A Personal Wiki software – WikiDpad

I was looking for a Wiki software for personal use. I am glad that I finally find WikiDpad.

For those who wander why we need a Wiki, here are some reasons:

1. I think a lot of folks when they want to write down something, they open Microsoft Word, then start writing and save. It seems fine, but when you accumulate lots of documents uncatagorized or categorized in folders, you will find it difficult to retrieve what you need when you need them. This is due to putting in folder can give you one view  only, it can not give you a dynamic view.For example, you write a reading summary about the Chapter 1 of a China human right book, should you put that file in the folder of “China” or “human right” or “Politics” or “sociology” or “Chapter 1″ ? You probably will put it in the Folder something like this: \Politics\human right\China\bookname\chapter 1. Unfortunately, you can not have ALL followings at the same time.
   1. \bookname\chapter 1.
   2. \human right\China\bookname\chapter 1.
   3. \China\bookname\chapter 1.
   4. \Politics\bookname\chapter 1.
2. WikiDpad can give you a dynamic view just like that (it only save one file at one location, but provides you many different logical views to see the file), actually whatever way you would like to set. And of course with searching ability too.
3. Dynamic viewing is just part of the solution. Hyperlinking is very useful in linking related files to each other. This is how the WWW works, right? No argument about that, you use it everyday. But if you do hyper linking in Word, it could be cumbersome and plainful experience since Word is too heavy and it was not designed for hyperlinking in the first place, it is just a added feature.
4. Writing HTML web-page is also painful, I do not want to learn lots of syntax before I start to work.
5. Using WikiMedia? It needs a web server and has to do configuration before I can start my work, It is for multi-users and Internet, a lot of features that I really don’t need.

     

That is where WikiDpad kicks in. It is a free open-source, platform-independentstandalone wiki notebook/outliner for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux with many features, such as dynamic tree generation, topic tagging, auto-completion, full text searches, visual link tree, customizable interface, image and file control, Unicode supported and exporting to HTML format …etc.

Some useful reference links below:

http://geekanddiva.com/archivedwiki/gtdonwikidpad.html

http://www.askderekscruggs.com/the-evolution-of-a-wiki-entry.html

http://www.ziemski.net/wikidpad/

Here are some Syntax you need to kick start

http://wikidpad.python-hosting.com/wiki/UsingWikidPad

Full manual comes with the Application, I think it takes you 1 to 2 days, and you will be on the fly.

You might want to consider these factors for your decision

If you know some programming and use Python, you can even add more feature and contribute back to the community. If you do not know programming but want to learn, Python certainly is the easiest way to start. Here are some Python FREE ebooks to jump start you.