web to HTML files that come bundled in a
pkzip (thanks rubyzip!), which works great for taking backups or
distributing a wiki. It’s also a half-decent CMS this way that you can
use to write documentation to all of those wonderful Ruby projects.

There’s also RSS feeds. Two flavors: Full content or just the
headlines. Unfortunately, there’s a few problems with international
characters like æåø that’ll render the XML invalid (so readers like
FeedReader chokes). Any help to get that working properly will be much
appriciated.

And thanks a ton to both Florian for a bunch of great patches and to
Why The Lucky for keeping RedCloth running at full force.

Full change list:

  • Fixed Windows compatibility [Florian]
  • Fixed bug that would prevent Madeleine from taking snapshots in
    Daemon mode
  • Added export entire web as HTML in a zip file
  • Added RSS feeds
  • Added proper getops support for the growing number of options
    [Florian]
  • Added safe mode that forbids style options in RedCloth [Florian]
  • Updated RedCloth to 2.0.5

Upcoming features (near- and far-future stuff mixed together):

  • Michael Granger is looking into getting Instiki running on BlueCloth
    – the Markdown syntax implementation for Ruby.
  • Polish. Lots of stuff in the backlog that needs polish.
  • Colors! Each web should get it’s own color.
  • More exporting features (fx: straight to FTP).
  • Dual-view wikis where an admin team can edit and everyone else see
    the export version with no edit links (but they can still search). This
    will really turn Instiki into something that could be used as a quick
    CMS.
  • Download the entire app and database and work on an instiki at home
    and then sync the changes back in.

Instiki is running its official website on Instiki itself:
http://instiki.nextangle.com

What is Instiki?

Admitted, it’s Yet Another Wiki Clone[1], but with a strong focus
on simplicity of installation and running:

Step 1. Download
Step 2. Run “instiki.rb”
Step 3. Chuckle… “There’s no step three!” ™

You’re now running a perfectly suitable wiki on port 2500
that’ll present you with a textarea for the home page on
http://localhost:2500.

Instiki lowers the barriers of interest for when you might consider
using a wiki. It’s so simple to get running that you’ll find yourself
using it for anything – taking notes, brainstorming, organizing a
gathering.

Instiki reserves a separate WikiSpace for each port number, so
you can run more than one wiki by keeping them on separate ports.
It also means that you can’t access the same wiki on another port
than the one you started it on (unless you move the directory in
storage).

Features:

  • Regular expression search: Find deep stuff really fast
  • Revisions: Follow the changes on every page from birth. Rollback to
    an earlier rev
  • Export to HTML in a zip: Take the entire wiki with you home or for
    reference
  • RSS feeds to track recently revised pages
  • Multiple webs: Create separate wikis with their own namespace
  • Password-protected webs: Keep it private
  • Authors: Each revision is associated with an author, so you can see
    who changed what
  • Reference tracker: Which other pages are pointing to the current?
  • Speed: Using Madelein for persistence (all pages are in memory)
  • Textile formatting[2]: By ways of RedCloth
  • Embedded webserver: Through WEBrick

Missing:

  • File attachments

Command-line options:
Run “ruby instiki.rb --help”

History:

  • 0.6.0: Fixed Windows compatibility [Florian]
    Fixed bug that would prevent Madeleine from taking snapshots
    in Daemon mode
    Added export entire web as HTML in a zip file
    Added RSS feeds
    Added proper getops support for the growing number of options
    [Florian]
    Added safe mode that forbids style options in RedCloth
    [Florian]
    Updated RedCloth to 2.0.5
  • 0.5.0: NOTE: 0.5.0 is NOT compatible with databases from earlier
    versions
    Added revisions
    Added multiple webs
    Added password protection for webs on multi-web setups
    Added the notion of authors (that are saved in a cookie)
    Added command-line option for not running as a Daemon on Unix
  • 0.3.1: Added option to escape wiki words with \
  • 0.3.0: Brought all files into common style (including Textile help on
    the edit page)
    Added page locking (if someone already is editing a page
    there’s a warning)
    Added daemon abilities on Unix (keep Instiki running after you
    close the terminal)
    Made port 2500 the default port, so Instiki can be launched by
    dobbelt-click
    Added Textile cache to speed-up rendering of large pages
    Made WikiWords look like “Wiki Words”
    Updated RedCloth to 2.0.4
  • 0.2.5: Upgraded to RedCloth 2.0.2 and Madeleine 0.6.1, which means the
    Windows problems are gone. Also fixed a problem with wikiwords
    that used part of other wikiwords.
  • 0.2.0: First public release

Download latest from:
http://
rubyforge.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=186

Visit the official Instiki wiki:
http://instiki.nextangle.com/

License is the same as Ruby’s

[1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?
WikiWikiClones
[2] Textile Syntax: http://www.textism.com/
tools/textile/

8

Is there some way to create preformatted text or code blocks?

