TWiki is a

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...

-based structured wiki application, typically used to run a collaboration platform,

knowledge Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distin ...

or document management system, a

knowledge base A knowledge base (KB) is a technology used to store complex structured and unstructured information used by a computer system. The initial use of the term was in connection with expert systems, which were the first knowledge-based systems. ...

, or team portal. Users can create wiki pages using the TWiki Markup Language, and developers can extend wiki application functionality with plugins. The TWiki project was founded by Peter Thoeny in 1998 as an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

wiki-based application platform. In October 2008, the company TWiki.net, created by Thoeny, assumed full control over the TWiki project while much of the developer community forked off to join the Foswiki project.

Major features

* Revision control - complete audit trail, also for meta data such as attachments and access control settings * Fine-grained access control - restrict read/write/rename on site level, web level, page level based on user groups * Extensible TWiki

markup language Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document ...

TinyMCE TinyMCE is an online rich-text editor released as open-source software under the MIT License. It has the ability to convert HTML text area fields or other HTML elements to editor instances. TinyMCE is designed to easily integrate with JavaScript l ...

based

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

editor * Dynamic content generation with TWiki variables * Forms and reporting - capture structured content, report on it with searches embedded in pages * Built in database - users can create wiki applications using the TWiki Markup Language * Skinnable user interface * RSS/

Atom Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons. Every solid, liquid, gas, a ...

feeds and e-mail notification * Over 400 Extensions and 200 Plugins

TWiki extensions

TWiki has a plugin API that has spawned over 300 extensions to link into

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases ...

s, create

chart A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent ...

s, tags, sort tables, write

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in ...

s, create image gallery and

slideshow A slide show (slideshow) is a presentation of a series of still images ( slides) on a projection screen or electronic display device, typically in a prearranged sequence. The changes may be automatic and at regular intervals or they may be manu ...

s, make

drawing Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayo ...

s, write

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in Reverse ...

s, plot graphs, interface to many different

authentication Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicatin ...

schemes, track

Extreme Programming Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development,"Human Centred Technology Workshop 2006 ", 2006, P ...

projects and so on.

TWiki application platform

TWiki as a structured wiki provides database-like manipulation of fields stored on pages, and offers a SQL-like query language to embed reports in wiki pages. Wiki applications are also called

situational application In computing, a situational application is "good enough" software created for a narrow group of users with a unique set of needs. The application typically (but not always) has a short life span, and is often created within the group where it is us ...

s because they are created ''ad hoc'' by the users for very specific needs. Users have built TWiki applications that include call center status boards, to-do lists,

inventory Inventory (American English) or stock (British English) refers to the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation. Inventory management is a discipline primarily about specifying the sha ...

systems,

employee handbook An employee handbook, sometimes also known as an employee manual, staff handbook, or company policy manual, is a book given to employees by an employer. The employee handbook can be used to bring together employment and job-related information wh ...

s, bug trackers,

applications, discussion forums, status reports with rollups and more.

User interface

The interface of TWiki is completely skinnable in templates, themes and (per user)

CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technolo ...

. It includes support for

internationalization In economics, internationalization or internationalisation is the process of increasing involvement of enterprises in international markets, although there is no agreed definition of internationalization. Internationalization is a crucial strateg ...

I18N In computing, internationalization and localization (American English, American) or internationalisation and localisation (British English), often abbreviated i18n and L10n, are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional ...

'), with support for multiple character sets, UTF-8 URLs, and the user interface has been translated into Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

TWiki deployment

TWiki is primarily used at the workplace as a

corporate wiki Wiki software (also known as a wiki engine or a wiki application), is collaborative software that runs a wiki, which allows the users to create and collaboratively edit pages or entries via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web applicat ...

to coordinate team activities, track projects, implement

workflow A workflow consists of an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of activity, enabled by the systematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, or process information. It can be depicted as a sequence o ...

s and as an

Intranet Wiki Wiki software (also known as a wiki engine or a wiki application), is collaborative software that runs a wiki, which allows the users to create and collaboratively edit pages or entries via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web application ...

. The TWiki community estimates 40,000 corporate wiki sites as of March 2007, and 20,000 public TWiki sites. TWiki customers include

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune (magazine), Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States Joint-stock company#Closely held corporations and publicly traded corporations, corporations by ...

such as

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent public companies, Motorola ...

