Creating a personal Wiki… Mac OS X ML

[Stoid]

I am on Mac OSX, Mountain Lion.

Does anyone know if there is a way to create links to documents/files/pages on one’s own computer? It can be done in specific apps that are built to do that (OmniOutliner, drag something into the outline and it’s attached and linked, and I think Devonthink does it, I’m sure there’s more) but I was wondering if there is some built-in capacity that can be exploited in this way.

My desire is to basically build my own personal wiki. VooDooPad is pretty good, but makes me crazy in a few key ways, and Trunk Notes is nice on the iPad, but I haven’t found much beyond that. It seems to me that with the crush of productivity tools and information managers and what not, Personal Wiki style would have more representation than it does. But since I’m not finding it, perhaps I can build it for myself?

All notions welcome.

[njtt]

I thought the whole point of a Wiki was that so lots of people, even strangers, could collaborate on a single set of documents. What is the point if it all going to be created by one person? Just create a set of documents, arrange them as you wish (folders, or whatever Apple calls them, should be fine for that), interlink them if, as, and where necessary.

[beowulff]

Well, Apache comes with OS X, so you could run your own web server, and do it in HTML…

[Stoid]

@njtt

I thought the whole point of a Wiki was that so lots of people, even strangers, could collaborate on a single set of documents. What is the point if it all going to be created by one person? Just create a set of documents, arrange them as you wish (folders, or whatever Apple calls them, should be fine for that), interlink them if, as, and where necessary.

That’s only part of it. From the ultimate Wiki:

A personal wiki is a wiki maintained primarily for personal use. Personal wikis allow people to organize information on their desktop or mobile computing devices in a manner similar to community wikis, but without the need for collaboration by multiple users.[1]

Personal wiki software can be broadly divided into multi-user wiki software with personal editions, and those wiki applications that are designed only for single users, not depending on a database engine and a web server. The first class includes wiki applications such as MoinMoin or TWiki, as these can be installed for standalone use as well. This may require installing additional software, for example a web server, a database management system, or a WAMP/LAMP software bundle.
There are also wiki applications specifically designed for personal use[5] apps for mobile use,[6] and apps for USB stick use.[7] Their feature set often differs from traditional wikis; examples are:

[ul]
[li]Dynamic tree views of the wiki[/li][li]Drag and drop support for images, text and video, mathematics[/li][li]Use of OLE or Linkback to allow wikis to act as relational superstructures for multiple desktop type documents[/li][li]Multimedia embedding, in particular wikis where one can link to internal aspects of movies and sound tracks and store notes / comments[/li][li]Macros and macros constructors. Also often support for alien macros so the wiki can act as a multi scripting macro system[/li][/ul]

As I noted, VooDooPad is pretty hot stuff when it comes to personal wiki, and it is referred to as such, but a little too hot in some respects for me.

It appears from that page that it is still as I saw last time: very windows/linux/geeked out options at this point. Sigh…

[Stoid]

@beowulff

Well, Apache comes with OS X, so you could run your own web server, and do it in HTML…

Like I said, super-geeked.

I like note taking to be powerful without being overwhelming, which is why I stand amazed that Evernote ever got off the ground… talk about overkill. Gives me a headache just to think about.

[Jragon]

@njtt

I thought the whole point of a Wiki was that so lots of people, even strangers, could collaborate on a single set of documents. What is the point if it all going to be created by one person? Just create a set of documents, arrange them as you wish (folders, or whatever Apple calls them, should be fine for that), interlink them if, as, and where necessary.

I believe that the creator of Wikipedia’s original software did, indeed, invent the software for personal note taking in grad school.

Either way, back when I had my own personal wiki, I installed a web server and followed the instructions to install MediaWiki on it. There’s other wiki software of course, but I think MediaWiki is the most polished. From there, you can generally access the wiki via http://localhost/mediawiki in whatever browser you use.

[Stoid]

Oh man I have been torturing myself… I installed Zim, and there was a bunch of hoop jumping and whatnot because I’m on a mac… nut now I’m completely at a loss as to how to RUN the damn thing…I have to stop now or I will get too crazy…

[AHunter3]

Like any Unix-based system, MacOS supports file URLs:
file:///Users/Stoid/Documents/YourDocument.doc

etc

Such URLs can be executed in most any application that turns a recognized URL type into a clickable link, including FileMaker, text selected & dragged to the Desktop (becomes a .webloc file), hmm Excel doesn’t like them (oddly enough), …
I’d use FileMaker (well of course I would, I’d use it for anything except movie footage editing and soundwave editing, but I mean I would suggest also that YOU consider using FileMaker), if you have it.

[picker]

For something along these lines that’s not a true wiki, I recommend VUE - (Visual Understanding Environment). It’s an open source platform developed by Tufts University. Very cool and very easy to use. You can tie into a wiki though, as well as create custom ontologies and the like. But I mostly use it for planning and note-taking, both personal and project based.