Wiki and Specification Writing

Introduction

Wiki is good for all sorts of things. It's a very hypermedia medium; about as non-linear as it gets. Specs, on the other hand often need to be linear. WikiSpecs are a rolled-up, linearization of a set of Wiki topics.

About Wiki

A wiki is a web site where people who have access can collaborate to create information, stored in topics.

• Hawaiian for "quick", WikiWiki is a web of related pages, each of which has a title (like OneMinuteWiki)
• Topics range from informal and unbaked to fully thought out.
• You (yes, you!) are encouraged to start editing immediately!
• Editing is very, very easy; click Edit on the menu on any page and edit the plain text using the FormattingRules.
• If you want to cancel editing use your browser's "Back" button. This helps to avoid unmodified copies of existing pages.
• If you're scared to change anything, try our PlayPage first.
• The general tone here is free and respectful.
• Every page change is recorded so you can see the history of pages. (Yes, and your IP address is tracked, so don't try to delete everything )
• You can use the Show Changes button to see the changes made for each version of a page.
• That's all you need to know to begin editing. Do not edit this page however, please go to SandBox to play.

If you're not sure where to start, you can start at the HomePage.

SharpWiki was originally developed by DavidOrnstein (working at Microsoft, but on his own time, so not officially connected to Microsoft). When it was time for the software to have its coming out party, it turned out that somebody else had started using the name publicly first. So this software was renamed to FlexWiki.

For more, see FlexWiki and FlexWikiHistory.

Wiki Developing Specs

{{IncludingWikiContentInSpecs}}

{{UsingTheWikiBlade}}

{{UpdatingFieldsInDocuments}}

Shouldn't this be pulling in data from IncludingWikiContentInSpecs, UsingTheWikiBlade and UpdatingFieldsInDocuments --ashepp@microsoft.com ?

Yeah -- if those topics existed -- DavidOrnstein

Thanks David, I'm having a hard time getting to grips with the commenting etiquette ? Don't see many others commenting around the site inline. Should I 'clean up after myself' ? What do you find best ?

Thanks --ashepp@microsoft.com

There's no real ettiquette. When a topic seems to be getting a bit painful, somebody cleans it up. You can feel free to clean up after yourself -- and even (using judgement) clean up after others. Or not.

We are trying to use FlexWiki for specs and the PMs are complaining it is just too painful. In particular, creating tables is a lot of work and hard to get right if the table contains significant text. Any ideas on tools to use with FlexWiki to make this easier? --cogg