I’ve tried @…@ (after reading the RedCloth source) and explicit

...
markers. Both times I get something like: 
Internal Server Error

undefined method `include?' for nil:NilClass

WEBrick/1.3.1 (Ruby/1.8.1/2003-12-25) at localhost:2500

and the page I was editing always throws up an error forever more (at
least until I kill the server and remove the damaged command_log from
storage/).

Is this something simple? Do I need to apply a patch? Or should I dig
into the source and libraries and write my own patch?

···

–
Frank Mitchell (fmitchell each acm period org)

Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

9

David Heinemeier Hansson wrote:

What’s new in Instiki 0.6.0?

Instiki is back on fork-challenged platforms (hello Windows!) after a
short hiatus in the 0.5 release. It now also properly snapshots the
Madeleine database when running in Daemon mode. So hopefully we should
be working all around.

More interestingly, there’s a bunch of cool new features in Instiki.
You can export the entire web to HTML files that come bundled in a
pkzip (thanks rubyzip!), which works great for taking backups or
distributing a wiki. It’s also a half-decent CMS this way that you can
use to write documentation to all of those wonderful Ruby projects.

There’s also RSS feeds. Two flavors: Full content or just the
headlines. Unfortunately, there’s a few problems with international
characters like æåø that’ll render the XML invalid (so readers like
FeedReader chokes). Any help to get that working properly will be much
appriciated.

And thanks a ton to both Florian for a bunch of great patches and to
Why The Lucky for keeping RedCloth running at full force.

Full change list:

  • Fixed Windows compatibility [Florian]
  • Fixed bug that would prevent Madeleine from taking snapshots in
    Daemon mode
  • Added export entire web as HTML in a zip file
  • Added RSS feeds
  • Added proper getops support for the growing number of options [Florian]
  • Added safe mode that forbids style options in RedCloth [Florian]
  • Updated RedCloth to 2.0.5

Upcoming features (near- and far-future stuff mixed together):

  • Michael Granger is looking into getting Instiki running on BlueCloth
    – the Markdown syntax implementation for Ruby.
  • Polish. Lots of stuff in the backlog that needs polish.
  • Colors! Each web should get it’s own color.
  • More exporting features (fx: straight to FTP).
  • Dual-view wikis where an admin team can edit and everyone else see
    the export version with no edit links (but they can still search). This
    will really turn Instiki into something that could be used as a quick CMS.
  • Download the entire app and database and work on an instiki at home
    and then sync the changes back in.

Instiki is running its official website on Instiki itself:
http://instiki.nextangle.com

What is Instiki?

Admitted, it’s Yet Another Wiki Clone[1], but with a strong focus
on simplicity of installation and running:

Step 1. Download
Step 2. Run “instiki.rb”
Step 3. Chuckle… “There’s no step three!” ™

You’re now running a perfectly suitable wiki on port 2500
that’ll present you with a textarea for the home page on
http://localhost:2500.

Instiki lowers the barriers of interest for when you might consider
using a wiki. It’s so simple to get running that you’ll find yourself
using it for anything – taking notes, brainstorming, organizing a
gathering.

Instiki reserves a separate WikiSpace for each port number, so
you can run more than one wiki by keeping them on separate ports.
It also means that you can’t access the same wiki on another port
than the one you started it on (unless you move the directory in storage).

Features:

  • Regular expression search: Find deep stuff really fast
  • Revisions: Follow the changes on every page from birth. Rollback to
    an earlier rev
  • Export to HTML in a zip: Take the entire wiki with you home or for
    reference
  • RSS feeds to track recently revised pages
  • Multiple webs: Create separate wikis with their own namespace
  • Password-protected webs: Keep it private
  • Authors: Each revision is associated with an author, so you can see
    who changed what
  • Reference tracker: Which other pages are pointing to the current?
  • Speed: Using Madelein for persistence (all pages are in memory)
  • Textile formatting[2]: By ways of RedCloth
  • Embedded webserver: Through WEBrick

Missing:

  • File attachments

Command-line options:
Run “ruby instiki.rb --help”

History:

