On 14-Apr-08, at 9:47 PM, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 12:34:00PM -0400, Brian McKee wrote:On 12-Apr-08, at 6:16 PM, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 08:54:40AM -0400, Brian McKee wrote:On 9-Apr-08, at 11:12 PM, Amit Uttamchandani wrote:Inspired by the easy to use wiki syntax, I've been looking around for similar markups that allow for basic "rich text" output.
I actually use a wiki currently - tiddlyWiki - and I edit the text in it with Vim using the It's All Text plugin for Firefox. Since it's a one page portable wiki (no server required) it'scompletely cross platform - I can carry it around on a USB stick andedit it where ever I'm at.
Mixing code and data is not my preffered method.
It's not really - Is a pdf file mixing data and code? or latex?
LaTeX and PostScript (though not PDF) allow a similar the same levelof programability that HTML+Javascript (as used in many browsers) does.
It is not often abused as in the way it is done in in tiddlyWiki . Ifyou have complex (La)TeX code in your document, you'd probably make it aseparate style / package.
Wiki syntax is less 'code' then those - and the raw data is still there as entered when you hit the edit button the next time.
What happens when you find a bug in the code that implements the interpetation of the wiki?
Then you re-edit it - the original text is still there unmangled.
And how do I know that the document you give me doesn't really log all of my details to your server? I have to re-inspect the code with each and every document. It is javascript that is run locally on my system and hence my browser assumes it is a bit more trustworthy. Indeed tiddlyWiki.org is hosted on a mediawiki.
The tiddlyWiki itself is self-contained and runs fine off-line, (although there are plug ins to make it run on a server) but I grant you it's not easily verifiable....
I use it because I've come to rely pretty heavily on the easy linking to both internal and external data that wiki's provide. Latex and AsciiDoc (I looked very quickly) have that 'compile as a separate step' process I find irritating. My output is in the format I need it in as soon as I hit the 'done' button, and still ready to be edited when I hit the 'edit' button. Granted, I don't have the wide range of output options provided by markup/compile cycle setups like Latex, but I don't need them....But then again, everybody must use your code to view your data.
I agree with you it's quite unsuitable for redistribution.When I do need to export data from it I use 'print to pdf' and distribute the pdf. Not as flexible as the other systems, but it's almost exclusively my notes and to-do lists, it's not intended to be sent anywhere. I find it handy for the OP's use case - taking notes. When it's a very often edited document (e.g. I edit my to-do list a dozen times a day or more) the 'make' step is too much, and the html rendering I have is all I need.
Hope that explains the different pros and cons as I see them. Brian
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