Sunday, February 25, 2007
DataPerfect, TiddlyWiki & TiddlyPerfect
It is a while since I have been working on any of my blogs, but a response to this blog from a former DataPerfect user prompted, combined with very exciting developments in the realm of TiddlyPerfect - a hybrid information species that is evolving from a relationship between DataPerfect and TiddlyWiki - has prompted me to post an update.
I had discovered TiddlyWiki - www.tiddlywiki.com - last October, and immediately was enthralled not only with the brilliance of its design, but also with the realization that I was able to generate content / tiddlers for TiddlyWiki pages from my DataPerfect applications.
Through my work with the NGO Committee on Education - www.ngo-education.net - my focus has been on the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014), and one of the principal tasks I had set was to share and make available, for the Committee and the Decade, Information Habitat's extensive archives on sustainable development - much of which is maintained in a set of DataPerfect applications - and TiddlyWiki appears to be an ideal vehicle for this.
TiddlyWiki is a self-contained wiki page, powered by Javascript, that can se set up immediately - it is definitely the wikiest of wikis - wiki being a Hawaiian word that means "swift" or "swiftly".
I had begun using Moodle - Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment - for this purpose, but after a while, had become somewhat frustrated by my inability to generate Moodle pages from DataPerfect. In particular, I had been very disappointed by the limitations of Moodle's wiki module, and had first come across TiddlyWiki from the "Using Moodle" forum.
Since discovering TiddlyWiki, and the opportunities to generate TiddlyWiki content from DataPerfect, almost all of my time has been devoted to developing TiddlyWiki applications, and on December 31, 2006 I registered the domain www.tiddlyperfect.net and launched an initial pre-release initial public offering of TiddlyPerfect.
As of now, I have posted eight TiddlyWiki / TiddlyPerfect sites, including TiddlyPerfect itself:
I had discovered TiddlyWiki - www.tiddlywiki.com - last October, and immediately was enthralled not only with the brilliance of its design, but also with the realization that I was able to generate content / tiddlers for TiddlyWiki pages from my DataPerfect applications.
Through my work with the NGO Committee on Education - www.ngo-education.net - my focus has been on the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014), and one of the principal tasks I had set was to share and make available, for the Committee and the Decade, Information Habitat's extensive archives on sustainable development - much of which is maintained in a set of DataPerfect applications - and TiddlyWiki appears to be an ideal vehicle for this.
TiddlyWiki is a self-contained wiki page, powered by Javascript, that can se set up immediately - it is definitely the wikiest of wikis - wiki being a Hawaiian word that means "swift" or "swiftly".
I had begun using Moodle - Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment - for this purpose, but after a while, had become somewhat frustrated by my inability to generate Moodle pages from DataPerfect. In particular, I had been very disappointed by the limitations of Moodle's wiki module, and had first come across TiddlyWiki from the "Using Moodle" forum.
Since discovering TiddlyWiki, and the opportunities to generate TiddlyWiki content from DataPerfect, almost all of my time has been devoted to developing TiddlyWiki applications, and on December 31, 2006 I registered the domain www.tiddlyperfect.net and launched an initial pre-release initial public offering of TiddlyPerfect.
As of now, I have posted eight TiddlyWiki / TiddlyPerfect sites, including TiddlyPerfect itself:
- DataPerfect Information - http://www.dataperfect.info - featuring DataPerfect-generated tiddlers from the DP manual;
- Information Habitat 2.0 (beta) - http://www.information-habitat.net - with DP-generated tiddlers for documents, projects and databases from Information Habitat; and
- four sites for the NGO Committee on Education, including:
- The proceedings of a workshop organized by the committee on Education, Youth & Technology for Sustainable Development - www.ngo-education.net/workshop;
- a re-publication of The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review - www.ngo-education.net/stern-review;
- Plan B 3.0: Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble - www.ngo-education.net/plan-b - a TiddlyPerfect adaptation of Plan B 2.0 by Lester Brown;
- Youth Challenge: UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development - www.ngo-education.net/challenge; and, most recently,
- a draft framework for Climate Change 2.0 - www.ngo-education.net/climate-change - with the vision of harnessing the power of Web 2,0 in addressing the challenges of the climate change crisis.
- The proceedings of a workshop organized by the committee on Education, Youth & Technology for Sustainable Development - www.ngo-education.net/workshop;
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Dataperfect - let the blogging begin
Dear friends,
This is a blog I have been meaning to start for a while - and although I hadn't written anything here since I set it up a couple of months ago, there has been much to report and I have compiled some very extensive logs of the development of some of the key databases I have been developing with DataPerfect.
I was very fortunate to have discovered DataPerfect - arguably the most brilliant database in existence, and one that has not just withstood the test of time, but has continued to grow with small yet significant enhancements - when it was released twenty years ago as a companion to the still magnificent WordPerfect for DOS and a key element in WordPerfect Office
DataPerfect was written by Lew Bastian who had written some of the first disk-caching patents while working for IBM and who is the older brother of WordPerfect author and founder Bruce Bastian. Lew Bastian continues to support DataPerfect and to play a vital role in the DataPerfect Users Discussion Group.
The most recent developments in DataPerfect - which I have not yet begun to make use of - can not truly be called small, as it is now possible for DataPerfect databases to run on a web server and to generate web pages on the fly.
DataPerfect - together with a set of related utility programs including WordPerfect Office - is available as a free download from the DataPerfect Users Discussion Group; the rights to use DataPerfect were released by Novell when it acquired the WordPerfect Corporation.
This is a blog I have been meaning to start for a while - and although I hadn't written anything here since I set it up a couple of months ago, there has been much to report and I have compiled some very extensive logs of the development of some of the key databases I have been developing with DataPerfect.
I was very fortunate to have discovered DataPerfect - arguably the most brilliant database in existence, and one that has not just withstood the test of time, but has continued to grow with small yet significant enhancements - when it was released twenty years ago as a companion to the still magnificent WordPerfect for DOS and a key element in WordPerfect Office
DataPerfect was written by Lew Bastian who had written some of the first disk-caching patents while working for IBM and who is the older brother of WordPerfect author and founder Bruce Bastian. Lew Bastian continues to support DataPerfect and to play a vital role in the DataPerfect Users Discussion Group.
The most recent developments in DataPerfect - which I have not yet begun to make use of - can not truly be called small, as it is now possible for DataPerfect databases to run on a web server and to generate web pages on the fly.
DataPerfect - together with a set of related utility programs including WordPerfect Office - is available as a free download from the DataPerfect Users Discussion Group; the rights to use DataPerfect were released by Novell when it acquired the WordPerfect Corporation.
