BCS Edinburgh Branch programme: 08/12/06 - Perspective

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Perspective - the WiKi documentation tool

Wednesday 6th December 2006, 6:30 pm

Speaker: Alan Slater

Venue: The Royal Scots Club Hepburn Suite, 30 Abercromby Place, Edinburgh EH3 6QE - map and direction.

This talk is free of charge and no reservation is required. Non members are most welcome. Refreshments available from 6:10 pm.

Presentation from the meeting (pdf)

Synopsis

Wikis are a form of web-site that contain features to allow users to edit and create content within the site itself. Since they concept of the Wiki was first invented by Ward Cunningham in 1995 these intriguing tools are increasingly becoming a standard component of the web landscape.

This talk looks at the background to Wikis as well as looks at a particular Wiki implementation: Perspective, the first to feature WYSIWYG editing. Although built using standard Microsoft tools, this Wiki engine has been built and released as an open-source tool under the GPL. The ups and downs of a few years in an open-source project are also covered.

The talk will also attempt to identify exactly what elements of the design of Wikis make them so appealing to users. Future directions for Wikis will also be discussed

About the Speaker

Alan Slater, a graduate of Heriot-Watt University, has been working with Web technologies since 1992. He co-founded Orbital Software in 1995 and worked there until it was acquired by Sopheon in 2001.