BeginnersStartHere

Slide 1: A short introduction to Foswiki

Slide 2: What is a Wiki?

• "Wiki" is short for "wiki wiki", the Hawaiian for "Quick" (and a perfect excuse for a picture of a cute girl in a hula skirt)
• The idea originates from Macintosh Hypercard, via Ward Cunningham
• In Ward's words, Wiki is "the simplest online database that could possibly work"
• A Wiki is basically a shared, online, persistent whiteboard

Slide 3: Foswiki Wiki

• Anyone can add content
  ... or change what is written
  ... or change the organisation of the content
• Whatever you write is
  ... nicely presented
  ... remembered... and never forgotten
• Write using What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) text editing
  ... or you can use plain text with a simple topic markup language that is quick to learn and easy to remember
  ... or you can use full HTML for complex formatting tasks

• governed by the Foswiki Association
• many volunteer contributors in many countries
• FOSWiki = Free Open Source Wiki

Slide 4: Foswiki features

• Revision control of all pages, so a record of changes to every page is kept

  r6 < r5 < r4 < r3 < r2

• Powerful macros allow users to build and use their own online applications
• Highly configurable look and feel, through use of templates and macros
• Plugins interface eases
  • customisation
  • extension
  • integration of existing applications
• Hundreds of extensions support additional features and integrate third party applications
  • download from the Foswiki Extensions website
• Secure and robust

Slide 5: Applications of basic Foswiki

• A whiteboard
• A document repository
• A collaborative authoring environment
• A notebook / scrapbook
• A chat room

Slide 6: Extended applications

• for Content Management (CMS) of websites
• for presentation development
• as a Blog
• as a (simple) database
• as a project management system
• for mashups
• as a tracking tool
• (truth is, we don't really know its limits!)

Slide 7: Structure of a Foswiki page

• A header
• A menu
• A body
• A footer

• The header and the footer are generated by the system
• The menu is also generated by the system, but mainly from content provided by you
• The body contains the text of the topic, as entered by you

Slide 8: The page header

• A Search box that allows you to look for topics or content all over the Foswiki site
• A Jump box where you can type in the name of a page you already know.

Slide 9: The menu - part 1

• Toolbox
• Create New Topic - for creating new topics via a menu
• Index - an alphabetical listing of all topics in the web
• Search - leads to a more advanced search page
• Changes - shows a list of recently changed topics
• Notifications - allows you to subscribe to receiving emails when topics change
• RSS Feed
• Statistics - for the activities current web
• Preferences - settings for the current web

Slide 10: The menu - part 2

• Webs
• Main
• Myco
• Project
• Sandbox
• System

Slide 11: The menu - part 3

• Myco
• Important topic
• Company philosophy

Slide 12: The page footer

• The Edit control takes you to an interactive page where you can change the page content using a WYSIWYG editor
• The Attach link lets you attach files
• Print version shows the page without any menus or top bars - for printing on paper
• History allows you to see older versions and what changed from version to version
• Backlinks shows which other pages link to this page
• View Wiki Text is for viewing the topic using topic markup language
• Edit Wiki Text is for editing the topic using topic markup language in a simple text editor
• More topic actions - takes you to a menu of less-frequently-used features

Slide 13: Editing Pages

• You've read a page, and you disagree with it violently! It says:
  Everyone knows that the world is flat
  But you know that it is really an Oblate Spheroid!
• You've clicked the edit link, and an edit page has appeared.
  • Depending on your site configuration, you will probably see a WYSIWYG editor and can start writing right away, just like you would in a text processor.
  • But if you clicked on the "Edit Wiki Text" link, what you see doesn't look much like what was on the page before.

• Now what?

Slide 14: What's in a page

• The hieroglyphics are what's known as "Topic Markup Language"
• They are a really simple way of telling the browser how you want the page to look
• You don't have to use them
  • Foswiki understands pages in plain text just fine.
    
    Actually it is an Oblate Spheroid
    
    appears as
    
    Actually it is an Oblate Spheroid
• Or you can just use the WYSIYG editor

Slide 15: The hieroglyphs just make pages prettier

• A full description of all the formatting can be found in the TopicMarkupLanguage.
• The best thing to do is just to type until you get stuck
  • then follow the link on the edit page to the help.

Slide 16: Commonly used formatting

• ---+ indicates a heading. Add more +'s for a deeper heading.

• %TOC% will insert a table of contents

Slide 17: More common formatting

• A blank line gives a paragraph break
• --- on a line of its own gives a horizontal bar
• Text in stars *like this* looks like this
• Text in underscores _like this_ looks like this
• Text in equals signs =like this= looks like this
• Bulleted lists use three spaces followed by an asterisk (*) at the start of the line
  • The depth of the bullet is given by the number of spaces, in multiples of three

• Numbered lists use a number in place of the *. The list is numbered automatically, so you can just use a 1

Slide 18: Even more.....