  • 0.6.0: Fixed Windows compatibility [Florian]
    Fixed bug that would prevent Madeleine from taking snapshots
    in Daemon mode
    Added export entire web as HTML in a zip file
    Added RSS feeds
    Added proper getops support for the growing number of options
    [Florian]
    Added safe mode that forbids style options in RedCloth [Florian]
    Updated RedCloth to 2.0.5
  • 0.5.0: NOTE: 0.5.0 is NOT compatible with databases from earlier
    versions
    Added revisions
    Added multiple webs
    Added password protection for webs on multi-web setups
    Added the notion of authors (that are saved in a cookie)
    Added command-line option for not running as a Daemon on Unix
  • 0.3.1: Added option to escape wiki words with \
  • 0.3.0: Brought all files into common style (including Textile help on
    the edit page)
    Added page locking (if someone already is editing a page
    there’s a warning)
    Added daemon abilities on Unix (keep Instiki running after you
    close the terminal)
    Made port 2500 the default port, so Instiki can be launched by
    dobbelt-click
    Added Textile cache to speed-up rendering of large pages
    Made WikiWords look like “Wiki Words”
    Updated RedCloth to 2.0.4
  • 0.2.5: Upgraded to RedCloth 2.0.2 and Madeleine 0.6.1, which means the
    Windows problems are gone. Also fixed a problem with wikiwords
    that used part of other wikiwords.
  • 0.2.0: First public release

Download latest from:
http://
rubyforge.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=186

Visit the official Instiki wiki:
http://instiki.nextangle.com/

License is the same as Ruby’s

[1] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?
WikiWikiClones
[2] Textile Syntax: http://www.textism.com/
tools/textile/

David Heinemeier Hansson,
david@loudthinking.com
http://www.loudthinking.com/

How is it we actually password protect a Wiki? I notice it mentioned
but it’s not in the commandline options or in the wiki for it.

Charlie

10

That is very cool!

Cheers

Dave

···

On Apr 16, 2004, at 12:24, Mauricio Fernández wrote:

Please find a patch providing RDoc support to Instiki at

11

How is it we actually password protect a Wiki? I notice it mentioned
but it’s not in the commandline options or in the wiki for it.

It’s current only available in multi-web mode. I should probably
clarify that. Anyway, when you start in multi-web mode, you’ll have the
option of creating a new web and setting a password for it.

···

–
David Heinemeier Hansson,
http://instiki.nextangle.com/ – A No-Step-Three Wiki in Ruby
http://www.basecamphq.com/ – Web-based Project Management
http://www.loudthinking.com/ – Broadcasting Brain

12

David Heinemeier Hansson wrote:

How is it we actually password protect a Wiki? I notice it mentioned
but it’s not in the commandline options or in the wiki for it.

It’s current only available in multi-web mode. I should probably clarify
that. Anyway, when you start in multi-web mode, you’ll have the option
of creating a new web and setting a password for it.

David Heinemeier Hansson,
http://instiki.nextangle.com/ – A No-Step-Three Wiki in Ruby
http://www.basecamphq.com/ – Web-based Project Management
http://www.loudthinking.com/ – Broadcasting Brain

Also related, what is the recommended way to shut it down other then to
just kill the ruby process? It would be nice if it stuffed a
instiki.pid file in the storage dir or something.

Charlie

13

David Heinemeier Hansson wrote:

How is it we actually password protect a Wiki? I notice it mentioned
but it’s not in the commandline options or in the wiki for it.

It’s current only available in multi-web mode. I should probably clarify
that. Anyway, when you start in multi-web mode, you’ll have the option
of creating a new web and setting a password for it.

David Heinemeier Hansson,
http://instiki.nextangle.com/ – A No-Step-Three Wiki in Ruby
http://www.basecamphq.com/ – Web-based Project Management
http://www.loudthinking.com/ – Broadcasting Brain

Also related, what is the recommended way to shut it down other then to
just kill the ruby process? It would be nice if it stuffed a
instiki.pid file in the storage dir or something.

My understanding was that Madeleine is happy to just be killed, so
I don’t think it’s any safer to have a pidfile (plus you have to manually
clean it up in the case of a crash).

But an ‘instiki.rb -stop ’ or ‘instiki.rb -stopall’ command
would probably need one, so maybe it’s a necessaly evil?

···

–
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns

14

Or run it under a process monitor such as djb’s daemontools. No pidfiles
needed (they have all kinds of problems). On Windows, run it as a service.

···

On Mon, Apr 19, 2004 at 06:07:02PM +0900, Dick Davies wrote:

My understanding was that Madeleine is happy to just be killed, so
I don’t think it’s any safer to have a pidfile (plus you have to manually
clean it up in the case of a crash).

But an ‘instiki.rb -stop ’ or ‘instiki.rb -stopall’ command
would probably need one, so maybe it’s a necessaly evil?

–
Jos Backus / /// Sunnyvale, CA
_/ _/ _/
/ ///
_/ _/ _/ /
jos at catnook.com // /// require ‘std/disclaimer’