Another requested feature for WikiPack was the ability to rename & delete pages, and today an update has been rolled out that allows you to do just that:
Keep the feature requests coming by either taking a minute to fill in the feature requests form, emailing info at wikipackit dot com, or following @WikiPack.
WikiPack now uses an updated Markdown rendering engine which has support for Markdown table syntax.
To use tables, follow this syntax:
| Heading 1 | Heading 2 |
|-----------|-----------|
| Row 1 | Value 1 |
| Row 2 | Value 2 |
| etc | etc |
Very handy!
Another cool feature is automatic generation of a table of contents for your documents. Especially handy for longer documents, it takes your headings and presents links in the sidebar that take you straight to that part of the document.
The headings actually have a permanent URL, so if you right-click on the sidebar links and copy the URL, you can use that to link to a particular part of your pages in other apps.
More updates on they way, but don’t forget to add your voice to the feature requests if you have a few minutes to click some checkboxes and help more WikiPack more awesome.
Since launching WikiPack in open beta, it’s been great getting feedback from the brave adventurers who have become early adopters. It’s been especially exciting because I’ve held back on building features until I’ve had demand for them from real users, but the features that I wanted to build myself have been the most requested, so I must be on the right track.
Even though I am scratching my own itch with WikiPack, I really want the features to be community driven, so towards that end I’ve made a simple feature request form that I’d love WikiPack users to fill in. If you haven’t already tried it out, head on over to http://wikipackit.com and signup now.
There’s also the user forum if you’d like to discuss any of these ideas, or add any of your own.
Click here to open the survey in a new window.
I was really excited over the weekend to read an article by John August on using a wiki to outline a screenplay. What a great idea!
Having done some contracted writing myself, I can testify to the fact that organising the outline & structure can be a real pain, and a wiki would be a great tool to simplify the process:
"The home page is a plot synopsis with acts as headings–and links to a character page when they are mentioned. There are also links to past events, organizations of importance, fictional technologies, etc. Character pages have headings like “Early Life”, “Relationship with xyz”, and in standard wiki style, are interlinked. I also have a tab of snippets, with pages for loose notes, dialogue and ideas I’m not sure I’m going to use yet."
Awesome! I think the combination of Markdown + Dropbox would be a great tool for writers, because the text-based nature of the writing process affords a distraction-free writing environment, especially when using dedicated editors like Byword with a minimalist fullscreen mode.
What’s even more exciting is the possibility of adding SPMD support to WikiPack. Now, I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up just yet; implementing a new subset of Markdown isn’t on the cards for WikiPack at the moment, but Brett Terpstra has been able to add SPMD support to Marked already, so in theory you could start using WikiPack to organise your SPMD pages, and Marked to render them. I’m not a screenwriter, but if you are, I’d love to hear how you go with combining SPMD + Markded + WikiPack.
I love reading about exciting new uses for personal wikis!
Give WikiPack a try at http://wikipackit.com
Sometimes the coolest updates are the ones behind the scenes that would otherwise go unnoticed. You may have already seen how WikiPack can sync with Dropbox; it’s fast, and transparent. Well now it’s even better!
To make the sync happen so seemlessly requires quite a bit of back-end infrastructure and engineering that I won’t bore you with, but while it was great, it was vulnerable to falling down when certain individuals decided to import a folder with several hundred Markdown pages in it. The system would become saturated, which would eventually result in it getting slow and unresponsive.
Furthermore, while sync errors were rare, they did occur but without any graceful error handling; a page might just fail to sync for no apparent reason for example.
The overload problem has been resolved now, so you should be able to import a Dropbox folder with hundreds of Markdown files in it without a problem. (It might take a while, but it will work.)
On the rare occasion that the Dropbox API fails to respond, or some other unforseen gremlin interupts a sync operation, it now gracefully handles that too by allowing you to view/edit the page, or try re-syncing it. There is no option to try turning it on and off again though...
So with this update, I’m quietly comfortable that the system is ready to scale. By that I mean that meeting an increase in demand is simply a matter of allocating more server resources, not that in it’s current state it could withstand the onslaught the would come from hitting the front page of Digg, Reddit, or Slashdot. Of course, I won’t stop you if you’d like to put that to the test :)
One of the main benefits of Markdown is that it should be human-readable in it’s native format, but how often have you ended up with a page looking something like this:
* [Robert Herjavec: Top 10 tips for budding entrepreneurs](http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2009/10/05/f-small-business-robert-herjavec-dragons-den.html)
* [Why you shouldn’t launch your startup in the press](http://gigaom.com/2011/12/19/lean-startup-launch-strategy/)
* [Slideshow on Customer Development Methodology](http://www.slideshare.net/venturehacks/customer-development-methodology-presentation)
* [You are in the emotion business](http://blog.kaisdavis.com/post/7877623196/you-are-in-the-emotion-business)
Human-readable? Not really…
The links above use the standard Markdown syntax of [title](URL), for example [Google](http://google.com), but as you can see, when the URLs are long, a list of links can become quite unwieldily.
We’ve all read a Wikipedia page with the little reference links strewn throughout the document, and a list of links at the bottom of the page. Markdown actually provides native support for cleaning up pages using something similar. Instead of the standard Markdown link syntax of [Google](http://google.com), reference style syntax allows you to enter the link as [Google][1], and then place the link at the bottom of the page:
Go to [Google][1] to search for stuff.
Words, words, words...
[1]: http://google.com
You don’t have to use numeric references, the reference can also be a human-readable string.
If you already have a page containing hundreds of links using the standard syntax, there is a handy tool that can automatically convert them all to reference-style links for you. Brett Terpstra’s Markdown service tools for Mac include a “Inline Links to References” service which makes maintaining reference-style links a breeze!
After intalling the service tools, just select your Markdown in your favourite Mac editor of choice and select Services > md - Inline Links to References. Applying this to the nightmarish list of links above results in the following:
* [Robert Herjavec: Top 10 tips for budding entrepreneurs][cbc]
* [Why you shouldn’t launch your startup in the press][gigaom]
* [Slideshow on Customer Development Methodology][slideshare]
* [You are in the emotion business][kaisdavis]
[cbc]: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2009/10/05/f-small-business-robert-herjavec-dragons-den.html
[gigaom]: http://gigaom.com/2011/12/19/lean-startup-launch-strategy/
[kaisdavis]: http://blog.kaisdavis.com/post/7877623196/you-are-in-the-emotion-business
[slideshare]: http://www.slideshare.net/venturehacks/customer-development-methodology-presentation
Ah… much better! You can now maintain your list of links by entering them using standard Markdown syntax ([Title](URL)), select the entire document and then run the “Inline links to References” service on it to re-generate all the references.
Since installing this service tool, I’ve been using it to clean up my WikiPack pages. Hope it helps you in your Markdown workflow too.