A step-up from TiddlyWiki that is still 100% portable?

Question

TiddlyWiki is a great idea, brilliantly implemented. I'm using it as a portable personal "knowledge manager," and these are the prize virtues:

1. It travels on my USB flash memory stick and runs on any computer, regardless of operating system
2. No software installation is needed on the computer (TiddlyWiki merely uses the Internet browser)
3. No Internet connection is needed
4. In terms of data retrieval functionality, it mimics a relational database (use of tags and internal links)
5. Set up and configuration are so simple as to be almost zero. This would also mean dependencies are so minimal as to be transparent, or nearly so.

Let's say I've got a million words of prose in 4,000 tiddlers (posts). I'm still testing, but it looks like TiddlyWiki gets very slow.

Is there an app like TiddlyWiki that keeps all the virtues I listed above, and allows more storage? (or rather, retrieval!)

NOTE: Separation of content and presentation would be ideal. It's nifty that TiddlyWiki has everything in a single HTML document, but it's unhelpful in many ways. I don't care if a directory of assorted docs is needed (SQLite, XML?), as long as it's functionally self-contained.

Solution 1

After some time and serious consideration, I will post my own answer.
There is nothing that matches TiddlyWiki.

As for voluminous information, TW can pretty much handle it. (My early discouragements were due to malformed code.) Difficulty accessing information through the interface becomes an issue before any speed problems. This isn't to fault the interface -- it could be more powerful, but that would sacrifice lightness.

Solution 2

Indeed TiddlyWiki can work with VERY large tiddler stores, they don't need to be in the current TiddlyWiki document either.

See "import tiddler" and friends over at http://tiddlytools.com

Solution 3

Before creating Rails, David Heinemeier Hansson wrote a wiki app called Instiki. Like TiddlyWiki, you don't run it from a separately running server*, so it's easy to run locally and move around on a USB drive (exporting the entire content to a zip file with all the html files or all the files in Textile markup). The entire Instiki tgz download is less than 5mb and the app has only one external dependency: Ruby.

So you can run Instiki anywhere you can run Ruby (for instance, on a Nokia N900 phone).

I never built any Instiki sites as large as you describe, but it ought to handle 1 million words in 4,000 pages a lot easier than TiddlyWiki handles 4,000 tiddlers.

Roger_S

* Oh, not to confuse anyone: Instiki uses the embedded webserver WEBrick

Solution 4

http://tiddlyweb.peermore.com/wiki/ maybe exactly what you are looking for.

You can use any TiddlyWiki variant and the data can be delivered via a server and on-demand.

Solution 5

You could try installing Portable Apps on your USB drive and adding the XAMPP Package which has Apache, PHP, MySQL all installed and running MediaWiki or other Wiki software on top of it.

View more solutions

Comments

[Smandoli]

That seems kinda top-heavy. But in reality, I prolly need to get over considering that kinda top-heavy. I have one question. After poking around on PortableApps/XAMPP, I'm not sure how it runs on Linux. XAMPP requires Wine? (Another thing I should stop considering top-heavy, maybe.) Do you have insight on that?

[Mike Keller]

I'm sorry I didn't realize that version used Wine to run. If you want something that runs native to Windows there is a version on the [XAMPP][1] website. The Lite version should be more than enough and if I remember correctly you should be able to install everything right on your USB stick and skip the PortableApps and WINE pieces. I only suggested PortableApps for ease of installation. [1]: apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html#646 "XAMPP Lite"

[Smandoli]

I've got my flash drive loaded up. I hope to give it a try tonight. One challenge is picking a wiki app -- MediaWiki looks heavy, over-powered for my purpose.

[Smandoli]

So far no luck getting Ruby/Instiki up on either Win XP or Ubuntu. Seems to be the Ruby install that is stuck. Closest I've gotten is the Browser Error 500 "Do you smell smoke?" on the XP. Funny message, but clearing the cache and tweaking the ruby config file haven't made it go away.

[Smandoli]

No attempt made yet to configure and run this, sorry.

[Mike Keller]

No worries I'm just anxious to see if the solution works best for you and if not what solution does.

[Roger_S]

You could check the Instiki site that Jackues Distler is hosting — golem.ph.utexas.edu/wiki/instiki/show/HomePage — and see if it has information that might get you running.

[Smandoli]

Thanks, I had found that one. I'm pushing my experiment along on TiddlyWiki for now. It's the Bible "on-a-stick." The TW interface is stressed (big columns of tags and tiddlers), but it functions just fine.

[Philip]

Although to be fair, this is a Windows version, however, there is likely to be a linux one available. Still not quite as easy as TiddlyWiki, IMO.

[Smandoli]

It's true. The app I envisioned when I posted my question runs very well, and your pointer for off-loading the data has been invaluable.

[pbr]

Rocking! ...glad it helped. :-)

[GuruM]

I've used tiddlywiki for the last 2 years and I agree. Just load the online/offline tiddly html page and search, add tiddlers. As easy as that. [Tiddlyspot][tiddlyspot.com] takes care of the online storage (it even stores last 7-8 backup versions). "Save changes" with auto-save and "Save to Web" are the best and easiest to use. No setup, no configuration (almost)

[GuruM]

I'm trying to expand from just a "Personal KnowledgeBase" to a shared "knowledge-base" edited by multiple users. Think "Movie Reviews" and other community based stuff. Couldn't find any wiki solution as simple to use as TiddlyWiki. Found kune.cc and EtherpadLite. But they're still in growing.

[Smandoli]

Yes. I am still in "classic" and using TiddlyWiki Desktop to solve browser problems. As for the new version, I can't tolerate the mobile-device look and feel. I'm sure it can be configured to my liking. I haven't enough time and courage to try it myself, so am just hoping someone else will.

[Arlen Beiler]

MediaWiki is what I have used in the past, and now I am switching slowly to TiddlyWiki5. One thing missing is file uploads. But you can easily use external hyperlinks.

[Soren Bjornstad]

It's worth adding 8 years later that recent versions of TiddlyWiki 5 have made huge performance improvements. Five-digit numbers of tiddlers are no problem as long as you're careful to prevent too many dynamic widgets from showing at any given time (like a spreadsheet, TiddlyWiki recalculates and rerenders after every change, so if you're editing a tiddler that has to have some super-complex filters run against it in 50 places in your open tiddlers, it'll get a bit laggy). The author has also said he'll consider breaking out into WebAssembly if scaling becomes a problem.