RIP deadwiki

A fun project that I used almost constantly in 2020, deadwiki was an experiment in organizing information, developing a web library, and creating a weird web language.

It is now abandoned and archived. Thanks for all the PRs!

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deadwiki

deadwiki is a Markdown-powered wiki that uses your filesystem as its db. This means you can keep your wiki in a git repository and edit content with your text editor, or read and modify pages with style using its 1990s-era web interface.

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There are two built-in ways to access your deadwiki:

• Run the local webserver and use the (minimal) HTML UI.
• Just use your filesystem. Regular Markdown files. cat, ls, etc.

~ status ~

Under construction!

The git master may be broken, so make sure you install from crates.io (see below).

I use it every day, and I like combining it with other small tools. I keep a Markdown TODO list in ~/.todo that I manage on the command line with a todo program, and I have a little scratch pad in ~/.scratch that I add links to in a shell using an s program, like:

$ s https://git.coolstuff.com/some/repo

With deadwiki, I symlinked both of those files into my ~/.deadwiki dir and can browse them using a fancy, 1990s-era HTML interface.

~ installation ~

Okay, so how do you get started? You just need grep, which you probably already have, and cargo, which is usually pretty easy to install.

Once you've got both of them you can install it with:

cargo install deadwiki

That'll give you a handy dandy dead CLI tool, if everything is setup and ~/.cargo/bin is in your $PATH. You should now be able to run dead -h to see the possibilities.

~ getting started ~

To begin, create an empty directory or find one already populated with .md files. This is your deadwiki. Simply point the CLI utility at it to get going:

$ dead my-wiki-dir/
-> deadwiki serving my-wiki-dir/ at http://0.0.0.0:8000

Now visit http://0.0.0.0:8000/ in your browser!

By default the main page will list all your wiki pages, but if index.md exists in your wiki it'll show that wiki page instead.

You can edit wiki pages locally with something like vim, or by using the web UI. Edits show up on the next page load, as do new pages - there is no database and no fancy pantsy caching. Just you, your filesystem, and a dream.

In addition to CommonMark, Markdown files can link to each other by putting the [Page Name] in brackets. Like most wikis, it'll either be a link to the actual page or a link to create it.

deadwiki also includes support for #hashtags. Any hashtag appearing in wiki text will be linked to a search page that lists all wiki pages containing that hashtag.

Finally, if you want to sync your wiki automatically, there is some very basic git support. Basically, if you start the dead program with the -s or --sync flag and point it at an existing git repository, it'll do this every 30 seconds or so:

git add .
git commit -am update
git pull origin master
git push origin master

Like I said, super basic! But it works, and it's nice that it syncs changes you make even outside of the web UI.

~ keyboard shortcuts ~

There are two modes: browsing and editing. Editing is powered by SimpleMDE and includes all its default shortcuts (shown below), plus a few deadwiki-specific shortcuts.

Browsing mode includes a few keyboard shortcuts to make navigation quicker and more nimble.

Browse Mode

Shortcut	Notes
Double Click	Enter edit or create mode
Ctrl-h	Go to the home page
Ctrl-j	Jump to page (fuzzy finder)
Ctrl-n	Go to the "new" page
Ctrl-e	Open editor for current page
i	Insert mode: Edit or New

Edit Mode

Shortcut	Notes
ESC	Exits edit mode
Ctrl Enter	Submits your edits
Cmd Enter	Same
Cmd-'	Toggle Blockquote
Cmd-B	Toggle Bold
Cmd-E	Clean Block
Cmd-H	Toggle Heading (Smaller)
Cmd-I	Toggle Italic
Cmd-K	Draw Link
Cmd-L	Toggle Unordered List
Cmd-P	Toggle Preview
Cmd-Alt-C	Toggle Code Block
Cmd-Alt-I	Draw Image
Cmd-Alt-L	Toggle Ordered LIST
Shift-Cmd-H	Toggle Heading (Bigger)
F9	Toggle Side-By-Side
F11	Toggle Fullscreen

~ hacking ~

The code is in pretty rough shape right now, as this is mostly a prototype-in-progress. But you can hack on it pretty easily with cargo:

$ git clone https://github.com/xvxx/deadwiki
$ cd deadwiki
$ cargo run wiki/

There's a basic wiki included that shows off some features.

~ future features ~

• --read-only mode, so i can have a copy i can view anywhere
• mobile-friendly CSS
• search (probably just grep)
• --gopher: serve wiki pages over gopher too (probably using phd)
• *.css in wiki dir gets included
• homebrew package, AUR package
• brew services for running on osx, systemd for arch
• basic TUI for creating new pages or opening wiki pages in $EDITOR.

~ philosophy ~

• no database
• text editor/plain text friendly
• prefer server-side rendering
• take your data with you (scm friendly)
• lean on standard UNIX commands (find, grep)
• js only for user input (keyboard shortcuts, markdown editor, finder)
• no js frameworks/helpers
• build time matters (28 crates currently, ~6s release ~4s debug)

~ screenies ~

Rendering Markdown. Wow.	Editing Markdown. Amazing.

~ bug reports ~

Please direct all known and unknown (suspected) bugs to this URL:

• https://github.com/xvxx/deadwiki/issues/new

~ credits ~

All SVG icons are Feather icons: https://feathericons.com/

deadwiki's source is licensed under the MIT License.