In another thread I posted a link a month ago to an interesting WYSIWYG markdown editor called Marko Editor. Upon visiting the page again today I saw another software there called Vis-à-Wiki, which looks like a combination of a desktop wiki using Markdown with an integrated concept mapper:

http://marko-editor.com/vis-a-wiki/

I find this quite a fascinating concept. Check out the video to see how it works:

http://youtu.be/WwiKrhyfAUY

Unfortunately, the developer has taken off the downloads both for Marko Editor and Vis-à-Wiki, citing some sort of licensing dilemmas. He is asking for advice on how to share these files, so if you can help him, you can contact him here:

http://marko-editor.com/download/

It would be great if this Vis-à-Wiki could get off the ground, as it sounds like a rather interesting and unique concept.

The developer of Marko Editor and Vis-à-Wiki has now also asked for licensing advice at the following forums, in case anyone here has some answers for him:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8640770

http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=39584.msg369607#msg369607

It certainly looks interesting. But regrettably I could not get the video to play.

Hugh wrote:

It certainly looks interesting. But regrettably I could not get the
video to play.

You can watch it on Youtube. It does work over here:

http://youtu.be/WwiKrhyfAUY

What's interesting to me about it, besides the fact that it is a wiki, is that it combines the wiki (linking) functionality with a concept mapping one (so you can add a link to a node on a concept map and it takes you to the wiki document), and then the concept map can be overlayed on a grid, so you can organise the nodes (and the notes) into a project layout (or different chapters, or whatever else you want the grid columns and rows to stand for).

As regards the risks of litigation, I'm not a lawyer. But I would have thought that pursuing his software development role through a small, private company, possibly off-the-shelf, or through a contractual link with other developers who already have such a set-up, would be the wisest way to protect the developer personally, not just from the risks of potential patent litigation but also from any other legal threats that may arise. But as I say, I'm no lawyer - and naturally the costs of such a course might well outweigh the benefits to him.

Dr Andus wrote:

What's interesting to me about it, besides the fact that it is a wiki,
is that it combines the wiki (linking) functionality with a concept
mapping one (so you can add a link to a node on a concept map and it
takes you to the wiki document), and then the concept map can be
overlayed on a grid, so you can organise the nodes (and the notes) into
a project layout (or different chapters, or whatever else you want the
grid columns and rows to stand for).

And of course it' also interesting that it uses WYSIWYG, which is a much-requested feature for wikis by users who don't like to use wiki markup, yet the underlying syntax is Markdown, so there is easy compatibility with a range of other software through even just simple copy and paste.

I say this only on the basis of having watched the video - I have no idea how well it really works in reality. But I'd love to try it out.

By any chance do you have the exe file ?

Karthik wrote:

By any chance do you have the exe file ?

Nope, sorry. It was taken down before I could try it. You could try to contact the developer.

http://tiddlymap.org/experimental/

https://github.com/felixhayashi/TW5-TiddlyMap