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Best wiki for a writer?

eclipse

eclipse

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 18, 2005
989
14
Sydney
Hi all,
I'm writing a children's Sci-Fi world that is quickly becoming quite vast. I was using Word, but now the "Document Map" way of getting around is becoming quite clunky.

I was wondering if I needed a wiki? Any ideas? Is there something fairly drop and drag that I can use that will help me along, and that I can use on my old G5 Leopard Dual 2 Ghz machine? I'm thinking of something like Voodoopad, but as I don't really know EXACTLY what I'm after I'm not really ready to pay for anything at the moment. I just want to play.

Surely there's a Voodoopad kind of system that's for free?

PS! Hold the phone...
I may have just found the jackpot for this and further software alternative questions!

http://alternativeto.net/SearchResult.aspx?profile=mac&platform=mac&search=tag:notepad

Oh, where to begin!??

Evernote has over 700 likes, but it is run by a Corporation. I could get half way through my kids book and discover the software I'm using is no longer supported. So should I go with an Open Source community for the Mac? Which one? Does Open Office have something like this, a kind of Voodoopad kind of database wiki thing?
 
Last edited:
Tomboy hasn't been updated in 3 years, doesn't have a spell checker, and basically doesn't seem to be continued any further. Voodoopad seems awesome but Lite doesn't seem to have a 'find and replace' function for a name.

EG: If I were writing a Harry Potter database, imagine how annoying it would be if I changed his name and it merely dropped all the links to his page?

Does anyone use anything like this? Or should I just put all my back-story in a few Word files in Outline view?
 
See, this one looks great.

http://reinventedsoftware.com/together/

Same with Voodoopad.

only problem, they are run by small 1 or 2 man bands.

I'm hoping to find more security than that — a product that will grow as my macs change and grow over time. I really wish Mac had a wiki as part of iLife or iWorks, I really do.

But if it ever came out it would probably only be compatible in Lion, and I'm stuck back in Leopard!
 
There's a lot of good stuff that I can recommend, but none are free.

For holding information and searching information, I recommend DEVONthink. It also supports links and wikilinks within DT RTF documents. You can export to files and folders, as well as other formats, so that if DEVON-technologies goes away, your data is safe. DT has been around since 2002

In terms of maintaining a database for a story, I'd recommend Tinderbox. The files are written in XML, so they can be read outside Tinderbox. The company, Eastgate, has been around since the 80s. I'm not sure how long Tinderbox has been around--I'd say at least 8 years.

Scrivener is popular Mac writing program that also allows you to store and organize snippets of information as well. It supports linking. You can export the data in a number of formats. Scrivener was launched in 2005.

Curio is another program that allows you to store, search, and organize a wide variety of file formats and included integrated mind mapping, outlining, and linking.

Again, none are free and some are fairly pricey. Most are relatively small operations.
 
Again, none are free and some are fairly pricey. Most are relatively small operations.
Click to expand...

Do you agree that it would be awesome if Mac got into this, and wrapped a wiki into iLife or iWorks? How approachable are they about these sorts of suggestions?

Can we start a campaign!? ;)
 
eclipse said:
Do you agree that it would be awesome if Mac got into this, and wrapped a wiki into iLife or iWorks? How approachable are they about these sorts of suggestions?

Can we start a campaign!? ;)
Click to expand...

Pages already handles document hyperlinking -- you can link to another document or a bookmark inside a document.

mt
 
Hi all,

I've found the ultimate wiki site called wiki matrix.

http://www.wikimatrix.org/wizard.php

It has a wizard which is asking me what I prefer. I want it to run on my G5 mac, but it doesn't seem to ask that, and instead asks what language I want it to be written in. I just want it to work on my Mac. Any ideas what I should tick?


.NET - C#
.NET, VB, C#
ASP
ASP, XML, XSL, CSS
ASP.NET C#
ASP.Net MVC 3 (C# with Razor view engine)
Basic4PPC (.NET)
C
C#
C# (Full), PHP (Viewer)
C#/ASP.NET 3.5
C#/XSLT
C++
ColdFusion
Free Pascal
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lua
Perl
Perl, JavaScript
PHP
PHP, C# on Mono (open source platform independent .NET
PHP, SQL, JavaScript
PHP, XSL, JavaScript
Programming Language Not relevant (completely self-contained)
Python
Python and JavaScript
Rails
REBOL
Ruby
Ruby on Rails
Shell
Smalltalk
tdbengine/EASY
Various (but completely self-contained)
XOTcl and Tcl
 
eclipse said:
Hi all,
I'm writing a children's Sci-Fi world that is quickly becoming quite vast. I was using Word, but now the "Document Map" way of getting around is becoming quite clunky.

I was wondering if I needed a wiki? Any ideas? Is there something fairly drop and drag that I can use that will help me along, and that I can use on my old G5 Leopard Dual 2 Ghz machine? I'm thinking of something like Voodoopad, but as I don't really know EXACTLY what I'm after I'm not really ready to pay for anything at the moment. I just want to play.

