Open source wiki and application platform Deki Wiki, powered by MindTouch, is releasing a new version of its software today that makes it easy to switch between multiple languages for the content and interface of any page on a wiki. The company claims now to offer the first polyglot application on the web and it's something we think our international readers will really enjoy.
MindTouch also announced that Deki Wiki has been chosen as the new framework to power the Mozilla Developer Community site, some great validation for a company that often seems to stand so far out on the bleeding edge that it could make potential users feel uneasy.
Ordinarily we wouldn't write here about new versions of software, but this internationalization seems like a great fit for our international audience. MindTouch is far more than just a wiki, it's a CMS with extensive application and mashup support. We wrote in January, for example, about the company's integration with one of our favorite services, Dapper. Deki Wiki was born as a Mediawiki fork, but those roots are barely recognizable anymore under several years of powerful innovation.
Below is a video about the polyglot support, we recommend readers click the "menu" button and then select the very nice full-screen view in the top right of the Viddler video player.
This latest release includes a long list of other new features, including the ability to block particular users and IP addresses and a multi-asset file uploader that's pretty slick, even if it still isn't as good as Viddler's - which is the best on the web.
Deki Wiki is free to use and the company sells premium support packages.
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Saw your tweet on this article, so buzzed over to check it out. Very interesting. We are indeed in a global economy and now we can have truly international Wikis as well.
Thanks for the headsup.
All the best,
Cindy
Posted by: Cindy Szponder | May 7, 2008 10:13 AM
Very interesting. Deki looks like the tool to build a more open version of Google's KNOL.
Posted by: bernard lunn | May 8, 2008 5:18 AM
Interesting... to note that XWiki has been offering such support for internationalizing your wiki application for years. So much for "the first polyglot CMS & application platform" ! It does application creation right within the wiki as well. Actually, it was one of the 2 pioneers in the space (along with JotSpot) back in 2004.
XWiki is Java-based, completely Open-Source / released under the LGPL license. It has a lot of activity going on right now. Find out more at http://www.xwiki.org .
Posted by: Guillaume | May 15, 2008 10:07 AM
@Guillaume,
Feature comparisons are always hard, but our survey of most wikis and CMSs indicated that Deki Wiki is the first for the following reasons:
1) MindTouch Deki Wiki supports polyglot URIs, allowing each translated page to have its own URI. This is important for SEO.
2) MindTouch Deki Wiki supports polyglot search, where you can either search a specific language or all languages, including pages that are language neutral.
3) MindTouch Deki Wiki supports creating polyglot templates that contain text specific to many different language, as well as the neutral language, which makes it nice an easy to edit and maintain.
4) MindTouch Deki Wiki automatically sets the appropriate language when creating new pages, reducing errors and making the flow more natural.
There are a lot of innovations here that go beyond storing "variants" of a page and, of course, we were the first to call it "polyglot".
Moreover, you cite JotSpot and Xwiki. These are too pioneering examples of wiki applications. However, the architecture of MindTouch and Xwiki/JotSpot are very very different. You can learn more about this here: http://mindtouch.com/Technology
MindTouch is allowing users to connect people, enterprise systems, web-services, applications and data stores; thus allowing users to organize data and systems in a way that's most suitable to them. This is really about Enterprise IT connecting systems and allowing users to collaborate around text, files, systems, and services. Realizing this, I'm certain you'll agree MindTouch is innovating in it's own right and pioneering a new kind of IT infrastructure--A people-centric kind. :-)
Posted by: Aaron Fulkerson | May 27, 2008 3:36 PM
Hi Aaron :-)
Let's play a bit the features game, if only for the sake of it :
1) XWiki does this as well (pagea?language=[fr,en,whatever])
2) Doesn't work in XWiki
3) You can create classes (similar to forms) and assign them a language
4) XWiki does this depending on the language preference of the user, set in a cookie
All in all you're right : we don't wanna enter a feature war anyway :-) The whole point of collaboration solutions is, well, to help people collaborate. That is, to work together, get things done more effectively, share pieces of information and offer them a better work experience overall.
I think XWiki & DekiWiki are both trying to offer innovative ways to integrate wiki's mostly free-form collaboration mode with existing, structured content coming from other applications.
From what I understand, XWiki tries to do this by offering the tools needed to rewrite the application (say a blog, a light CRM, a task manager, whatever application one might think of) and make it run right inside the wiki while DekiWiki is more into extracting the info from existing systems and providing access to it through mashups in the wiki...
(Bear in mind that's a rough description, you can build mashups from external data in XWiki and I guess there's some application-building capabilities somewhere in DekiWiki's API...)
That's acually 2 different philosophies to address a similar issue. Both hold their advantages and inconvenients, though the ultimate aim remains the same : give people what they need.
Software doesn't matter anyway : http://is.gd/7sE ;-)
Posted by: Guillaume Lerouge | May 27, 2008 4:49 PM