Run, do not walk, over to hypergogue.net to read an awesome article by Simon Bostok on Markdown.
He talks about what Markdown is and why it’s so cool, as well as introducing some handy Markdown tools. Seeing a lot of people speaking highly of Mou these days, will have to give it a try. He’s not the only person who’s life has been changed by Markdown, as he quotes other follow enthusiasts sharing their joy for it.
Give it a read!
Some good folks had experienced issues setting up their WikiPack accounts recently when trying to import their Trunk Notes pages. They selected the /trunksync folder, as you would, but WikiPack wasn’t smart enough to know that it should import their pages from the /trunksync/notes folder, so they ended up with an empty wiki. Sorry about that…
As a solution, it now prompts you to select your default Markdown extension and uses that both to check that the selected folder actually contains Markdown files, but also to filter out any unwanted files like .html, .css, .etc :)
Did you know that there isn’t really an “official” standard Markdown extension? Some people use .md, some .markdown. How about you?
Here’s a list of all the common extensions I’ve seen in use:
Another cool thing I didn’t mention in the video is that now when creating new pages, it will ensure that they always have your default Markdown extension, so you don’t have to worry about typing it in (which I often forget to do anyway…).
I hope this update makes the initial Dropbox import process much smoother!
Word seems to be spreading as WikiPack has picked up a few users recently, so I thought it might be nice to have a discussion forum for WikiPack users.
I've setup a Google Groups discussion forum for WikiPack, and I'd love you to join in!
Looking forward to hearing from you!
I’ve talked about QuickCursor previously, a handy tool for editing text fields in your favourite text editor. Today I’d like to show you how I use it with TextMate to make editing Markdown files in WikiPack so much easier:
Another cool thing I forgot to mention is that TextMate can give you a preview of how the Markdown will be rendered, before saving it back to the browser. I find that useful so I can quickly check that my document without having to save it and then edit it again if I made any mistakes.
It should also be mentioned that this combination of tools can be used on any website that accepts text input. It can also be used with native Mac apps that provide text fields. I use it constantly throughout the day!
Yes, I have an Alpha copy of TextMate 2. To be honest, it didn’t really offer anything to tempt me away from Sublime Text 2. I pretty much just use TextMate as my system default Markdown editor, and use Sublime Text for my coding. Will be interesting to see what it’s like when it’s officially released; hope it’s a free upgrade!
I thought it would be great to post a series of “tools of the trade” posts where I’ll introduce various apps & tools that work really well with Markdown and WikiPack.
The first tool I’d like to talk about is QuickCursor, a handy little Mac app from HogBay Software that is a great compliment for the WikiPack web app.
It’s a really simple tool that sends the contents of any editable text field to your favourite text editor.
Markdown is plain text, and as such is perfectly editable in any web browser’s text field, but using a dedicated text editor brings a lot of advantages like autocompletion, auto-indentation, keyboard shortcuts for making text bold, italic, etc. etc.
My regular workflow is to click the edit button in WikiPack, then hit the QuickCursor global keyboard shortcut to send the page’s Markdown to TextMate where I can write the page, preview it as it will be rendered, and then send it back to the browser before saving the page.
It’s a really handy little app which I highly recommend if you spend any amount of time editing text in web applications with any kind of frequency!
‘Tis the season to be jolly, (or so my hangover tells me), so I’d like to show you how you could use WikiPack to make a Christmas shopping list. I’m not saying that you should buy any of the items on my shopping list and send them to me, but I won’t stop you if you really want to :)
WikiPack starts with pages, your pages, which can be about anything you like. So let’s make a shopping list page. There’s a bunch of different ways you can do that:
I tend to prefer starting with a relevant page and editing that to enter a link to the new page I’m creating. That might sound a bit weird, linking to a page that doesn’t exist yet, but the way it works is actually pretty cool: After saving the page, when you click on the link, it creates the new page for you automatically, and when you save the new page, it will have a link back to the original page. I like using this approach because it keeps all my stuff nicely linked together and organised.
Anyway, let’s say for this example that we’ll create a page called “Christmas Shopping List”. Here’s what the link would look like in the parent page:
# My awesome page of stuff
Make a [[ChristmasShoppingList|Christmas shopping list]]
The ChristmasShoppingList bit is a “WikiWord”, and the bit after the | is how the link will be displayed on the page.
What I love about WikiPack is using it to gather links, pictures, and notes about things together, and how easy it is to do that. Something I was thinking of putting on my list was a waterproof case for my digital camera so we can get some great photos when we’re camping and having fun on the beach. Here’s what the page might look like:
## D90 Waterproof case
Looks like the DiCAPac WP-S10 is the top contender for a cheap, soft, waterproof case.
