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WikiCreole 1.0 released

After almost a year of work, a group of about 50 developers led by Chuck Smith and Christoph Sauer announced the release of WikiCreole 1.0. As every wiki software has its own markup definitions, the differences can make them difficult for novices to learn and experts to remember, thus a common wiki markup lays the foundation for development of cross-engine wiki software. Creole, a term coined by wiki guru Ward Cunningham, attempts to bridge those gaps.

After almost a year of work, a group of about 50 developers led by Chuck Smith and Christoph Sauer announced the release of WikiCreole 1.0.

WikiCreole universal markupCreole, taking its name from the field of linguistics, a stable language that originated from a combination of two or more languages. As every wiki software has its own markup definitions, the differences can make them difficult for novices to learn and experts to remember, thus a common wiki markup lays the foundation for development of cross-engine wiki software.

The Creole name for a common markup was born from an idea of wiki founder Ward Cunningham at Wikimania 2006 the international Wikipedia conference. The goal: create a common markup that was not a standardization of an arbitrary existing markup, but rather a new markup language that was created out of the common elements of all existing engines. Under this premise the Wiki Creole Working Group analyzed existing wiki markup and compiled a greatest-common denominator subset of elements and presented its report.

Although I did nothing on this project but keep tabs through the Wiki Research mailing list, I did attend the breakout group that discussed this idea at WikiSym 2006 in Denmark (). That discussion ended with six wiki engines — MediaWiki, C2, JSPWiki, PurpleWiki, DokuWiki and TWiki — agreeing to work on implementing the Creole concept with some basic standard markup. In the interim since last August, Smith and Sauer got help from I3G and guided the iterations to its present stable version. To give WikiCreole a chance of success, the standard is frozen for two years.

WikiSym 2006 workshop on Creole markup

This cooperation reflects the Wiki Ohana mindset, described by Eugene Kim in a blog post last summer. Ohana means “family” in Hawaiian and refers to the sense of collaboration between different wiki platforms. Next up—perhaps helped greatly by WikiCreole—could be Wiki Interchange Format. WIF would permit exports of article content from one wiki engine to another. It is one of several proposals made by the wiki developer community out of WikiSym 2006 to improve the functionality and user experience for the 88 wiki engines that now exist.

Congrats to Chuck, Christoph and the rest of the contributing developers.

By Kevin Makice

A Ph.D student in informatics at Indiana University, Kevin is rich in spirit. He wrestles and reads with his kids, does a hilarious Christian Slater imitation and lights up his wife's days. He thinks deeply about many things, including but not limited to basketball, politics, microblogging, parenting, online communities, complex systems and design theory. He didn't, however, think up this profile.

1 reply on “WikiCreole 1.0 released”

After reading the headline, I secretly hoped for a link to a wiki full of Cajun cuisine.

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