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Ask HN: Looking for a Static wiki generator

1 points by bobcattr ↗ HN
I am looking for a simple static wiki (not blog) generator. All I really need is the static generation of markdown files to be presented in a parent child fashion. Does anything like this exist?

The reason being the host system is not powerful enough to run a wiki engine like dokuwiki

11 comments

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ColinWright
I'm sure people will chime in with more information here, but you might be interested in previous discussions of this and similar questions:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4860457

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4858436

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4857473

bobcattr
I have searched before and didn't really come up with much that is a wiki. Everything is a blog
ColinWright
I produced my own statically generated wiki that uses forms, email, and a cron job to receive changes, regenerate the site, then upload the changed pages. It's crude, old, non-standard, and definitely not what you want. When I made it some 13 years ago there were no alternatives. Still runs, mind you.

So it's possible, and I'm sure someone has done it, but I have no suggestions. Sorry.

Added in edit ...

Have you had a look at this: http://code.google.com/p/statwiki/ ??

Or this: http://ikiwiki.info/ ??

Or this: https://github.com/arthurk/pyll#readme ??

This also has a lot of information:

http://iwantmyname.com/blog/2011/02/list-static-website-gene...

ColinWright
So if it's a wiki, how do you intend to make a change, given that it's static? I'd be interested to see how your solution to that design issue compares with the solution I came up with over a decade ago.
bobcattr
Through the markdown (or whatever else) files on the system via the shell.
ColinWright
I don't understand. It's a wiki. You have a collection of plain text files with markdown or something. There's a web server. The webserver expects html.

How does the text get converted to html? What provokes the process? Do you just initiate it by hand having changed the plain text files? If so, what's the difference between a wiki and a static web site?

I don't understand what you're trying to achieve, and why you're calling it a wiki.

gexla
I don't quite get it either.

Could you use something like Org mode in Emacs? Org mode has a sort of personal wiki feel. Everything is stored as text and you can export your files as HTML.

bobcattr
You convert the files via whatever does conversion. The same as any other SSG.

The difference is the layout of the data. In a wiki the data is usually laid out hierarchically. Regular static sites are not. Most that I have looked at create blogs.

I'm caling it a wiki because with the exception of not using a browser it should be one.

ColinWright
What's an SSG? I've gone and tried to look it up on wikipedia, but there's nothing that appears to be relevant.

  > In a wiki the data is usually
  > laid out hierarchically.
What? No. In a wiki the pages are semi-automatically linked. Go and look at the very original wiki, the very first one by Ward Cunningham[0]. Pages are linked completely according to the text, and there is absolutely no hierarchical structure. Even wikipedia has no hierarchical structure because of being a wiki. It has some structure, but that is imposed independently.

You then also say:

  > ... not using a browser ...
So it would appear that we have established that what you want:

* Isn't editable through a web interface - unlike a wiki

* Has some sort of hierarchical structure - unlike a wiki

* Doesn't use a browser - unlike a wiki

So what you want is, in fact, not a wiki. That leads me to wonder what you do actually want. You seem to want to have some pages that use markdown (or something), and are somehow arranged in a hierarchical manner, and then somehow presented in that hierarchical manner, but without using a browser.

So I don't understand what you want. Here are some questions:

* You say you want the files in some sort of hierarchy - how is that defined?

* How do you envisage a user accessing this static "site" given that you said you don't use a browser?

* After you make a change to a page, do you initiate the re-building of your static site manually, or do you envisage some sort of automated process?

* Where is your "simple static wiki" stored, in order to be accessible?

* Is it just you accessing it? Or is it open to others?

Answers to these (and many other) questions might help us understand what you actually want.

Just don't call it a wiki.

[0] http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WelcomeVisitors

1331
It seems that the terminology is causing some confusion. The definition of a wiki is "a website which allows its users to add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser" [1], which is pretty much the opposite of "static." I assume that what you want is a static site generator that has organisational features that are common in wiki software...

My favourite wiki software is Gitit [2]. It uses Pandoc [3] to convert from an input format (such as Markdown) to HTML. Perhaps you could write a simple script that iterates through all source files and renders the HTML to a destination directory using Pandoc, creating any subdirectories as required. That minimal solution should be very easy to implement; adding organisational markup within the HTML would require some programming.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

[2] http://gitit.net/

[3] http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/