* [Manufacturer's site](http://www.dicapac.com/new_eng/02_products/sub03.html)
* Available on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Waterproof-Nikon-D3000-Underwater-Hous/dp/B003L75CUC) for about $90, or locally for about $150
* Great product shot on [Flickr](http://www.flickr.com/photos/deskounlmtd/3588053889/)
* Awesome, [comprehensive review](http://www.danhimbrechts.com/blog/2009/11/22/dicapac-wp-s10-dslr-waterproof-housing/) from a Sydney based photographer - he recommends it.
And here’s how that would actually look on the page:
Looks like the DiCAPac WP-S10 is the top contender for a cheap, soft, waterproof case.
The cool thing is that while on your larger device, you can do your research and copy & paste links and photos etc into your page, but when you’re out and about, you can still view the rendered page, or even edit it if needed. I added an idea I had to one of my pages over the weekend with my phone, and while I was in a store I spotted some camera cases like the one above and was able to quickly pull up my page to get the model number of the one I was looking at. Fun times!
If you'd like to try WikiPack for making your own Christmas shopping list, go to http://wikipackit.com and bring the awesomeness to your Dropbox folder.
WikiPack frees your personal data from being locked into proprietary data formats that can only be used with proprietary apps, and brings it alive as your own hosted website. There’s nothing particular unique about that, loads of sites provide a means of storing and retrieving your own universe of personal data, but none quite like WikiPack
I came from using bespoke personal information managers that kept my data locked away in their own mystical archives, to going almost full circle to plain-text solutions like Simplenote. The driving force was the iPhone really; I needed access to my notes from multiple devices. I mean, I love Yojimbo, but guys, an iPad version that’s read only? It was with a heavy heart that I realised I needed something more.
For a while all was well, especially with the discovery of native Simplenote clients like Notational Velocity, and Brett Terpstra’s awesome nvAlt. I started migrating my notes over to Simplenote pages, but I soon realised that there was something lacking, something that I missed from my usage of Yojimbo - simple text formatting, and images.
I like to research stuff. I’ll take an interest in something, like an iPhone accessory, or a camera lense, or a fountain pen, and get obsessed with it. I’ll want to know everything about it, all the different models available, different prices, and I’ll want links to reviews, and photos, all tied together into a handy page. Yojimbo was great for that, plain text, not so much.
Then I discovered Markdown, and my life changed. Seriously! Here’s an excerpt from the Markdown philosophy:
Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible.
Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions.
That sounds too good to be true - human readable plain text that can be rendered as a formatte page? It really is the best of both worlds. My Simplenote archive started migrating over to Markdown files, as I took advantage of the portability of plain text, and the formatting power of Markdown.
At first, I had Markdown files sprinkled all over my filesystem. But again, it was the iPhone really that drove the search for something that can keep all my files together, and also make them accessible to all my various devices. Dropbox serves that need perfectly.
I recently upgraded to a new laptop, a beefy Macbook Pro to serve as my work machine, and for the first time my Documents folder is empty, barren, bare. Well, of documents anyway, I seem to have put my development source code folders in there for want of somewhere better to put them. But my documents, mostly Markdown pages, now live in the ubiquitous Dropbox folder.
Now I had my Markdown pages in a single place, and apps to access them on my iPhone, iPad, and my Mac. There’s was only one piece of the puzzle missing - a means of linking them all together
It’s great having a page for lenses, and a page for the DSLR I’m looking at, and another page with links to various photography tutorials, but as stand-alone pages, relevant information ends up being fragmented instead of tied together. There’s always search, and tagging, but when you’re focussing on a particular area of interest it’s really great to have everything tied together in one place. That’s where WikiWords come into the picture.
By augmenting my Markdown pages with simple WikiWords, I can link them together and create my own personal wiki of sorts. I could, for example, make a photography page, which links to my lenses page, and my tutorials page, and my page with photos and links to reviews of the DSLR I’m lusting after, and easily navigate between them as my own little interactive website.
At this point, I’d like to give kudos to Trunk Notes for starting me on this journey. It’s the app which first turned my static Markdown pages into a living wiki. It’s an iOS app which syncs with Dropbox and renders Markdown pages as a wiki. It’s really very advanced, with lots of additional functions like todo lists. I highly recommend that you try it!
The thing is, I don’t get out much. (He says while typing away in a coffee shop…) OK, I go out a little bit, but for most of the day I’m parked in front of my Mac while I’m working, so I really needed to bring my wiki onto my Mac. Trunk Notes provides a web server which does that, but it must be running on an iOS device on the local network for it to be accessible. I needed something more permanent, and to that end I created WikiPack
So that’s what WikiPack is. I really need to work on a way to get that across in 7 words or less, but that about sums it up. It starts with pages, written in human readable Markdown, synced to the cloud in a Dropbox folder, and rendered to you as an interactive website.
I’m really excited about it, and I hope you’ll like it to. To try it out, go to http://wikipackit.com, and please let me know what you think!
cheers