The IntraWiki

It's funny, I don't have nearly as much of a "not built here" syndrome when it comes to work. I did install a version of the software that runs this weblog for our "IntraBlog" and that worked out okay once I got rid of the restrictions for commenters not to use HTML. And now I just installed the incredible JSPWiki instead of the half-ass wiki I wrote years ago and am very happy for it. I grabbed Raible's Redman template and (once I got rid of the red) and it looks fantastic - I then linked up the weblog and the wiki (the pages don't cross over, but that's okay) and poof, we're up and running with a Wiki. Believe it or not - I tried a Perl, Python *and* a PHP app for this thing first and none worked as quickly or easily or had as many features as JSPWiki. Finally Java wins the "easy to install and use" battle!

What's more, because I *hate* ugly URLs, I threw Paul Tuckey's Fantabulous UrlRewrite Filter in front of the app so I could make the urls which look like "/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=RussellBeattie" into the much nicer "/wiki/RussellBeattie.html". It was very easy - I should send the change over to the JSPWiki guys, since all it took was changes in two lines in the WikiEngine.java and 3 lines in a urlrewrite.xml. By the way, Paul just left a comment that UrlRewrite is at 1.1 *and* it's now a Java.net project. Rock on! I *love* that library!

Anyways, it's amazing how fast people take to Wikis. Like weblogs, they have such a high return on investment in terms of learning curve and end result. My coworker Dave is now cranking away with a bunch of documentation that he was starting to do using Latex (believe it or not). He's *much* happier with how quick and easy and good looking it's turning out.

Cool beans.

-Russ

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