Wiki Component

A wiki component, is a reusable object, which can be embedded into an existing web application.

A wiki component can allow community contributions to an otherwise static web page.

For example imagine a web application which displays a music collection. Adding new artists or albums may not be possible through the web site, but a wiki component would allow comments to be added to each artist, and each album.

The wiki markup for George Harrison's page might look something like this :

George Harrison is best know for his time in
[artist:The Beatles],
and people often overlook his best work
[album:George Harrison/All Things Must Pass].

Note, that the link to "The Beatles" isn't to a wiki page; it is a link to another part of the music catalogue. In fact, there may not be any wiki text for "artist:The Beatles", but the artist does exist.

So a wiki component is not in control of the urls. The urls are governed by the web application (the music catalogue in this case). Also, the wiki component cannot constrain the page names either - these are also controlled by the web application too, not by the wiki component.

Pink Wino is designed from scratch to be flexible enough that it doesn't need to be in control of page names, or of urls, and it can be easily embedded into existing JSP pages.