Dev-Picayune

I was very nearly ready to release my Python-based Snowy Woods Journal application. It’s a simple application. It allows you to keep a personal journal. It’s wxPython-based so it enjoys some cross-platform goodness. It uses SQLite for storage so it’s pretty tight on the storage side of things. I also have support for tagging and text based searches.

I also am missing some things that would be nice like storing rich text (in a non-RTF way), export templates (although it does support a basic text export) and storing links to web-sites. I’d also like to find an elegant way to handle encryption without totally breaking the search functionality.

But aside from the encryption issue, I’ve found what is surely a better program for accomplishing what my little Snowy Woods app hoped to do: TiddlyWiki. And really TiddlyWiki does so much more.

In my own words, TiddlyWiki is wiki software written entirely using JavaScript embedded in an html file. It’s capable of updating itself on most any modern browser. So what you have is a wiki stored entirely inside a single html file that can update itself and can be run on almost any computer with a modern browser. Furthermore, the author has made the system pluggable so new features can be added. It takes a bit of adjusting to get the hang of it, but it really is an amazing JavaScript accomplishment and for what I would use it for, I suspect that it might do just as well or better than my journal program. Plus, I could use it on far more computers. So just like my goal with my journal app, TiddlyWiki works perfectly from a little USB drive. Oh, and when it saves, it also makes a backup copy. But of course unlike most programs, the backup essentially includes the source code as well as the data.

If there’s one complaint I have, it’s that it does store everything in the one file. There’s something that makes me nervous when my data and source code all live together in the same file. It violates every rule of common-sense abstraction I like to follow. But in the end, it still is a brilliant program that has to have many scratching their heads wondering why they hadn’t thought of it first.

As for Snowy Woods Journal, I guess I’ll try to finish up a few things on it and go ahead and release it here on the site. But without me using it, I don’t see that I’ll making many improvements or changes there. The only brightspot I can see is that the app layout as a whole might work fairly well for a blog editor that I have been planning (PumpkinSeed) to go along with the Pumpkinvine Blog System.

Technorati Tags: pumpkinvine, pumpkinseed, TiddlyWiki, Snowy Woods Journal, python, java script, wxpython

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