Jules Jones

Edited the next morning: I've settled on TiddlyWiki for now -- I do find the reading interface annoying, but the very thing that annoys me about it is part of why it could be exactly suited to what I want a wiki for.

Sometime back before I got the day job and my brain turned to mush by the time I got home, it occurred to me that I'd written enough kilowords that I needed a more organised database of Stuff than simply dumping a "people and places" file on the end of the WordPro meta-file for any individual mansucript. For example, I needed to keep track across multiple series, the better not to confuse readers (and myself) by having significant characters in completely different series with the same name, and similar such infelicities. There was also the minor point of being able to keep track of ideas for future pieces that I might or might not get around to.

I use Approach for a number of things (such as keeping track of the status of manuscripts), but it didn't quite suit. However... m'friend Charlie Stross had been mucking about with a personal wiki about the Singularity, in connection with the Creative Commons release of his novel Accelerando. That looked rather more like what I needed.

The one problem is that there's something about the TiddlyWiki reading interface that really grates on my nerves. I prefer the Wikipedia interface, although that may be a matter of being more familiar with it. On a quick skim, I find pages in WikiPad more comfortable to look at, even though objectively I think a TiddlyWiki may be more useful for what I envisage actually doing with it.

TiddlyWiki requires JavaScript (bad), but is a self-contained HTML file I can take anywhere -- and readily put on a public website should I so desire.

So, two questions of the audience...

1) Any suggestions on an easy wiki to use, ideally one that I can stick on my website without having to get waveney to handhold me through Scary Things like SQL?

2) Would anyone be interested in me putting up a public version of my background notes and scribblings?