[cgi-wiki-dev] Fwd: [wiki-standards] WikiCreole 1.0 Press Release

[Earle Martin]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chuck Smith <csmith at hs-heilbronn.de>
Date: 04-Jul-2007 13:00
Subject: [wiki-standards] WikiCreole 1.0 Press Release
To: Discussion of wiki research and practice
<wiki-research at wikisym.org>, The discussion list for wiki standards
<wiki-standards at wikisym.org>


Link to this press release:
http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/WikiCreolePressRelease
To digg it: http://digg.com/software/WikiCreole_1_0_a_common_wiki_markup

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

After a year of diligent effort, a group of nearly 50 dedicated users
and developers are proud to release WikiCreole 1.0. Creole is designed
to be a common wiki markup language which augments existing markup to
enable wiki users to transfer content seamlessly across wikis, a boon
to novice and expert users alike.

Creole, taking its name from the field of linguistics, a stable
language that originated from a combination of two or more languages.
As every wiki software has its own markup definitions, the differences
can make them difficult for novices to learn and experts to remember,
thus a common wiki markup lays the foundation for development of
cross-engine wiki software.

The Creole name for a common markup was born from an idea of wiki
founder Ward Cunningham at Wikimania 2006 the international Wikipedia
conference. The goal: create a common markup that was not a
standardization of an arbitrary existing markup, but rather a new
markup language that was created out of the common elements of all
existing engines. Under this premise the Wiki Creole Working Group
analyzed existing wiki markup and compiled a greatest-common
denominator subset of elements and presented its report.

Practitioners and wiki developers were then invited to a workshop at
WikiSym 2006 in Denmark to learn about Creole and discuss how to
proceed. WikiSym is a symposium (conference) series dedicated to wiki
research and practice. Participants evaluated different markup
elements for possible unification and added them to a wiki created for
this purpose. The resulting data resulted in the first version of the
Creole spec, version 0.1. Many workshop participants also agreed to
implement Creole into their existing wiki implementations.

In true wiki fashion, the report and data were published to a wider
audience who were unable to attend allowing them to discuss the
decisions made and add their own proposals. An iterative workflow was
introduced that discussed and introduced these new proposals into the
spec. Discussion pages were used to address each topic and at the end
of each iteration (4-8 weeks), a new version number was added to the
spec.

The working group's goal was to emphasize consensus instead of
majority rule, so opinion polls were always followed by an attempt to
reach mutual agreement. After many long months of cooperation, the
working group finally reached a point of maximum commonalities. Creole
1.0 was then frozen for the next two years to allow time for adoption.
The WikiCreole site (www.wikicreole.org) now has extensive
documentation of the empirical analysis and discussions of the
elements to support the decisions behind the spec. Today, ten wiki
engines support Creole and many more are planning to implement it in
the coming months. Wiki engine developers implementing WikiCreole in
their parsers, give a clear sign to the community of their readiness
to cooperate and draw us all closer together, making life easier for
everyone in the wiki world.

With the support of i3G (Interdisciplinary Institute for Intelligent
Business Processes; Heilbronn, Germany), Christoph Sauer and Chuck
Smith have led the process with great help from the wiki developer
community through its initial concept to 1.0. Through their selection
of content and personnel, i3G, is trying to overcome the barriers
between computer science, engineering and business. They also develop
customized concepts for companies to help optimize operational
workflow and its representation for IT systems.

For more details, contact Chuck Smith at +49 7131 504 474 or
csmith(at)hs-heilbronn.de
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-- 
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/