TiddlyWiki

Jeremy Ruston started work on TiddlyWiki in September 2004, and in August of this year called it "a moderately active and successful open source project". He's being modest. As of this writing (September 2007), Google finds over 8 million pages that mention TiddlyWiki, with 2,320,000 of those also mentioning Linux.

TiddlyWiki is a breed apart. Variously described as "a reusable non-linear personal web notebook", a "one-file wiki", "a wiki-modeled client-side single page application" and more, none of the labels as simple as TiddlyWiki itself: a small standalone HTML file that contains all the JavaScript and CSS it needs to do what it does -- which is give you a simple and straightforward way to write and organize linked and tagged text inside a simple client-side file.

Rather than pages, TiddlyWiki uses "tiddlers" -- chunks of text you can write, edit, show, hide, tag, shuffle and otherwise manipulate in a variety of ways. Using it reminds me both of blogs and outliners, yet it's different than both because it's non-linear and non-hierarchical.

Mostly it's handy. It's a way of writing in any browser, on or off the Web, in a form that can easily be posted, emailed or put on a thumb drive for what the TiddlyWiki folks call "Wiki-on-a-Stick".

"Our scope is intentionally small", Ruston says. "It's unique to client side development" and ideal for many purposes small and large. "Building customizable user experiences", for example.

TiddlyWiki is also permutational, with many versions, variations, plugins, macros and arcane uses. There are even client-side hosting sites for folks who need it. Checking it out could hardly be easier. For that go to tiddlywiki.org.

And see if you can come up with a one-word name for its breed.

- Doc Searls