• You can create a table using vertical bars:

     | Cat | Feline |
     | Bear | Ursine |
     | Wolf | Lupine |

• appears as

• %RED% …. %ENDCOLOR% will change the colour of the enclosed text. Lots of colours are available (%RED%, %GREEN%, %BLUE% etc)

Slide 19: WikiWords

• One special hieroglyph that is very important is a WikiWord
  • a word that starts with uppercase, then some lowercase, then more uppercase (this is known as CamelCase)
• This has a special meaning to Foswiki. If it matches the name of another topic, Foswiki will automatically create a link to that page for you.
• If there is no such page, then the word is highlighted differently, LikeThis
• If you click on the word, then Foswiki will invite you to create that page.

• This lets you enter the names of topics you think should exist, but don't yet
  • You, or someone else, can always come along later and click on the question mark!

Slide 20: Referencing other pages and URLs

• WikiWords automatically link to the target page
  • You can make these links easier to read using square brackets:
    • [[WikiWords][bumpy words]] appears as bumpy words
• An ordinary URL pasted into text will appear as a link - http://www.google.com
  • You can also prettify URLs using square brackets:
    • [[http://www.google.com/][Google]] appears as Google
• Use %SEARCH. This is an interface to a sophisticated search engine that embeds the results of the search in your page. See System.Macros for full details.

Slide 21: More formatting

• There's lots more formatting available, see TopicMarkupLanguage
• If you are an HTML expert, you can even enter raw HTML!
• Important to disable unwanted formatting, use <nop>
  • <nop>_word_ appears as _word_

Slide 22: Creating new pages

• Alternative ways:
  • Click on the question mark after a WikiWord
  • Type in the name of the topic in the "Go:" box
  • Type in the name of the topic in the URL
• Any time you try to visit a page that doesn't exist, Foswiki will invite you to create it.
• Make sure the names of topics are always WikiWords.

Slide 23: Attachments

• Attachments are files which have been uploaded and attached to a Foswiki topic using the [Attach] link in the toolbar.

I	Attachment	Action	Size	Date	Who	Comment
	Sample.txt	manage	0.1 K	22 Jul 2000 - 19:37	ProjectContributor	Just a sample
	Smile.gif	manage	0.1 K	22 Jul 2000 - 19:38	ProjectContributor	Smiley face

• Attachments are simply files, in whatever format you want.
• Foswiki recognises some file formats, notably image files (.gif, .jpeg, …)
  • Write %ATTACHURL%/myco.gif to see this:

Slide 24: Wiki Culture

• What can I edit?
  • Anything. But it's good etiquette to sign your contributions
  • If someone doesn't want you to edit a page, it's up to them to say so, clearly, on the page
• But what if somebody doesn't like my edits?
  • In Foswiki, they can always recover the old revision and re-instantiate it if they really want to
  • Otherwise they should regard your changes as an opportunity for discussion
• Pages in wiki are (usually) in one of three "modes"
  • DocumentMode
  • ThreadMode
  • StructuredMode

Slide 25: That's fine for the internet, but...

• Viewing/editing topics can be restricted to any indvidual, or group of individuals
• Foswiki can be integrated with corporate single-sign-on solutions

Slide 26: DocumentMode

• A page in DocumentMode usually consists of a contribution which is written in the third person and left unsigned.
• The piece of text is community property
  • It may have multiple and changing authors as it is updated to reflect the community consensus.

Slide 27: ThreadMode

• Thread mode is a form of discussion where the community holds a conversation
• The discussion usually starts out with a statement, at the top of the page, that is subsequently discussed
• The page may be periodically "refactored" (edited) to remove some of the comments
  • As long as the comment is accurately reflected in what replaces it, nobody usually minds.
  • Remember to always maintain a complete list of contributors, though!

• ThreadMode is rather like an e-mail thread
  • Except that new comments are usually added to the end
• ThreadMode pages often get refactored into DocumentMode

Slide 28: StructuredMode

• A page in StructuredMode follows some predefined structure for example
  • An agenda
  • A set of meeting minutes
  • A requirement description.
• Pages in StructuredMode will usually have rules governing how they are edited.

Slide 29: Contributed features

Slide 30: Getting more information

Slide 31: Credits and Acknowledgements

• This training was developed by Foswiki:Main.CrawfordCurrie on behalf of Oxamer, one of the companies in the Oxford Gene Technology group.
• Valuable contributions were also received from the Foswiki Open Source community; special mentions go to:
  • Foswiki:Main.WalterMundt
  • Foswiki:Main.SvenDowideit
• The latest version of this presentation is available at Foswiki:System.BeginnersStartHere