= DWiki features

DWiki's job is to be a good way to display version controlled
wiki-text pages that you write in a real editor.

The important DWiki features:
* [[simple but reasonably powerful text rendering|Formatting]]
  (based on WikiText).
* natural support for arbitrarily-named links: you don't have
  to follow some magic page naming standard that doesn't fit well with
  the natural names for things.
* pages are normal, simple files, and you edit them directly in Unix.
* support for putting pages in RCS, with strong disincentives to
  hand-edit files without checking them out (they stop displaying).
* directories can display like changelogs: pages inline, most recent
  first.
* can generate Atom syndication feeds for recently changed things.

== The inevitable feature list:

In no particular order:
* simple WikiText-like text rendering. (Chris wrote pages in GNU Emacs
  and relentlessly smushed anything that got in the way of how GNU
  Emacs wanted to autoformat things.)
* The text rendering choices are designed to make it easy to write
  about Unix systems.
* full support for directly editing wiki pages.
* does not force a flat page namespace; uses straightforward Unix
  files and directories to organize the DWiki page space. (Thereby
  keeping the Unix view of DWiki's pages simple.)
* supports a blog-like view of a directory that inlines pages there,
  most recent first.
* in-filesystem page redirects make it trivial to support plurals,
  moved/renamed pages, etc.
* text-based page templates control how all pages appear, making it
  easy to control various bits of a DWiki's appearance.
* pages can be put in RCS for version control and multi-person editing
  access. RCS files can live in either the page directory hierarchy
  (for simplicity) or another parallel directory tree (for neatness).
* forces people not to edit RCS-controlled files without locking them
  by refusing to display inconsistent unlocked files.
* generates Atom syndication feeds for recently changed pages and
  recent comments, for the entire DWiki or any subtree thereof.
* written in Python.
* simple-ish yet powerful enough (I hope) user authentication system,
  with an equally simple yet powerful way of restricting who can read
  DWiki pages.
* supports the option of letting people (possibly including the world)
  comment on some or all of the pages.
* takes some pride in properly generating and handling Last-Modified:
  and ETag: headers in HTTP responses.
* wikitext to HTML generates fully HTML 4.01 Transitional compliant
  HTML provided only that you don't jump multiple indent levels in at
  once in lists (thus [[Formatting]] doesn't validate).
* can run as a CGI-BIN or standalone, and support for additional
  environments (SCGI, WSGI, whatever) should be easy to add if it is
  needed. ~~Disclaimer: standalone does not use a production-quality
  webserver implementation~~; it uses Python's _BaseHTTPServer_ with a
  hack to use threading.

== Missing DWiki features

Also in no particular order:
* you can't edit DWiki pages from the web, but see WhyNotWebEditing.
* no user authentication.
* therefor, no access restrictions on who can read what.
* searching is primitive at best.

=== A necessary acknowledgement:

A number of DWiki's features and design decisions are shamelessly
inspired by C.J. Silverio's as yet (22 May 2005) unfinished
[[Snippy|http://www.ceejbot.com/blog/space/Snippy]].  Note that Snippy
is much more powerful than DWiki probably ever will be, plus if it had
been finished when I was writing DWiki I probably wouldn't have.