Oddmuse is a wiki engine

Wiki software

Wiki software is collaborative software that runs a wiki, i.e., a website that allows users to create and collaboratively edit web pages via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web application that runs on one or more web servers...

. It is free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

, licensed under the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

. Oddmuse is based on UseModWiki

UseModWiki

UseModWiki is a wiki engine written in the Perl programming language. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License. Pages in UseModWiki are stored in ordinary files, not in a relational database. Something similar to the interface can be seen in MediaWiki with the classic skin.- History...

 version 0.92, and many patches published on the UseMod site. The programs have diverged since the fork. The creator and main developer of Oddmuse is Alex Schröder.

Features

The core wiki engine consists of a single Perl

Perl

Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...

 script, which is intended to be kept shorter than 4,000 lines. More features can be added with modules (extensions

Extension (computing)

Software extension, is a file containing programming that serves to extend the capabilities of or data available to a more basic program. It is a kind of list of commands which are directly included in the program. This term often coincides with the plug-in...

).

Pages in an Oddmuse wiki

Wiki

A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...

 are stored in a flat file database

Flat file database

A flat file database describes any of various means to encode a database model as a single file .- Overview :...

, i.e. ordinary files

Computer file

A computer file is a block of arbitrary information, or resource for storing information, which is available to a computer program and is usually based on some kind of durable storage. A file is durable in the sense that it remains available for programs to use after the current program has finished...

. The structure was chosen to simplify the Oddmuse architecture.

Oddmuse aims to have all the features required to run multilingual sites. It has Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

 support out-of-the-box. A module allows users to specify the language of paragraphs, and to see only the text written in the languages they understand. Also language tags are supported. There is an ongoing effort to translate Oddmuse documentation into multiple languages.

Oddmuse also functions as a content management system

Content management system

A content management system is a system providing a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based...

, with modules for calendar, comment pages and blog

Blog

A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

s.

The markup of Oddmuse wiki resembles UseMod markup. Some features can be turned off, and others added with a few modules like LaTeX

LaTeX

LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to...

 support.

Oddmuse should produce valid XHTML

XHTML

XHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....

 1.0 Strict web pages.

Oddmuse was the first wiki engine to implement page clusters. When one or more pages in a page cluster change, only the central cluster page shows up in recent changes. One can see the changes in detail in the central cluster page. Oddmuse uses Creole markup

Creole (markup)

Creole is a lightweight markup language for formatting wikitext, aimed at being a common markup language for wikis, enabling and simplifying the transfer of content between different wiki engines....

language in its syntax.

External links

• Official site
• The Emacs Wiki is the most prominent Oddmuse-based wiki