There’s no denying the usefulness of a wiki, even to a non-geek. You can accomplish that a lot with one—write notes and drafts, collaborate on tasks, construct full web sites. And a lot extra.
I’ve used quite a lot of wikis over time, both for my very own work or at numerous contract and full-time gigs I’ve held. While conventional wikis are superb, I actually like the concept of desktop wikis. They’re small, straightforward to put in and keep, and even simpler to make use of. And, as you’ve got in all probability guessed, there are a selection a desktop wikis accessible for Linux.
Let’s check out one of many higher desktop wikis: Zim.
Getting going
You can both download and set up Zim from the software program’s web site, or do it the straightforward method and set up it via your distro’s bundle supervisor.
Once Zim’s put in, begin it up.
A key idea in Zim is notebooks. They’re like a set of wiki pages on a single topic. When you first begin Zim, it asks you to specify a folder in your notebooks and the title of a pocket book. Zim suggests “Notes” for the title, and ~/Notebooks/ for the folder. Change that if you’d like. I did.
After you set the title and the folder in your pocket book, click on OK. You get what’s primarily a container in your wiki pages.
Adding pages to a pocket book
So you’ve a container. Now what? You begin including pages to it, after all. To try this, choose File > New Page.
Enter a reputation for the web page, then click on OK. From there, you can begin typing so as to add info to that web page.
That web page may be no matter you need it to be: notes for a course you are taking, the define for a e book or article or essay, or a list of your books. It’s as much as you.
Zim has plenty of formatting choices, together with:
- Headings
- Character formatting
- Bullet and numbered lists
- Checklists
You also can add photographs and connect recordsdata to your wiki pages, and even pull in textual content from a textual content file.
Zim’s wiki syntax
You can add formatting to a web page utilizing the toolbar, however that is not the one strategy to do the deed. If, like me, you are type of old-fashioned, you need to use wiki markup for formatting.
Zim’s markup relies on the markup that is used with DokuWiki. It’s primarily WikiText with just a few minor variations. To create a bullet record, for instance, kind an asterisk. Surround a phrase or a phrase with two asterisks to make it daring.
Adding hyperlinks
If you’ve plenty of pages in a pocket book, it is simple to hyperlink them. There are two methods to do this.
The first method is to make use of CamelCase to call the pages. Let’s say I’ve a pocket book known as “Course Notes.” I can rename the pocket book for the info evaluation course I am taking by typing “AnalysisCourse.” When I need to hyperlink to it from one other web page within the pocket book, I simply kind “AnalysisCourse” and press the area bar. Instant hyperlink.
The second method is to click on the Insert hyperlink button on the toolbar. Type the title of the web page you need to hyperlink to within the Link to area, choose it from the displayed record of choices, then click on Link.
I’ve solely been capable of hyperlink between pages in the identical pocket book. Whenever I’ve tried to hyperlink to a web page in one other pocket book, the file (which has the extension .txt) all the time opens in a textual content editor.
Exporting your wiki pages
There would possibly come a time if you need to use the knowledge in a pocket book elsewhere—say, in a doc or on an internet web page. Instead of copying and pasting (and shedding formatting), you’ll be able to export your pocket book pages to any of the next codecs:
- HTML
- LaTeX
- Markdown
- ReStructuredText
To try this, click on on the wiki web page you need to export. Then, choose File > Export. Decide whether or not to export the entire pocket book or only a single web page, then click on Forward.
Select the file format you need to use to avoid wasting the web page or pocket book. With HTML and LaTeX, you’ll be able to select a template. Play round to see what works greatest for you. For instance, if you wish to flip your wiki pages into HTML presentation slides, you’ll be able to select “SlideShow_s5” from the Template record. If you are questioning, that produces slides pushed by the S5 slide framework.
Click Forward. If you are exporting a pocket book, you’ll be able to select to export the pages as particular person recordsdata or as one file. You also can level to the folder the place you need to save the exported file.
Is that every one Zim can do?
Not even shut. Zim additionally has plenty of plugins that broaden its capabilities. It even packs a built-in net server that permits you to view your notebooks as static HTML recordsdata. This is helpful for sharing your pages and notebooks on an inside community.
All in all, Zim is a robust, but compact instrument for managing your info. It’s simply one of the best desktop wiki I’ve used, and it is one which I preserve going again to.