Surely there's a Voodoopad kind of system that's for free?

PS! Hold the phone...
I may have just found the jackpot for this and further software alternative questions!

http://alternativeto.net/SearchResult.aspx?profile=mac&platform=mac&search=tag:notepad

Oh, where to begin!??

Evernote has over 700 likes, but it is run by a Corporation. I could get half way through my kids book and discover the software I'm using is no longer supported. So should I go with an Open Source community for the Mac? Which one? Does Open Office have something like this, a kind of Voodoopad kind of database wiki thing?
Click to expand...

Since there are list of wikis as you are saying that you have list of wikis and you are confused then go and test each wiki that may help to get the best one
 
eclipse said:
Hi all,
I'm writing a children's Sci-Fi world that is quickly becoming quite vast. I was using Word, but now the "Document Map" way of getting around is becoming quite clunky.

I was wondering if I needed a wiki? Any ideas? Is there something fairly drop and drag that I can use that will help me along, and that I can use on my old G5 Leopard Dual 2 Ghz machine? I'm thinking of something like Voodoopad, but as I don't really know EXACTLY what I'm after I'm not really ready to pay for anything at the moment. I just want to play.

Surely there's a Voodoopad kind of system that's for free?

PS! Hold the phone...
I may have just found the jackpot for this and further software alternative questions!

http://alternativeto.net/SearchResult.aspx?profile=mac&platform=mac&search=tag:notepad

Oh, where to begin!??

Evernote has over 700 likes, but it is run by a Corporation. I could get half way through my kids book and discover the software I'm using is no longer supported. So should I go with an Open Source community for the Mac? Which one? Does Open Office have something like this, a kind of Voodoopad kind of database wiki thing?
Click to expand...

Evernote is not a wiki, but I use it for my writing because of its syncing capabilities. There is a lot of other stuff to recommend in it, but that was the deciding factor for me.

It is run by a corporation (*gasp!*), and as a product that makes money, you can bet that it will continue to be around with robust support. Six years and counting. Worst case scenario, you export your stuff as html or text. No worries.

I also highly recommend VoodooPad. It is relatively inexpensive, and the best wiki out there, in my opinion. Gus is very active in supporting it, and the internal linking capabilities are second to none (including all of the wikis available for windows).
 
palpatine said:
I also highly recommend VoodooPad. It is relatively inexpensive, and the best wiki out there, in my opinion. Gus is very active in supporting it, and the internal linking capabilities are second to none (including all of the wikis available for windows).
Click to expand...

What happens if you change a character's name? It won't go through all instances of your various files and change that will it?
 
eclipse said:
What happens if you change a character's name? It won't go through all instances of your various files and change that will it?
Click to expand...

not that i know of. i suppose you could write a script that would do it, but i am afraid i don't know how. if you email gus (the guy who runs it) he can probably answer this better.

if you asked me to do it right now, i would export your files as text, do a global change with any text editor, and import them all back into voodoopad. that is maybe a five minute process. but, if it is something you do often, it may get annoying, and voodoopad might not be for you.

the best part of voodoopad is the linking. let's say you have three pages, and the character's name is John. One page is called "John." You keep all of his biographical info here. Now, every time you type the word John anywhere in your documents, it will automatically link to John's page. This works for stuff that is already written as well. Let's say you decide halfway through that you need to flesh out a place-name like "Gondor." Create the page and VoodooPad automatically links it to every instance. Pretty cool for wiki making.
 
I use Dossier http://www.vortimac.com/dossier/index.php

Quick to learn and simple to use and has support for wiki links.

30 day trial on the web site and available at the app store at a decent price.

I tried a few others before purchasing Dossier but they all seemed to complex or had features that I didn't need so I settled on the simplest one to use and it's worked o.k for me.
I use it with a little app called ShelfMenu that allows me to enter notes or take clippings off the web with minimum effort and then sort them in Dossier later.

If you are writing a book then get the simplest applications you can, that way you can learn them quickly and easily and concentrate on the writing.
 
If you are writing a book then get the simplest applications you can, that way you can learn them quickly and easily and concentrate on the writing.
Click to expand...

I agree! Talk about simple — at this stage I'm just using Word! :D I've got a Mac OS folder with all the book files in it, so there's the Zac - novel file where I actually write the story, the Zac - encyclopedia where I take notes on the whole world, and the Writing hints file where I make special notes about my writing style and things to look out for.

If my world becomes way too big I'll just break down the encyclopedia into logical chunks. EG: The Shire, Misty Mountains, Gondor, Mordor, etc. If I change a name I just open all my files and run a search & replace on that name. Too easy (for now). But thank you all for your contributions above. I think if Voodoopad had a wiki-wide search & replace function that would have updated all the links as well, I probably would have gone with that.
 
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