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue and market capitalization. The company sells da ...

and

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Mana ...

, as well as

small and medium enterprise Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are businesses whose personnel and revenue numbers fall below certain limits. The abbreviation "SME" is used by international organizations such as the World Ba ...

s, such as

ARM Holdings Arm is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England. Its primary business is in the design of ARM processors (CPUs). It also designs other chips, provides software development tools under the DS-5, RealView ...

and

DHL DHL is an American founded, German logistics company providing courier, package delivery and express mail service, which is a division of the German logistics firm Deutsche Post. The company group delivers over 1.8 billion parcels per year. ...

. TWiki has also been used to create collaborative internet sites, such as the

City of Melbourne The City of Melbourne is a local government area in Victoria, Australia, located in the central city area of Melbourne. In 2018, the city has an area of and had a population of 169,961. Estimated resident population, 30 June 2018. The c ...

's ''FutureMelbourne'' wiki where citizens can collaborate on the future plan.

Realization

TWiki is implemented in Perl. Wiki pages are stored in plain text files. Everything, including meta such as access control settings, are version controlled using

RCS RCS may refer to: Organisations *Racing Club de Strasbourg Alsace * Radio Corporation of Singapore * Radcliffe Choral Society * Rawmarsh Community School *Red Crescent Society * Red Cross Society * Representation of Czechs and Slovaks, a football ...

. RCS is optional since an all-Perl version control system is provided. TWiki scales reasonably well even though it uses plain text files and no

relational database A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relati ...

to store page data. Many corporate TWiki installations have several hundred thousand pages and tens of thousands of users. Load balancing and caching can be used to improve performance on high traffic sites. TWiki has database features built into the engine. A TWiki Form is attached to a page as meta data. This represents a database record. A set of pages that share the same type of form build a database table. A formatted search with a SQL-like query can be embedded into a page to construct dynamic presentation of data from multiple pages. This allows for building wiki applications and constitutes the TWiki's notion of a structured wiki.

TWiki release history

* 1998-07-23: Initial version, based on JosWiki, an application created by Markus Peter and Dave Harris * 2000-05-01: TWiki Release 1 May 2000 * 2000-12-01: TWiki Release 1 December 2000 * 2001-09-01: TWiki Release 1 September 2001 * 2001-12-01: TWiki Release 1 December 2001 ("Athens") * 2003-02-01: TWiki Release 1 February 2003 ("Beijing") * 2004-09-01: TWiki Release 1 September 2004 ("Cairo") * 2006-02-01: TWiki Release 4.0.0 ("Dakar") * 2007-01-16: TWiki Release 4.1.0 ("Edinburgh") * 2008-01-22: TWiki Release 4.2.0 ("Freetown") * 2009-09-02: TWiki Release 4.3.2 ("Georgetown") * 2010-06-10: TWiki Release 5.0 ("Helsinki") * 2011-08-20: TWiki Release 5.1 ("Istanbul") * 2013-10-14: TWiki Release 6.0.0 ("Jerusalem") * 2018-07-16: TWiki Release 6.1.0 ("Kampala")

Forks of TWiki

Forks In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods eit ...

of TWiki include: * 2001: Spinner Wiki (abandoned) * 2003: O'Wiki fork (abandoned) * 2008: Foswiki, launched in October 2008 when a dispute about the future guidance of the project could not be settled, resulting in the departure of much of the TWiki community including the core developer team

Gallery

Image:twiki_screen_4_0_a.png, Sample page layout. Image:twiki_screen_4_0_b.png, Page edit with wiki markup, SmartEditAddOn toolbar installed. Image:twiki_screen_4_0_c.png, Page edit with WYSIWYG editor. Image:twiki_screen_4_0_d.png, Edit tables with EditTablePlugin.

References

External links

TWiki.org - Open source community site

Comparison between TWiki and MediaWiki

TWIKI.NET - company providing commercial installation, support and hosting solutions for TWiki

WikiMatrix description of TWiki

Foswiki.org - The Free and Open Source Wiki site
{{Perl Free software programmed in Perl Free wiki software Free content management systems Groupware Perl software Cross-platform software